Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Samira Shackle
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Let's not hide behind Palestinian division in the quest for a just peace
Six years after the first parliamentary elections in the occupied Palestinian territories, differences between the main political parties have taken a worrying turn. Persistent external meddling has given rise to two distinct administrative and geographic entities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, reinforcing in their wake the fragmentation...
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Breaking the taboo: Washington talks Israel and apartheid
Throughout the nine months of the current round of Israel-Palestine peace talks, and the torturous months of convincing both parties to return to the negotiating table that preceded it, one thing has been consistent: John Kerry’s dedication to the process. The US Secretary of State has been tireless in...
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Back on the agenda: Chemical gas attacks in Syria
On Friday 11th April, there was an attack on Kafr Zeita, a rebel-held village 125 miles north of the Syrian capital, Damascus. Agreement between the Syrian regime and the rebels is rare, but in this case, both sides say that it was a chemical gas attack, involving the use...
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Tension grips Saudi-US alliance
At the end of March, US President Barack Obama made his first visit to Saudi Arabia since Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power in Egypt in 2011. The fall of Mubarak arguably marked the beginning of the current tension between the two allies: the Saudi monarchy was dismayed to...
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Why is Israel opposed to Palestine joining international treaties?
Last week, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that he had accepted the application of Palestinians to join 13 international UN conventions. Significantly, these include the Geneva Conventions, which govern the rules of war and military occupation. Ban informed all 193 UN member states that the application, by...
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Egypt's military-led government continue to clamp down on free speech
This week the trial of 20 journalists resumed in Egypt. They stand accused of joining or aiding a terrorist group, namely the Muslim Brotherhood, which is being broadly oppressed by the interim government after being ousted in July. The 20 people include Al-Jazeeera correspondent and Australian citizen, Peter Greste, who...
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What's the point in holding peace talks simply for the sake of the process?
When the US Secretary of State John Kerry finally got Israelis and Palestinians back around the table for negotiations last July, few were optimistic about the renewed peace talks. It soon became obvious that late April was an unrealistic deadline for a final agreement. Kerry scaled back, and the...
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The return of polio: Another tragic consequence of Syria's war
Polio is an entirely preventable disease that can cause paralysis, disability, and even death. It is incurable and highly contagious, but vaccination drives have meant that worldwide, cases have decreased by 99 per cent since 1988. Until recently, the disease remained endemic in just three countries – Afghanistan, Nigeria, and...
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US-Israeli visa controversy wages on
America’s visa waiver programme allows citizens of specific countries to enter the US for tourism, business, and in transit for up to 90 days without having to obtain a visa. It currently applies to 38 countries – and there are efforts to up that by one and include Israel. The...
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Controversial Saudi ban of Brotherhood backfires
Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, in an escalation of the campaign to stamp out the group across the region. Saudi Arabia’s decree equates the Brotherhood with groups widely classified as terrorist, such as Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Islamic State of Iraq and...
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Abbas faces harsh options
This week, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, went to Washington to meet with the US president, Barack Obama. He did so under heavy pressure, as US-brokered peace talks with Israelis reach their expiration date of April, with no deal in sight. As Abbas landed in America,...
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By making impossible demands, Netanyahu seeks to paint the Palestinians as intransigent and deflect international pressure
“Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, where the civil rights of all citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, are guaranteed,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a speech in Washington earlier this month. “The land of Israel is the place where the identity of the Jewish people...
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UN envoy Brahimi was right to apologise to the Syrians
The second round of peace talks on Syria has drawn to a close, with little evidence of any progress. The talks at Geneva were more than a year in the making – even getting representatives of the Syrian government and of the rebels to sit in the same room...
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Even its friends aren't allowed to criticise Israel
This week, the head of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, travelled to Israel and addressed the Knesset. It did not go according to plan. During Schulz’s speech, several far-right members of the Knesset (MKs) walked out. Speaking in his native German, Schulz stressed the importance of remembering the Holocaust, and...
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Egypt slips from US democratic agenda
Last month, US President Barack Obama gave his annual State of the Union address. The speech is the president’s opportunity to assess the condition of the country, as well as set out his legislative agenda and his national and international priorities. This year, Obama did not spend long on...
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Tensions over Ukraine give Al-Assad smokescreen to avoid surrendering his chemical weapons
During the three blood-soaked years of the Syrian civil war, Russia and the US have rarely seen eye to eye on the best way to tackle the crisis. A rare moment of agreement came last August, when the two countries struck a deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria....
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Obama turns up the heat on Netanyahu
Over the last few months, the US president Barack Obama has remained largely silent on the matter of the Israel-Palestine peace process. His secretary of state, John Kerry, has taken charge of the protracted task of getting both sides around the negotiating table and pushing for a breakthrough deal. Recently,...
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BDS the elephant in the room at this year's AIPAC conference
When John Kerry, the US secretary of state, attempted to restart the stalled Israel-Palestine peace process, he set a deadline of April 2014 for an agreement. That deadline is fast approaching, and an agreement remains out of reach. The pressure is on. In an interview with Bloomberg this week, the...
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Yemen: moving the revolution from the street into the halls of parliament
In 2011, as mass protests swept the Middle East, Yemen unseated its dictator of 33 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Since then, the country has dropped off the western news agenda, displaced by the chaos in Egypt and violence in Syria. But Yemen’s transition to democracy has been nothing if...
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Are German-Israeli relations wavering?
This week, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and nearly every minister in her new coalition landed in Israel for two days of joint cabinet consultations. These annual meetings highlight the strong bond between Israel and Germany, seven decades after the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany killed six million Jews. “We...
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Saudi Arabia takes tentative steps to ease tensions with the US
America and Saudi Arabia have been allies since the kingdom was formed in 1932. The relationship is mutually beneficial, giving Riyadh the protection of a powerful western military, and ensuring secure oil supplies for Washington. Despite periods of increased tension over the years, this alliance has remained more or...
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Has the EU finally decided to get tough on Egypt?
Ever since Mohamed Morsi, the democratically elected president of Egypt, was ousted in July 2013, the European Union – along with other western powers – has been uncertain of how best to respond. This week, the body of 28 states took steps to clarify its position, with the Foreign...
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Egypt's press downgraded from 'partly free' to 'not free'
“Journalists are never supposed to become the story,” wrote Al-Jazeera correspondent Peter Greste, in a letter smuggled out of Cairo’s Tora Prison. Yet that is just what has happened to the award-winning Australian journalist, who was arrested along with two Egyptian colleagues, Mohamed Famy and Baher Mohamed, on 29...
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Egypt's regime craves elusive legitimacy
This week, the African Union’s (AU) Peace and Security Council held a summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The 54 member states focused on the situation in South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Egypt. Representatives of Egypt will be in attendance – but only to give a...