All Stories Archive

The meeting in Cairo between Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshaal can be best described as "an important step in the right direction", not least because reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas appears to be more likely. It has set the stage for dialogue which, it is hoped, will move beyond...

I felt very uneasy when Britain's ambassador to Iran claimed that the attack on the British Embassy in Tehran was state-supported. What does Dominick Chilcott not understand about people power? Hasn't he learnt from the Arab Spring that when angry people rebel it's impossible to stop them? To say...

Al Jazeera is an enigma – although owned by an absolute monarch, it's hailed as an independent voice in a region scarred by tyranny. Mehdi Hasan visits its headquarters in Doha to see if the praise is deserved. On Friday 11 February, thousands of Arabs spilled on to the...

As Republicans seeking the party's nomination for the next US presidential election fall over themselves to prove how Israel-friendly they are to "Republican Jewish leaders", the country closest to their heart – no, it's not the USA – has demonstrated once again its contempt for due process and international...

Israel is no longer "the only democracy" in the political desert of the Middle East; indeed, it never was. Any country which maintains a military occupation, builds illegal colonies and practices racism in the land of another doesn't deserve to call itself democratic. Nevertheless, that's the stereotypical image of...

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) has just celebrated its 24th anniversary in an unusually turbulent political climate in Palestine and the Arab world. Changes in the international arena include the rise of new powers accompanied by the decline of others; and Western Europe is mired in a financial and...

The new mantra against Islamist politicians is that they can succeed in opposition but fail in government; experience of holding the reins of power will, it is alleged, reveal the paucity of their skill in governance. The main question that comes to mind when we hear Islamists' opponents singing...

Israel's response to the political developments in the Arab world revolves around security. An increase in its military budget has been accompanied by substantial amendments to the country's security strategy. Democracy in the Arab world is viewed by Israel as a serious threat to its security and even its...

Mainstream media only ever addresses Israeli racism indirectly, if at all. An issue that has received less than its fair share of media coverage is the document prepared by European embassies in Israel asserting the "importance of regarding Israel's treatment of its Arab population as a substantive issue, and...

They can take away our land; they can take away our rights; they can even take away our right to live; but we are Palestinians, and with God's help, we will survive. The above statement encapsulates the spirit of Palestine and its people. The speaker was an elderly man...

A strange affliction seems to be affecting settlers in the West Bank. It seems that as soon as they are granted settler status (a badge of dishonour in the eyes of the rest of the world considering the illegal nature of all settlements) these individuals lose all ability to...

The Israeli Supreme Court has rejected petitions submitted by human rights organisations seeking a cancellation of the amendments to the Citizenship Act which will prevent the reunification of Palestinian families living on both sides of the Green (1948 Armistice) Line. Six judges voted against the petitions; five were in...

OVER the past 64 years, Palestinians have tried armed struggle; we have tried negotiations; and we have tried peace conferences. Yet all we have seen is more Israeli settlements, more loss of lives and resources, and the emergence of a horrifying system of segregation. Khader Adnan, a Palestinian held...

Israel has finally done what it has waited almost a year and a half to do; in a raid contravening international law it arrested two members of the Palestinian Parliament who had been seeking refuge in the International Red Cross compound in East Jerusalem. We all knew it was...

Hamas is a movement of institutions, with committees, laws and regulations which determine the status of each member. It is important to remember that before going into specifics about the Islamic Resistance Movement we should emphasise this point. And that when these committees decide on any issue in accordance...

Ahmed Kahlaoui, leader of Tunisia's National Committee to Support Arab Resistance to Normalization, has appealed for the awaited Tunisian constitution to include an article outlawing the normalization of relations with Israel. He asserted that the Committee would move to Pardo, set up a protest tent, and stage a sit-in...

Violence, abuse, non-accountability, hate, such is communal living today within the occupied West Bank, where some 518,974 colonisers1 sit within "200"2 illegal settlements. Noam Chomsky, "The settlements cover over 42% of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), not counting the Jordon valley, which they are taking over"3 Estimates of colonisation...

There are no Palestine-Israel negotiations being held at the moment because Israeli preconditions kill them before they begin. The Palestinian side doesn't have any alternative to offer instead of negotiations, which means that the issue will remain in limbo unless there is a change in the balance of power...

It has been twelve years since Morocco became a signatory to the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world's first permanent international court to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. During this time, Morocco has continued to move forward in its...

News about Israel's latest killing spree against the people of the Gaza Strip has only occupied a small amount of airtime in the news bulletins of Arab TV stations. This is a source of great anger, especially when those channels are in Arab Spring countries seeking to restore dignity...

Two opposing phenomena are interacting in the Middle East; the first is Israel, moving back to the past with its policies, laws and ideology, looking ever more like a "typical" Middle East country: closed, exclusive, violent, and culturally and religiously rigid. The second phenomenon is the effort made by...

Before clashes broke out in Syria, the head of the Hamas Movement's Political Bureau, Khaled Meshaal, contacted the Syrian leadership and offered clear and frank advice regarding the need for political reform. He warned the regime that the wave of demand for reform sweeping the region would not stop...

We owe the Syrian people an apology for every day that they were slaughtered before our eyes during the past eleven months. The Arab people have let them down and have watched on from the side-lines as if the "the heart of Arabism" has become surrounded by Arabs with...

Efforts to keep the Gaza Strip in the dark, including its many hospitals, homes and street lights, is immoral and inhumane and constitutes collective punishment against the Palestinians. It also shows complete casual disregard by the Israelis for the Arabs who can see this crime against their brothers taking...

Western media simplistically cast the divide between revolutionaries and the Brotherhood in secular-Islamist terms Secularism is not my cause and sharia is not my fear but I am one of those Egyptians who are critical of the Muslim Brotherhood movement – one who made a point of not voting...

We are living in momentous times, with political changes sweeping across the Middle East and Western countries pushing democratic values as the panacea for all human ills. This is deceptive, as actions often contradict the hype. At the centre of this stands the state of Israel, which alone among...

Criminal demolition in the OPTs Within the catalogue of criminality that is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the destruction of Palestinian homes must rank as one of the most cynical and heinous. "Some 90,000 people are currently reported to be at risk of displacement as a...

Palestinians have been putting their bodies and lives on the line against repeated Israeli aggression in the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Sometimes they have succeeded in pushing back the hordes of illegal Jewish settlers and the Israeli soldiers protecting them; sometimes they...

AS A FORMER legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, I spent more than six years working toward a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During that period, we held countless negotiation sessions, examined scores of proposals, met with hundreds of diplomats and even went house-to-house campaigning for the...

The election results in Egypt which have favoured the Muslim Brotherhood's "Freedom and Justice Party" are reflected across the Arab Spring countries; the Islamic movement has come of political age. This has upset the remaining secularists to the extent that a phobia of the Brotherhood has surfaced in Arab...

It looks as if Israel intends to put many obstacles in the way of the proposed Palestinian election, not least that it does not want polling stations in Jerusalem – "the eternal capital of the unified state for Jews only" and it does not want Hamas to participate, directly or...

Many politicians and journalists are fearful of the future which can be facing the religious minorities in Syria following the revolution. Very often, these fears are expressed in the context of justifying the hesitancy of the US and the international community to arm the Free Syrian Army. It is...

There is no doubt about Islamists' commitment to the Palestinian cause, regardless of their ideological classifications, or whether they are in government or opposition. Nevertheless, a number of statements attributed to them in recent months – some accurately – cast doubt on that commitment, even given that some were distorted and...

The innocence of childhood is precious, to be cared for gently and nurtured, allowing the child, whose future we are building, to develop happily and safely in an atmosphere of love and peace. For many Palestinian children their childhood is lived in fear with the threat of violence and...

Three representatives of Egypt's Freedom and Justice Party spoke in the Palace of Westminster recently where they were able to explain their plans and political vision. Invited by the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), the FJP members were Fatema AbuZeid, an elected representative of the Constituent...

Israeli researchers have been preoccupied from the very first days of the Arab revolutions to analyse the possible consequences for Israel; the Israeli establishment has not disguised its fear of the revolutions' success. Perhaps the most important conference to discuss the revolutions was that organised by the Israeli National...

Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, Islam has been largely absent from political activity in the Muslim world. The decline of the Ottomans coincided with the fragmentation of the region by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and this continued until very recently, with religion being...

Yossi Beilin is a smart man – he told us so himself – and because of that, he is quite certain that the Netanyahu government will not accept the four Palestinian demands of (1) the cessation of settlement activity; (2) adopting the 4th June 1967 border as a reference; (3)...

Sheikh Raed Salah's legal victory against the British government's decision to deport him from the UK represents one more example of the battles he has been fighting for years against the Israelis and their supporters inside and outside historic Palestine. The Upper Immigration Tribunal's decision emphasises the independence of...

It is interesting to note that a recent robust defence of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's planned "Museum of Tolerance" in Jerusalem uses an attack on the credibility of Sheikh Raed Salah as part of the argument. Sheikh Raed Salah, wrote the Centre's Director of Public Relations in a letter...

Administrative detention provides a vehicle for the arrest of Palestinians where there is no genuine reason for them to be taken into custody, even under Israel's draconian military occupation. Nobody sees the "evidence" provided by intelligence officers apart from the Israeli judge. The lawyers acting for the detainee can't...

In America, the Jewish community's Anti-Defamation League (ADL) promotes racial integration, equality and multiculturalism within American society. The ADL and other Jewish organisations work closely at local levels with school administrators across the US to educate young children about the virtues of tolerance and multiculturalism. As a promoter of...

The ongoing post-conflict reconstruction process in Libya is reigniting a crucial debate among transitional justice advocates about the role that the International Criminal Court (ICC) can play in delivering justice and redress to victims of grave crimes. In the midst of the February 2011 revolution, the ICC opened an...

Recently, millions of Egyptians crowded round TV sets in Cairo to watch two presidential candidates debate their country's future. For citizens more used to having a political system imposed on them than joining in the discussion, they seem to have adapted quickly. Cheers and applause broke out as the...

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...

Everyone is waiting anxiously for the outcome of the first round of the Egyptian presidential election. It might be a decisive vote in terms of such elections in Egypt; if one of the candidates receives more than 50 per cent of the votes, he will be President. So who...

Democracy, to paraphrase writer and comedian Alexei Sayle, allows you to march up and down the street and elect new dictators every few years. Here in the West, we see this played out regularly as our "elected dictators" ignore mass demonstrations and insist that we can remove them through...

Once again Muhammad Rashid has returned to the forefront of the political scene, first through programmes on satellite television under the title "political memory", and second through the Palestinian Authority's request for Interpol to arrest the man on charges of corruption. That request has been ignored, perhaps because the...

It is ironic that Western nations seeking to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions are the same countries which sold nuclear technology to Tehran in the first place. Iran has worked with the US and Western nations since the 1950s to develop its nuclear energy capabilities. In 1975, German conglomerates Kraftwerk...

Revolutionary Egypt is at a crossroads, with the revolution itself under threat, requiring all factions to reconsider their positions, especially the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic group must be alert, ready to mobilise its supporters and prepared for self-denial. Let's not forget, though, that Egypt is on the coat-tails of...