Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that Israel is placing hurdles in the way of Palestinian participation in sports and violating international laws and FIFA’s rules. During his meeting at Ramallah with FIFA President Sepp Blatter and FIFA Vice President Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, Abbas said that FIFA must hold...

The former Director of the General Intelligence of Saudi Arabia Prince Turki Al-Faisal has turned down an offer made ​​by the Israeli former military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin to visit the Knesset and present the Saudi peace initiative, saying emotions do not serve the peace process. Prince Turki, who...

Why is it that the United States has never experienced a military coup in all of its history despite the fact that weapons are easily attainable and there is a quite a military atmosphere throughout the country? By contrast, General Haftar’s hasty decision to stage a military coup in...

Human rights groups have claimed Bahraini pro-democracy activists in London are being “systematically persecuted” by the British government, with specific accusations made against Whitehall departments, the Metropolitan Police and a high profile member of the House of Lords. The accusations come as King Hamad of Bahrain, whose family have...

More than 200 Muslim scholars issued a fatwa on Sunday forbidding participation in the current presidential elections in Egypt. The fatwa has been announced at a press conference in Istanbul held by the “coordinating committee for fatwas of the Muslim nation.” The conference was titled: “Forbidding the recognition of...

President of the Taghyeer Party Bassem Khafagi praised the Brussels and Cairo declarations announced recently to unite the anti-coup front. He called for unity of revolutionary powers vis-à-vis the military coup. Khafagi urged the signatories of the Brussels and Cairo declarations to uphold ten principles, which he believed should...

The Egyptian cabinet decided Sunday to revoke the Egyptian citizenship from a Palestinian Associated Press photojournalist on charges of membership in a foreign militant group. Award-winning AP photojournalist Khalil Abdel-Kader Abu Hamra said in statements Sunday that he had lived in Egypt for a long time, and was never...

Osama Morsi, son of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi, said that gunmen stole the family’s car after stopping his two brothers and their driver on the ring road in Maadi, Cairo Sunday. Osama told Anadolu news agency that his brothers Amr and Abdullah were stopped in Maadi ring road...

An Egyptian youth campaign claims it gathered 14 million signatures to bring down the post-coup regime in Egypt. The Batil (Illegitimate) campaign founders said in a statement that they aim at collecting 30 million signatures that call for ending the military coup in Egypt The campaign said that many...

Dozens of Palestinian families in the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank are waiting to see Pope Francis I during his historic visit to the region. Eight families have been selected to represent Palestinian society and its suffering under the Israeli occupation. They are scheduled to meet...

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, has revealed that the Israeli authorities have demolished a number of buildings in six populated districts in Area C, east of Jerusalem in the E1 settlement zone and the surrounding region. The demolitions took place on May 19....

The head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis I, has said that he follows with pain the severe tensions in the Middle East and stressed the need to reach a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis as well as a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Speaking after...

Expectations are high as Pope Francis begins his tour of the Holy Land. While he is known for his outspoken support for the poor and oppressed, the Vatican has insisted that the purpose of the Pope’s visit is primarily religious and “absolutely not political”. And yet, according to the...

Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat has said that the Palestinians have no objection to returning to the negotiation table, provided that Israel releases a group of long-term, pre-Oslo prisoners and stop settlement activity, the Maan news agency reported on Saturday. Dr Erekat was speaking on the fringe of a seminar...

Saudi authorities denied a media report, which claimed that a cell working for Qatari interests had been arrested recently in Saudi Arabia. Spokesperson of the Saudi ministry of interior General Mansour Al-Turky denied the report published on Friday by the London-based Al-Arab newspaper, which quoted unnamed sources as saying...

Lebanon is currently witnessing presidential vacuum as outgoing President Michel Suleiman ended his 6-year-term on Saturday without having a successor. A farewell ceremony was held for Suleiman at the presidential palace on Saturday. With the end of Suleiman’s term, Lebanon enters an indefinite period of presidential vacuum as Parliament...

An Italian navy vessel has intercepted a migrant boat with 435 people on board, including 264 children, mostly Syrian and Egyptian refugees, the authorities said on Saturday. The rescue operation on Friday afternoon is the latest in what is an escalating migration crisis in the southern Mediterranean. At least...

Just under a quarter of Libya’s 182 MPs have pledged their support for the military and policing operations carried out by renegade General Khalifa Haftar. Forty MPs called for the abolition of the mandate of the new government headed by Ahmed Meitik. Abu Bakr Alrajabani MP issued a statement...

Egyptian police arrested a number of female students on their way to attend an exam at Ain Shams University on Thursday and held them at an undisclosed location, their families reported. According to the family of one of the disappeared students, Hanaa Youssef Hamed (21 years old), the students...

A number of supporters of presidential candidate and military coup leader Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi attacked an anti-Sisi protest with Molotov cocktails on Saturday evening downtown the Egyptian capital Cairo. The anti-Sisi protest has been organised by the “Against You” campaign, which opposes the candidacy of Al-Sisi for presidency and...

Minister of Justice in the military-installed government of Egypt Nayer Osman claimed: “there are no detainees in Egypt” in response to reports of secret detentions recently revealed by Amnesty International. Osman pointed out that he verified his claim with the public prosecutor Hisham Barak, and found that there are...

As the Pope visits the ‘Holy Land’, much media coverage has focused on the current problems facing Christian Palestinians, and in particular, the so-called ‘price tag’ attacks being perpetrated by right-wing Jewish extremists. Ahead of the Papal visit, Israeli police even issued restraining orders against known activists. As Jessica...

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan said in an interview with the Guardian Saturday that the international community has let down the Syrian people by failing to prevent the ongoing bloodshed in the embattled country. Annan expressed his concerns about “the proxy war” being waged by Riyadh and Tehran...

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said on Friday evening that political deadlock has delayed the achievement of many things in the country. In a speech during a celebration with journalists, Suleiman said that the basis of the state of Lebanon has recently started to be built with the latest nominations...

Spokeswoman of the US State Department Marie Harf said on Friday that her country opposes any unilateral measures to be taken by Palestinians or Israelis. “No one should take any steps that undermine trust, including unilateral steps,” Harf said. The spokeswoman stressed that the US wanted peace talks to...

The Egyptian youth group Ultras Nahdawi celebrated its second anniversary on Friday with fresh protests across the country. Ultras Nahdawi was founded on May 22, 2012 with the launching of the presidential campaign of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi. The name echoes football fan groups “Ultras” known for their...

Around 6,000 individuals from across the world have signed a petition, handed to the Pope, calling on him to discuss the violation of children’s rights with Israeli officials during his visit to Jerusalem. The petition called on the Pope to give most attention to Palestinian children inside Israeli jails...

Israeli authorities have revoked the ID of 241 Palestinians living in Jerusalem in the last two years, a human rights organisation has said. In a statement issued on Thursday, Al-Meethaq for Human Rights (MHR) said that this policy poses a threat socially and economically to Palestinian residents in Jerusalem....

Israeli occupation forces appeared in two videos, believed to be captured on Friday, harassing Palestinian children in Hebron, whilst Israeli settlers laughed and took photos of them. In one of the videos an Israeli soldier stole the children’s football while they were playing in one of Hebron’s alleyways. One...

Egyptian airport authorities arbitrarily banned prominent columnist Fahmi Huwaidi from traveling to the Spanish capital Madrid on Friday, Anadolu news agency reported. According to security sources, Huwaidi was scheduled to fly to Madrid via EgyptAir, but was barred after airport authorities found his name included in a no-fly list....

The Egyptian ministry of higher education is currently working on a long-term plan to close down university dormitories believed to be a hub for organising student protests, a London-based newspaper reported Sunday. According to Al-Araby Al-Gadid newspaper, the Egyptian ministry of higher education is secretly planning to eliminate dorms...

The city of Bethlehem has been bustling in preparation for Pope Francis’ upcoming visit for several weeks. Roads are being cleared and painted, and banners featuring the Pope and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have gone up across the city. But while some find themselves busy preparing for the...

Dozens of civilians have been forcibly disappeared and held for months in secret detention at an Egyptian military camp, where they have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment in order to make them confess to crimes, according to shocking new evidence gathered by Amnesty International. Egyptian lawyers and activists...

A court in the Delta Nile Province of Mansoura has delivered rulings in 13 different cases, in total sentencing 155 supporters of ousted President Mohammad Morsi, including some university students, to terms ranging from one year in prison to life imprisonment, according to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Mesreyoon. The newspaper...

Renegade Libyan General Khalifa Haftar, who is leading armed clashes against the Libyan army, said that his country would cooperate with Egypt on the security front to fight extremists in both countries, adding that Libya has the right to build a strong army to support the Egyptian army, according...

Israeli bulldozers guarded by a large force of police started to demolish the mosque in Wadi Al-Niam in the Negev on Thursday amid residents’ fears that authorities could also demolish homes in the village. A demolition order had been nailed to the mosque wall a few days earlier. The...

Some of the officials in the Palestinian Authority believe that there is no alternative to negotiations with Israel because it chose that approach as the sole method of dealing with Israel in order to achieve the dreams of our people and restore our national rights. There has now been...

The UN Secretary General’s Special Representative in Iraq, Nikolay Mladenov, has voiced his concern about reports of increased armed activities in Fallujah in the Anbar province and its devastating impact on civilians. Mladenov noted that the Iraqi elections, which concluded earlier this week, arrived at a time when the...

The Gamaleya Misdemeanor Court of Appeal accepted the request of ten students to appeal their 17-year sentence with bail set at 64,000 Egyptian pounds (around $8,900) in the case known as “the riots” of Al-Azhar. The court reduced their sentence to two years in prison. Al-Rassd news website reported...

Palestinian Prime Minister in Ramallah Rami Hamdallah is to head the upcoming Palestinian national unity government which was agreed among the Palestinian factions, an informed source told Al-Rai news agency said on Wednesday. The source said that Hamas and Fatah had agreed that Hamdallah is to head the national...

America’s former peace envoy to the Palestine-Israel negotiations, George Mitchell, has said that the only solution to the conflict is through the two-state solution. Responding to a question from Quds News during a lecture at the National Press Club, Mitchell said that there is no solution apart from two-states....

The former president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, Moaz Al-Khatib, denied on Wednesday media reports claiming that several Syrian opposition figures are forming a new political entity to negotiate with the Syrian regime under Egyptian auspices. Anadolu news agency reported that Al-Khatib posted a...

The Tunisian authorities have detained 30 Palestinian refugees at Carthage Airport, including three children under ten years old and four women and young men persecuted by the Syrian regime for refusing to join the army. All had managed to escape from the conflict in Syria. A group of human...

A number of Fallujah neighbourhoods were targeted on Wednesday by artillery shelling and rockets that resulted in collateral damage across people’s properties; it is unknown if there was any human losses. Fallujah has been under heavy artillery shelling by the Iraqi army since the breakout of the military campaign...

The President of Libya’s General National Congress Nouri Abusahmain has ordered his chief-of-staff on Wednesday to detain the defected soldiers. Libyan media sources reported the order, which Abusahmain said, was issued because of the appearance of some officers and soldiers on TV channels calling for a coup against the...

The mission of US envoy Martin Indyk has come to an end, as he announced on Wednesday that he is planning, during the upcoming days, to dissolve his team and return to the United States. A US official said that the United States does not intend to put efforts...

In December 2013, a court in Israel ruled that a synagogue built in the Givat Ze’ev settlement must be demolished. The reason was that it had been illegally built on privately owned Palestinian land after the purchase deeds were forged by Israeli settlers. The synagogue – and the entire...

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has strongly denied media reports claims the Israeli government had agreed to hand the Vatican control of the Cenacle, the room where Christians believe Jesus held the Last Supper in Jerusalem. Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Office said in a letter addressed to the Jewish Information...

The Israeli authorities issued another evacuation order against the residents of Al-Araqib village in the Negev Desert on Wednesday, Palestinian sources have reported. The sources said that the Israeli Land Authority posted eviction notices outside the Turi family homes and on the village’s mosque and cemetery. Dated 8 May,...

An Egyptian court issued an appealable verdict on Wednesday in favour of imprisoning 21 students from the University of Mansoura in the Dakahlia governorate who support former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. The students include three girls. They have been sentenced to periods ranging from two to five years in...