Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Shazia Arshad
-
Reactions from leading experts on latest UN Commission on Gaza
The United Nations Human Rights Council announced last week the formation of a commission to investigate the most recent Israeli attack on Gaza, Operation Protective Edge. The panel will be headed by William Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law. The UN has said that the panel will be...
-
Pro-Palestinian protests are not where the extremism is
Protestors, activists, human rights campaigners, indeed anyone who seems to care about social justice has taken to the streets in recent weeks to demonstrate against the ongoing Israeli injustices. The Israeli attack on Gaza has left 1, 960 Palestinians dead and just under 10, 000 injured. Watching the events...
-
Will there be accountability for Brits fighting in Israel?
The Israeli army is currently waging a cold blooded campaign against the Gaza Strip, the third of its kind in less than six years. As thousands of Palestinians are killed and injured by Israeli forces, attention is slowly but surely turning towards those who are committing some of the...
-
Lessons of Apartheid and Palestinian popular struggle
EXCLUSIVE PICTURES Chaired by former foreign associate editor of the Guardian, Victoria Brittain, the speakers Mahmoud Zaware and Sami Abou Shehadeh talked about their lives in Israel and the West Bank respectively as they struggle against occupation and apartheid. As the meeting began, the audience and speakers stood for...
-
EU-Israel Association Agreement upgraded?
The EU-Israel Association Agreement is the legal framework upon which relations between Israel and the European Union are based. It was signed in 1995 and came into effect in 2000, allowing Israel preferential access to EU markets. Today, the EU remains Israel’s largest trading partner. The Agreement was due...
-
The impoverishment of Palestinian Arabs in Israel
The Israeli government sets a state budget which is allocated to all sectors of society. Claims of economic discrimination are rife given the disparity in living conditions between Palestinian Israelis and Jewish Israelis. 61.3 per cent of Palestinian families live below the poverty line compared to 29 per cent...
-
The Palestine Papers - a matter of public interest
Following the leak of some 1600 documents a selection known as the Palestine Papers were released by Al Jazeera and the Guardian newspaper; they highlight previously unknown details relating to the peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. The documents record hundreds of meetings between Palestinian, Israeli and US officials,...
-
Detention of Palestinian political prisoners
FACT SHEET As candidates prepared for elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in 2006, the Israeli authorities began a campaign of detention and imprisonment to thwart the growing move towards democracy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli authorities began to arrest members of Hamas: 450 were detained...
-
Child Prisoners
The imprisonment of Palestinian children is a common feature of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Defence for Children International (DCI) estimates that since 2000 around 7,500 Palestinian children have been prosecuted by Israeli military courts. Many expected the 164 children (aged 12-17) being held by Israel to be...
-
Settler violence September-October
Illegal settlements continue to be built across the West Bank and bring with them even more problems, including increasing incidents of settler violence. The illegal settlers colonising the West Bank attack Palestinian people, land, schools, mosques and agriculture. A problem that has existed for some time is worsening, and...
-
Obstacles to Peace and security in the Middle East - the siege of Gaza
The ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip, in place since the 2006 democratic election of Hamas, has been condemned widely by international figures, from British politicians to UN representatives. Some 5 years on, the blockade of Gaza remains very much intact. As the debate over peace and security in...
-
Catherine Ashton, the EU and Egypt: A different kind of democracy
Catherine Ashton, the EU Foreign Affairs High Representative, remains the only foreign official to have met with ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi during his detention. Shortly after the coup that deposed him in July 2013, Ashton travelled to Egypt and along with meeting regime officials she was taken to...
-
Media portray crisis in Tunisia as Egyptian scenario despite clear differences
After the events of the Arab Spring, observers in Europe and America turned to watch Tunisia’s development. The consensus was that if Tunisia could make a successful democratic transition from Ben Ali’s autocracy then it would be a model for the other “Arab Spring countries”. Indeed, over the past...
-
Journalists under attack in Egypt
With the official death toll continuing to rise and sources within the Muslim Brotherhood estimating that thousands of Egyptians were killed in the massacres at Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Al-Nahda Squares on Wednesday, it would be a surprise if the number of dead and wounded journalists didn’t also rise. In...
-
Coup uses media for misinformation campaign
If one takes his or her information about the Muslim Brotherhood solely from the media reports coming out of Egypt today, he or she could be forgiven for thinking that the Muslim Brotherhood is a power grabbing, violent group of extremists intent on destroying Egypt. Ever since the removal...
-
How low will the Egyptian media go? President Obama, the secret member of Muslim Brotherhood
The Egyptian media has done little to restore its image since the removal of President Morsi, smears against the president and the Muslim Brotherhood have been par for the course since the installation of the military coup leaders. The media, often under the control of the state or the...
-
The arrest of Gehad El-Haddad raises serious concerns about freedom of expression in Egypt
The arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman, Gehad El-Haddad, had the hallmarks of a kidnapping rather than a conventional arrest. His arrest in Cairo on Tuesday, along with two colleagues, although shocking, is no surprise to observers of Egyptian politics. Since the coup on July 3rd the arrest of...
-
A war criminal’s "special mission": avoid arrest
The failure to uphold Britain’s obligations towards universal jurisdiction were demonstrated this week when Tzipi Livni met with Foreign Secretary William Hague in London and managed to avoid arrest for alleged war crimes. Livni’s previous, disrupted, visit to London in late 2009 was the catalyst for the British government’s...
-
Lifting the Veil of Secrecy
Judicial Review of Administrative Detentions in the Israeli Supreme Court, by Shiri Krebs Vanderbilt Journal of Transitional Law, Vol. 45, No. 3, May 2012 Shiri Krebs is currently a JSD candidate at Stanford Law School in the USA; between 2006 and 2010 she served as a legal advisor on...
-
The Arab Spring: What did it do for women?
Earlier this year year London played host to the highest ranking female politician in the Arab world, her position made possible by the advent of the Arab Spring – and specifically the Jasmine Revolution which catalysed it in her home country of Tunisia. Mehrezia Labidi came to hold the...
-
Egypt's coup leaders grateful for Israeli support
The Egyptian army and Israel have grown much closer in the weeks since the coup d’etat. In a Ha’aretz report, Amos Harel, suggested that the Egyptian and Israeli relationship now was in fact stronger than it was during the rule of Mubarak. Following the coup, it was Israel that...
-
Lords call for economic sanctions against Israel
In a House of Lords debate on the plight of Palestinian citizens of Israel (“Arab Israelis”) called by the Lord Bishop of Exeter, peers from across the political spectrum drew attention to what has been described as a “fifth column” of Israeli society. The Bishop initiated the debate, explaining...