Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj yesterday. In a statement the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that the two officials discussed bilateral cooperation on a broad range of issues including security, science and technology, research and innovation, agriculture and water as well as...

All UN efforts to provide relief to Taiz have failed, Alkhaleejonline.com reported Yemen’s Local Affairs Minister Abdel Raqib Fatah saying yesterday. “All efforts done by the UN organisations to provide aid to the Governorate of Taiz have failed so far,” Fatah said in a press conference held in Riyadh....

This is the first article of a two part series examining the Iraqi revolution and the five years that followed it. Part II looks at Iraq's ancient Sunni-Shia division . Read Part II here. The Arab Spring carried with it the Middle East's hopes, dreams and aspirations. Like its...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to convince the countries of Eastern Europe and the Balkans to oppose a decision expected to be taken by the European Union’s foreign ministers on Monday distinguishing between Israel and the settlements. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Monday quoted senior government officials...

Prime Minister David Cameron has told representatives of the UK’s Jewish community that he intends to “mark” with them the centenary of the Balfour Declaration next year. Cameron met members of the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) on January 13, in what has become an annual meeting. According to a...

The majority of Palestinian deaths during the recent violence, which some have called a third intifada, occurred at Israeli checkpoints, according to a study by the Al-Quds Centre for the Studies of Palestinian and Israeli Affairs. The Jerusalem Intifada? Rising tensions in the Occupied Territories have led to dozens...

Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem have been brought to a close with the marking by the Armenian Orthodox Church of Jerusalem of Christmas Day on January 19th. In the 18th century all Christian churches adopted the Gregorian calender for marking religious feasts with the exception of some eastern Orthodox churches....

When ISIS militias swept into Mosel, Iraq, in June 2014, Ibrahim Mahmoud plotted his flight, along with his whole family, which included 11 children. Once upon a time, Ibrahim was himself a child escaping another violent campaign carried out by equally angry militias. In his life-time, Ibrahim became a...

Arab media has recently been talking a lot about the danger of sectarianism and sectarian alignment and about the necessity of averting this slide and avoiding embroilment in it. As a matter of principle, this an enlightened and rational discourse that favours, or should favour, the notion of the...

Facebook has agreed to pull a page that incited against Israelis, but only after the Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center NGO exposed its double standard in removing inciting pages. As part of its investigation, Shurat Hadin launched two different pages, one entitled “Stop Palestinians” and one entitled “Stop Israelis”. It...

PLO Executive Committee member Dr Hanan Ashrawi has condemned racist graffiti by Jewish extremists on the walls of the Dormition Abbey of the Virgin Mary on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Slogans written in Hebrew called for the “Slaughter of Christians to send them to hell”. Ashrawi made her comments...

The orphaned survivor of a fatal arson attack on a Palestinian family will learn this week the fate of his family, five months after the attack. Five-year-old Ahmad Dawabsheh lost his 18-month-old brother Ali and both of his parents when their home in the occupied West Bank village of...

Israeli violations against Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque have continued unabated since the city was occupied in 1967. According to Palestinian sources, however, the last two years have witnessed a noticeable uptick in both the number and scale of these violations. The most serious assault on the mosque occurred in August...

While the Tunisian political scene has recently garnered praise and attention for winning the Nobel Peace Prize, it has yet to win any prizes for establishing a thriving and stable economy. Tunisia's problems, mainly rooted in the realm of the political, have compounded and exacerbated the small country's economy....

Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights has said that Israel is escalating the targeting of children in Gaza and continues its "violations" of international laws aimed at "protecting children during armed conflicts", Anadolu Agency reported on Sunday. In its annual report, Al-Mezan said that Israel did not respect international and...

Three US citizens have been kidnapped in Al-Dorah neighbourhood, in the south of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, Al Jazeera reported. Iraqi security forces set up checkpoints in southeast Baghdad and sent out helicopter search parties on Monday after confirming three US citizens had gone missing. Al Jazeera correspondent...

Owners of seven foreign trademarks are planning to leave the local Jordanian market with capitals worth 65m Jordanian Dinars ($91,5m), an informed source told the Al-Ghad newspaper on Sunday. The sources, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that these seven trademarks are owned by two companies. One of the...

In my last article, titled “The expulsion of Palestinians from Lebanon: A systematic policy”, published on 13 January, I noted that the reduction in UNRWA’s educational and health services in Lebanon is an implementation of an unannounced systematic policy in the UN. This policy is encouraged by the friends...

The Israeli authorities prevented the Jerusalem National Centre, known as Al-Hakawati, from holding a cultural event in East Jerusalem on Sunday. Al-Hakawati was scheduled to hold a meeting to discuss the cultural landscape in Jerusalem in the presence of the Jerusalem Press Club, the Cultural House and the Palestinian...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s condemnation of Syria’s starvation policy is welcome. He was absolutely right to make clear that the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime. However, he seems to have overlooked the situation in the Gaza Strip, where two million Palestinians have...

The Syrian armed opposition have said rebel brigades have prevented the progress of regime forces towards areas controlled by the rebels in Mount Turkmen, in the countryside of Latakia. Al-Arabiya Al-Hadath, a news channel, reported the Syrian opposition saying on Sunday that rebels had thwarted the progress of regime...

A fascinating article by a Jerusalem Post Knesset reporter earlier this month gives quite the insight into the increasingly desperate state of the Israeli "war" against BDS. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement aims to hold Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people. At first ignored,...

An Egyptian court has jailed Khaled Beltagi, the son of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Beltagi, in absentia on charges of illegal protest, a defense lawyer said. Beltagi’s son was slapped with a two-year jail term and a 50,000 pound ($6,000) fine last week, lawyer Faisal al-Rawi told Anadolu Agency....

More than 1,060 new apartments were handed over to those most in need in the Gaza Strip in the presence of the Qatari ambassador. The properties, constructed as part of the first phase of Hamad City which was funded by Qatar, are located in the southern city of Khan...

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri denied on Sunday that there were any kind of talks between his country and Turkey, Rassd.com reported. In an interview with Al-Wattan newspaper Shukri reportedly said: "I know nothing about these claimed negotiations. When I visited Kingdom, we did not mention anything about...

Senior aide to the Chief Palestinian Authority (PA) Negotiator Saeb Erekat has been arrested over allegations of spying for Israel for 20 years, Israeli media reported yesterday. Leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoting a "senior" PA official saying that the spy was observed for a couple of months and the...

“If a man once fails," say the Anatolians to illustrate a man who was living in wealth and suddenly loses everything. Surely, he faced a catastrophe; everything happened at once so he was caught unprepared. That’s when the real journey begins, where he is going to witness the ugly...

President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi yesterday received Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan in Cairo to discuss local and regional affairs. Al-Sisi’s spokesman Ambassador Alaa Youssef said that Brennan praised the strategic relations between Egypt and the United States, pointing to the importance of Cairo’s regional...

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has been working relentlessly to thwart a European Union decision that would firmly distinguish between Israel and territories occupied in the 1967, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday citing senior Israeli and European officials. According to the officials, if the resolution is adopted it could...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani yesterday called on Americans to invest in his country, saying “there aren’t any obstacles in front of them”. Rouhani made his remarks during a press conference held in the Iranian capital, Tehran, following the lifting of international sanctions. The president pointed out that a priority...

Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal said yesterday that his movement will take urgent action to help solve the Palestinian refugee crisis in Lebanon following UNRWA’s decision to reduce financial aid to them. In a statement, Meshaal said Hamas stands by the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and supports their demands. “We...

As the Palestinian death toll continues to rise on an almost daily basis, Palestinians across the West Bank are holding memorials and solidarity events alongside ongoing protests. Israel's policy of punitive house demolitions is also continuing. Also read: Netanyahu threatens to ban Muslim prayer call and polygamy PA calls...

Iran has released Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-American citizens under a prisoner swap deal with the US, Iranian state media and American authorities said Saturday. The Iranian Fars News Agency quoted the Tehran's prosecutor as saying that four Iranian-American nationals were freed as world leaders...

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Saturday welcomed verification that Iran has fulfilled its obligations under a deal to restrict its nuclear program. In a statement, Ban said the announcement was evidence that “international proliferation concerns are best addressed through dialogue and patient diplomacy”. He added: “This is a...

Head of the Human Rights Committee in the new Egyptian parliament Murtada Mansour threatened to shutdown the rights organisations in the country. His remarks provoked a wave of anger amongst rights activists, Quds Press reported on Friday. "There is no need for human rights boutiques and shops," Mansour said,...

It is now five years since the ouster of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's long-time dictator and the first of the Arab despots to be successfully challenged and toppled in the mass uprising of the Arab Spring. Back then, what seemed like an epochal event, ushering in a new...

Switzerland’s attorney general arrived in Cairo on Friday to discuss the future of hundreds of millions of dollars frozen in Swiss banks belonging to former Egyptian officials; most have been deposited by ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his sons, Anadolu reported. Egyptian diplomatic sources in Cairo said: “The Swiss...

A prominent Egyptian political analyst, Amr Hamzawi, has condemned the “coup” government for its crackdown on the mass media and political activists. Also read:  Egypt: 99 cases of enforced disappearance In Egypt, 340 forced disappearance cases in two months Deaths in Egyptian prisons have trebled in the last three...

"Within one day we managed to reclaim this mosque for the community. It is not just a mosque now. It is a community centre for people whether they are Muslims or not. It is about humanity." With these words, the Chair of the Trustees of London's Finsbury Park Mosque,...

Palestinian Authority (PA) ambassador to Lebanon Ashraf Dabbour called on UNRWA to cancel its new medical care policy, which puts much burden on the Palestinian refugees, Al-Resalah newspaper reported. Recently, the UN agency said it was forced to reduce its customary payment of 100% of medical expenses for Palestinian...

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas – has refused an Iranian offer of normalisation and funds if it severed all ties with Saudi Arabia, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported on Friday. According to the London based newspaper, Hamas’ top leader Khalid Meshaal rejected the Iranian offer of closer ties...

A government human rights official in Egypt said on Friday that 99 Egyptian detainees have disappeared from prisons. Investigations are ongoing into 70 other cases of forced disappearance. Also read:  Jailed Brotherhood leader transferred to Cairo hospital In Egypt, 340 forced disappearance cases in two months Deaths in Egyptian...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unleashed on Friday a tirade of assaults against the Muslin community in Israel, accusing them of causing noise and violating law through the call to prayer and polygamy. During a meeting for the Likud Bloc in the Knesset, he said: “There is no respect...

The Arab Spring has brought the plight of many new tribes, religions and even ethnic groups to the discussion platforms of Middle Eastern and North African politics. In Yemen, one of them is the Houthis, a tribe based in Saada, north eastern Yemen. During the Arab Spring, many Yemenis...

Russian intervention has revived the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Friday. In remarks made during his official visit to southern Turkey's Adana province, Hammond said: “Russian intervention has given the regime a new full life”. He also added that U.K. was demanding an...

The coup led government in Egypt is at the peak of its weakness, even though it does not show it. The hand of oppression, brutality and oppression has extended to every component and group in society and it has kidnapped the youth from cafes and means of transportation. The...

Step into the Middle East and see what's been happening over the last seven days in pictures…...

The European Union today announced that it would be sending €12.3 million ($13.4 million) to the Palestinian Authority’s social allowances programme to benefit poor Palestinian families living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Ma’an news reported. The contribution is the final portion of a €50 million ($54.5 million)...

Israeli Foreign Ministry officials have expressed surprise at the United Methodist Church’s (UMC) decision to divest from five Israeli banks on the grounds of human rights concerns. Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot are among 39 companies blacklisted by the...

Coup supporters are intensifying their fierce attack on Hisham Genena, who chairs Egypt's Central Auditing Organisation (CAO), intending to character assassinate him in prelude to sacking him and potentially putting him on trial charged with publishing misleading, false reports about corruption in Egypt. The fact finding committee, whose formation...