Lebanon is facing the imminent threat of economic default and ongoing anti-government protests which have failed to abate. These factors have allowed problems within the healthcare system to slip from the government’s grasp, leaving it to rot. Now, just when a strong healthcare sector is most needed, it is...

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“It is particularly in Darwish’s poetical progression that Palestine endured and became metaphor.” This observation in the introduction to Palestine as Metaphor (Olive Branch Press, 2019) resonates throughout the five interviews with Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, which together make up this book. Darwish narrates Palestine, conflict and confrontation, love,...

Occupation authorities will be closing all crossings between Israel and the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip on Monday as general elections are held in the country. “A general closure will be imposed on the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip crossings will be closed as of Monday...

A notorious right-wing settler group has developed an app that enables users to calculate the distance between their homes and the borders of the Palestinian state being proposed by US President Donald Trump, reported the Jerusalem Post. The right-wing group Regavim used maps proposed in Trump’s so called “deal...

The UN Universal Postal Union has recognised Palestine’s right to have direct postal exchange with the world through Jordan without any restrictions imposed. Following the UPU council meeting in Bern, Switzerland, discussing solutions aimed at improving the operations and quality of the Palestine’s postal services, the Palestinian government announced...

Israeli forces have opened fire on Palestinians who were defending themselves from illegal settlers taking over a major West Bank city last night. According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian stores and houses in the town of Huwwara and the village of Beita, south of...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday hit out against “massacres” committed against Muslims in India after riots in New Delhi left at least 33 dead. “India right now has become a country where massacres are widespread. What massacres? Massacres of Muslims. By who? Hindus,” Erdogan said during a speech...

The billionaire ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, has today lost a court battle to keep secret publication of his marital feud with his youngest wife, Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussein, who fled to London from the UAE last year with their two children. The Court of Appeal...

Two volleyball players from Brooklyn College showed solidarity with Palestinians by taking to their knees earlier this week during the playing of “Hatikvah”, Israel’s national anthem, before a match at Yeshiva University in New York. The gesture, which has become a universal symbol of protest against racism and discrimination...

PHOTOS: Turkey holds cat beauty pageant...

In a measure intended to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Lebanon has banned all entry to travellers from countries with large outbreaks of the illness, the National News Agency (NNA) reported today. The measure will restrict entries via land, air and sea, to travellers from China, Iran, South...

Mohamed Al-Saifari has become the fifth person to die from medical negligence whilst detained in Egypt. Al-Saifari died inside the 10th of Ramadan city police station in Al-Sharqia Governorate yesterday, despite being acquitted in July 2019 on bail of 5,000 Egyptian pounds ($320). Al-Saifari had been on hunger strike...

NATO members held an emergency meeting today at the request of Turkey following the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers in north-east Syria. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement after the meeting that the talks were held under Article 4 of NATO’s founding treaty, which allows any ally...

Two leading Democratic presidential hopefuls have said that they will not be attending the upcoming AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference, in what appears to be another high-profile rejection of the pro-Israel group. Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar each said they will not take...

US and Saudi officials met in Riyadh to discuss their mutual support for the Syrian opposition  forces in Idlib, American officials said in a tweet. The embassy made the announcement on Twitter saying: “We just finished a productive meeting with our Saudi partners. We discussed the U.S.-#Saudi Arabia partnership...

Turkey has reportedly killed at least 309 Syrian regime soldiers and destroyed dozens of military vehicles and defence systems in retaliation for the regime’s offensive which killed 33 Turkish soldiers last night. According to Turkey’s Defence Minister Hulusi Akar today, they destroyed five regime military helicopters, two air defence...

A regiment in the Yemen Army has pledging allegiance to the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Socotra, renouncing the UN-backed government of Abd rabbuh Mansur Hadi. An adviser to the Yemeni Minister of Information, Mukhtar Al-Rahbi, said that a second army regiment in Socotra has rebelled against...

Lebanese Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, yesterday launched a Twitter account with his “official team” asking “for Plans & Suggestions” from citizens. The account calls for Lebanese people to “share with …  recommendations, projects & claims”, in hopes to please everyone and come up with solutions. Under the...

Journalist Solafa Magdy and her husband Hossam Al-Sayyad have had their detention renewed for a further 15 days. Solafa and her husband were arrested in November 2019 as they were leaving a coffee shop in Dokki, Cairo, along with their friend, the activist Muhammed Salah. All three were forcibly...

Israeli legal rights centre Adalah has sent an urgent letter to the director general of the Education Ministry, demanding details of a recent meeting with agents from the Shin Bet security agency. Last November, Director General Shmuel Abuav met with two Shin Bet agents “to discuss issues related to...

Anti-Palestinian incitement continues to rise in Israeli society, according to a new report by 7amleh – The Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media. 7amleh’s annual index revealed that in 2019, one racist social media post was published on average every 64 seconds – a total of 495,000...

Egyptian and Liverpool football star Mohamed Salah has been named as the first ambassador for the UN Instant Network Schools programme, which aims to connect young refugee and host country students to high quality online education. As of this year, 20 new Instant Network Schools will be launched, with...

The Palestinian-led boycott movement has slammed a motion passed by the Austrian parliament that singles out the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign for criticism. “Instead of fighting real anti-Jewish racism at home,” the BDS Movement stated, “Austria’s parliament adopted an anti-democratic resolution today that demonises BDS as antisemitic...

In a major international survey, only 37 per cent of Israelis said human rights groups should be able to operate freely, as reported by the Times of Israel. The 34-nation poll, conducted by the US-based Pew Research Centre from May-October 2019, focused on views of, and support for, democracy...

Reading, research and short trips are simply not enough for visitors to Palestine to understand how difficult it is for those living under occupation with restrictions imposed on their movement as they go about their daily lives. Palestinians are caged in by a forbidding wall, and have to negotiate...

Israel is reported to have assassinated a senior Hezbollah leader yesterday near the village of Hader, near Quneitra, in the Syrian Golan Heights. Syria’s official news agency, SANA, reported that a “civilian” was killed in an Israeli drone strike on his car in Quneitra, southern Syria. However, opposition media...

Israeli occupation forces yesterday demolished a house and a garage north-west of Bethlehem; south of the occupied West Bank, under the pretext that it was built without the nearly impossible to obtain building permits. Local sources said Israeli army forces accompanied by a bulldozer and military vehicles stormed the...

Kuwait confirmed two more cases of the new coronavirus today, taking the toll to 45, according to its Health Ministry. “The two cases were in contact with the infected people who came from Iran before the outbreak was announced,” the ministry said. The ministry asserted stable health conditions of all...

Eight members of US Congress have nominated Saudi women’s rights activist, Loujain Al- Hathloul, who has been imprisoned by authorities in Riyadh since 2018 for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Saudi security services arrested Al-Hathloul in mid-2018, as part of a campaign against female activists and human rights defenders. According...

The UN finally published its database this month listing companies which profit from Israel’s brutal military occupation of the West Bank. This move was only made after years of unexplained delays. Rather helpfully, though, the Zionist Federation – an anti-Palestine, pro-Israel lobby group in Britain — admitted that, “The...

The first time I tried these elmali kurabiye, or apple cookies, my Turkish friend had made a huge platter and brought them over. I cannot tell you how melt-in-your mouth these cookies are. The apple cinnamon filling is a thing of dreams. I fell in love immediately and knew...

The UAE’s Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development (KFED) yesterday signed a $100 million agreement with the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance to support and finance micro, small and medium-sized projects in the country. The deal was signed by Hussain Jassim Al-Nowais, chairman of the Khalifa Fund, and Ahmed Shide, Ethiopia’s...

Tunisia’s new Prime Minister, Elyes Fakhfakh, and members of his cabinet yesterday sworn in before country’s president Qais Saeed a parliamentary confidence vote that broke four months of political wrangling. “The most prominent challenges facing the new government today are the country’s economic and social conditions,” Saeed said in a...

Turkey will no longer stop Syrian refugees from reaching Europe, a senior Turkish official said, as Ankara responded on Friday to the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers in an air strike by Syrian government forces in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region, Reuters reports. President Tayyip Erdogan chaired an emergency meeting...

At least 33 Turkish soldiers have been killed and tens of others injured in an airstrike by forces of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Idlib, northwestern Syria, a Turkish official said late Thursday, Anadolu reports. “There are critically wounded , and they are being treated at...

An Israeli general in the military reserve attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he has become a threat to the moral and democratic system. Amos Malka, the former head of the Israeli military intelligence (Aman), described in an article,  published in Yedioth Ahronoth the prime minister’s agreement to sell...

Iraq’s Prime Minister-designate Mohammed Tawfik Allawi has submitted a request to the British ambassador in Baghdad, relinquishing his British citizenship, Russia Today (RT) reported yesterday. “Following my assumption as the Prime Minister of Iraq, I’m giving up my citizenship of any foreign country,” Allawi said in an official message to...

Iranian officials yesterday called for “granting leave to a group of prisoners as a measure to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus in the country.” “We asked the judiciary to grant leave for prisoners with health certificates to reduce inmates’ numbers in prisons and limit the spread of the...

A court in Sidi Mohamed, Algeria, acquitted the son of President Abdelmajid Tebboune on Thursday of corruption-related charges in the real estate sector. At the same time, the main suspect was sentenced to eight years in prison, according to the Algerian radio. The verdicts were issued on Wednesday after...

The Turkish Minister of the Interior, Suleyman Soylu, announced that his country had deported 7,918 foreign “terrorists”. The Anadolu Agency quoted Soylu saying that the deportees belong to 102 different nationalities and that their deportation came within the framework of the measures taken by Turkey against “foreign terrorists.” On...

German foreign minister demanded the Syrian regime and Russia protect civilians in Idlib, Anadolu Agency reports. Heiko Mass told the UN Security Council that UN officials have described conditions in the province where people are freezing to death and attacks on civilians are “cruel beyond belief” in a scene of an ongoing offensive...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Fatah Central Committee member Hussain Sheikh on Thursday in Moscow where he urged Palestinians to reconcile to strengthen its position in talks with Israel, Anadolu Agency reports. Lavrov confirmed Russia’s adherence to the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement....

Lebanon confirmed the country’s third case of coronavirus on Thursday, after a man arriving from Iran on Feb. 24 tested positive, the health ministry said, according to news agency NNA, Reuters reports. The patient was taken from his home by the Lebanese Red Cross and into quarantine at a Beirut hospital...

As part of efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Kuwait will temporarily not allow Gulf citizens to enter the country using their national identity cards, Kuwait’s Interior Ministry said on Thursday,  Anadolu Agency reports. “The decision excludes Kuwaitis who are abroad and exited on their identity cards,” the...

Greece will tighten border controls to prevent the spread of coronavirus, focussing on island routes used by migrants to enter the country, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday, Reuters reported. His comments came as Greece reported two new cases of coronavirus, bringing its total of confirmed cases to three –...

The Palestinian Doctors Association has threatened to take “unprecedented measures” and step up protests against the government, after the Supreme Court ruled to end their strike. The Supreme Court in Ramallah issued a decision to stop the medical association’s strike for the second time, after a decision was issued...

In 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. The current coronavirus epidemic, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, has so far infected around 80,000 people and killed more than 2,700, most of them in China. Can we expect to...

China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran met in Vienna on Wednesday to voice support for the Iran nuclear deal, the EU External Action Press Office has announced. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed in 2015, but was seen to be threatened by the unilateral withdrawal of...

Iran’s former ambassador to the Vatican and prominent cleric Hadi Khosrowshahi died of coronavirus, local media reported on Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. According to the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency, the 81-year-old cleric died at a hospital in Iran. Earlier in the day, Iran put the death toll in the country from...