All Stories Archive

By Jonathan CookAn Arab member of the Israeli parliament is demanding that a newspaper be allowed to publish an investigative report that was suppressed days before Israel attacked Gaza in winter 2008. The investigation by Uri Blau, who has been in hiding since December to avoid arrest, concerned Israeli...

By Abdul Bari UtwanThe Arab region is presently experiencing strange circumstances which bring to mind the situation which prevailed before the 1973 war. The peace process is basically stalled, especially on the Palestinian track; the resistance does not resist; there are no military operations; and there are no missile...

By Khalid Amayreh Muhannad Salahat, 32, is another Palestinian journalist victimized by the Palestinian Authority Mukhabarat or General Intelligence. Earlier this month, Salahat, who lives in Amman, Jordan, but has a home in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, had to spend 14 nightmarish days in the custody...

In Israel, the main factor that determines the right of citizenship is "nationality" rather than the place of birth. Such nationality does not apply to all the current residents of the Zionist state because it is based on ethnicity, as stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Law...

By Fahmi Huwaidi The current consensus among the majority of Egyptians, with a loss of confidence in the present and growing concern for the future, brings to mind pivotal scenes in the modern history of Egypt, at the end of the monarchy and in the aftermath of the June...

The oppression of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is normally associated with the Israelis. However, the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas oppresses not only popular resistance activists, their families, neighbours, friends and colleagues in schools and the workplace, but also suppresses free speech, the news media,...

EXCLUSIVE ARTICLE FROM MEMOBy Mahan AbedinSituated deep inside the Bekaa valley, a stone's throw away from the historic town of Baalbek, sits the Jalil Palestinian refugee camp, the most idiosyncratic of all the eleven Palestinian camps still inhabited in Lebanon. Poor, remote and subject to the harsh local weather,...

Deputy Minister of International Relations and Co-operation of the Republic of South Africa Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim used the occasion of the 2010 Budget Vote in the National Assembly (22nd April 2010) to reiterate the South African position in relation to the current state of Israeli – Palestinian affairs. He...

By Ali Jawad In the self-sensationalising world of modern media, some truths are better witnessed than told. Over the past fortnight, major media outlets have focused on Syria's alleged delivery of scud missiles to the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. By examining how the story first came to light, as...

By Ahmed MansourThose who take notice of such things will know that Israel, generally, is working according to a long-term strategy with the complicity of the Palestinian Authority on one hand, and the Arab states with which Israel has diplomatic relations on the other. US policy guides the actions...

The dust from the Al-Mabhouh murder and forged passports affair has barely settled, yet Israel is again infuriating its European allies. After the furore following Al-Mabhouh's assassination in Dubai, during which Israeli agents used forged passports from several European countries, Israeli officials would have been well advised to stay...

By Dr Mohsen Saleh Israel has a negotiating strategy that is designed to prolong the negotiations allowing more time for the construction of facts on the ground, putting it in a position to impose its will on "final status" talks. In fact, the strategy can be broken down into...

By Dan Lieberman – Alternative Insight A question continually asked: Why has peace in the Middle East not been attainable? Clues to the answer are shunted from biased minds but are revealed in the Lebanese and Gaza conflagrations. They come from asking another question. Why did Israel react strongly...

Islamic Posts Filled by Secret PoliceBy Jonathan CookJob interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel's secret police, a labour tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet's refusal to...

By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank Encouraged by government flaccidity and leniency, Jewish settler terrorists in the West Bank are planning to carry out more arson attacks against Islamic houses of worship for the purpose of forcing millions of Palestinians to flee their homes and land in order...

The Secretary-General of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr Mahmoud Al-Ramahi, has said that amid expectations that support for the Palestinian Authority will be stopped due to the financial crisis; there is widespread European activism toward opening the channels of communication with the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. European officials are...

By John SpritzlerAP reporter Rizek Abdel Jawad broke a taboo by providing truthful background in his report today on Palestinians in Gaza marching to commemorate the Nakba, which mean "catastrophe" in Arabic and refers to the Zionist removal of Palestinians from what is now Israel in 1948. Jawad may...

The importance of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot be stressed enough. The high profile the issue has across the world illustrates its key status in world affairs. All the more reason, therefore, that debate surrounding it is not clouded by accusations of racism in place of open discussion. The New...

By Azmi BisharaCongratulating Israel on its "Independence Day" is to congratulate it on the successful armed robbery of Palestine and the brutal displacement of its people. When such congratulations come from political leaders in the USA, for example, or France, or the Ivory Coast, it could be argued that...

By Ala'a Al-Rimawi Since June 2007, the people of Gaza have been subject to an immoral and inhuman blockade imposed by Israel – with Egyptian support – which has prevented almost all of the basic necessities of life from passing through the border posts. The nominal reason for the...

By Abdel Bari Atwan We know that the Islamic Resistance Movement is facing intensive Israeli and Arab efforts to bring about the downfall of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip because it sticks to the option of resistance. This resistance includes the ever-present constants in the struggle: non-recognition...

By Naomi Wimborne-IdrissiIn March 2010, protests in a London concert hall interrupted a live BBC Radio3 broadcast by an Israeli chamber music group and sparked vehement arguments about the legitimacy of such actions. On Saturday (May 22) the Jerusalem Quartet returned to London's Wigmore Hall, as unrepentant about being...

Israel's political and military leadership clearly had no real strategy for dealing with the Freedom Flotilla intent on breaking the siege of Gaza. The country's government was unable to make the correct decision about how to tackle this particular challenge. On the face of it, the arrival of so...

By Yvonne RidleyHow many people remember the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro way back in October 1985? Four members of the Palestine Liberation Front took control of the liner off the coast of Egypt as she was sailing from Alexandria to Port Said. It was a...

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine For many years, I have been  arguing rather constantly  that Israel is a decidedly terrorist state that differs little in character from other nefarious entities. My views in this regard were occasionally depicted "as wild exaggerations." Some of the naïve observers, long exposed...

By Abdel Bari Atwan We thank God that the Freedom Flotilla set sail from the ports of Turkey; we praise Him more that one of them, Mavi Marmara, was flying the Turkish flag; and we praise Him for the third time that Turkish martyrs were killed by Israeli soldiers...

By Yvonne Ridley The full extent of the atrocities carried out by Israeli commandos on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla is beginning to emerge as the survivors return home with their powerful eyewitness accounts. Now would be the time, you might think, for some humility or even an apology...

By Roger Higginson IssueThe time has come for a re-appraisal of UK policy towards Israel, 19 years after the Middle East Peace Process started in Madrid. On 16 March 2010, American General Petreus testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that "the enduring hostilities between Israel and some...

In the wake of Israel's assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the international community called for the siege of Gaza to be lifted. US President Obama called it "unsustainable" while others have been more forthright. A spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Christopher Gunness speaking on...

By Omar Radwan Following the Israeli raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which resulted in the murder of at least nine civilian activists (some are, apparently, still unaccounted for) carrying aid to Gaza, Israel has been faced with calls for an inquiry into the incident. The United Nations Security...

By Seyfeddin Kara The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), one of the most prestigious economic clubs in the world, was founded in 1961. It currently has 31 member states, most of them EU countries and other developed countries, including the USA. The OECD maintains 60 percent of...

By Ramzy Baroud "Even despots, gangsters and pirates have specific sensitiveness, (and) follow some specific morals." The claim was made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a recent speech, following the deadly commando raid on the humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza on May 31. According to Erdogan,...

Something is going very wrong in Jerusalem. Israel's warped sense of immutable ownership and unchallengeable control over Palestinian lives has given way to a rampant series of acts that would cause utter shock and disbelief if carried out anywhere else in the world. To begin with, democratically elected MPs...

Asa Winstanley, The Electronic Intifada, 22 June 2010 A document sent to Ibrahim Khraishi, Palestinian Authority representative at the UN in Geneva, proves that the PA attempted to undermine Turkey's push for a UN Human Rights Council investigation in to Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla (Patrick Bertschmann/UN...

By Omar Radwan Following Israel's attack on the Freedom Flotilla at the end of last month, the siege of Gaza has come under the spotlight. In Europe and the United States there is a growing realisation in official circles that the siege is unacceptable and untenable. With this realisation, attention...

News analysis by Khalid Amayreh in East Jerusalem The recent decision by the Israeli government to banish four Palestinian lawmakers from Jerusalem to areas in the West Bank run by the Palestinian Authority (PA) is another repugnant expression of the Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing in the city, holy...

By Abdel Bari Atwan President Mahmoud Abbas has stressed, in all his press interviews, that he will not go into direct negotiations with the Israelis unless there is tangible progress in the "proximity" talks, sponsored by US Senator George Mitchell, the US peace envoy. According to the Palestinians' Chief...

Israel, we are told frequently, is "the only democracy in the Middle East". This is the "Get out of Jail" card used against critics whenever the argument is swinging towards Israel's opponents; it is as if being a democracy implies that the state is incapable of doing the things...

By Dr Mohsen Saleh The past few months have provided an opportunity to review the ideology of the late scholar Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who died recently in Lebanon, and his vision of the Palestinian situation. There is no doubt that Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah was one of the greatest Shiite...

By Omar Radwan Yesterday, an Israeli military inquiry committee published a report about Israel's raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. While criticising "mistakes" made by the Israeli navy, such as its failure to coordinate with the Mossad before the raid and to properly plan the raid, the report is...

By Ma'an Bashur If the veteran American journalist Helen Thomas had called for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, as she called for the Israeli withdrawal from Palestine, would she have been forced to resign from her post as a media anchor at the White House...

By Dr. Salman Abu Sitta The deteriorating situation of the Palestinian cause is no secret to anyone, including Palestinians themselves and the Arab world. There is, therefore, an urgent need to review this situation and prepare a viable political agenda able to be applied. This is not to say...

By Dr Bassem Naeem The European Union's foreign policy chief has visited Gaza for the second time. Cathy Ashton's visit on 18 July came several months after her first trip since when much has happened in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Not long after her first...

By Dr Salman Abu Sitta What is the position of neighbouring Arab countries on all this? In 1948, some Arab states went into Palestine after Britain's departure under pressure from the demonstration that swept the capitals of their respective countries following the Deir Yassin massacre and others. Their purpose...

By Ahmad Tibi In today's Israel, advocating equal rights for all can prove fatal, writes Ahmad Tibi* In the 11 years that I have served in Israel's Knesset I have received numerous death threats. Pulsa Denura (the term for a rabbinical death curse) has evidently taken exception to my...

By Uri Avnery WHEN I was first elected to the Knesset, I was appalled at what I found. I discovered that, with rare exceptions, the intellectual level of the debates was close to zero. They consisted mainly of strings of clichés of the most commonplace variety. During most of...

By Dr. Eyad Sarraj We do not need a great deal of intelligence, access to classified information, round or square theories to be able to put events into perspective or to understand them in their proper context and to know where we stand. For observers, it is a straightforward...

By Zuhair Andraos With complete disregard for international law, Israel continues to impose new facts on the ground; the latest instance being the approval by the Knesset committee of a law concerning a referendum to be held on its occupation of Syria's Golan heights. The real tragedy in all...

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem Outgoing British ambassador to Israel, Tom Phillips, has been quoted as saying that the British public is drifting away from Israel due to negative impression about Israeli criminal policies against Palestinians. Speaking during an interview with the right-wing newspaper, the Jerusalem post, Philips...

By Abdel Sattar Qassem It is easy to believe that the people of Palestine face just one war, that which is related to the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of the Gaza Strip; some may even limit the "war" to the blockade of the Gaza Strip...