Opinion

Jonathan Brenneman packed for his second attempt at crossing the Jordan-West Bank border with a jacket, fully charged iPod, letters of official invitation and 500-page collection of Flannery O'Connor...

The phone call between President Barack Obama and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani ended more than 30 years of no official communication between leaders of the two states. It...

More than 50 doctors and health professionals have demanded that the Syrian government and all armed groups in the country respect the neutrality of hospitals, ambulances and patients, and...

Thirteen years ago former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to the compound of the third holiest site in Islam, Al-Aqsa Mosque, sparked the Second Intifada. The intifada, which raged...

Bankers in Iran are hoping that new President Hasan Rouhani will follow through on hints that reform is coming to the industry, which is saddled with dangerous levels of...

Palestinian refugees from Syria (PRS) are arguably the most vulnerable sub-population affected by the Syrian crisis. Having been uprooted twice from their homes, those now in Lebanon face a...

"The establishment of the Court is a gift of hope to future generations, and a giant step forward in the march towards universal human rights and the rule of...

The Salafist Nour Party has represented an interesting phenomenon in the Egyptian political arena since its inception. This is especially true considering that it finished second in the elections,...

Towards the end of September, the Israeli authorities announced that researchers working with an archaeologist from the Hebrew University had found a valuable item near Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. It...

"Any time someone comes to engage me, I am beaten. All the men look at me and my brother thinks I have had sexual relations with them. No one...

The Palestinian Authority has gone to the negotiating table alone in an attempt to regain the occupied territories. After more than twenty years of painful negotiations, it has not...

In a fractious Middle East that is rife with conflicts nothing is spared; houses of worship are attacked and sports clubs, schools and markets are unsafe thanks to the...

The Obama administration's decision to suspend some military aid to Egypt is a clear case of better late than never. Although an announcement was originally planned for August, its...

I do not want the approval of the late great thinker, Mohammad Abed al-Jabri, in my use of the term 'Arab mind'. This term is problematic because it gives...

Nema Shamlawi and her family were sleeping when over 15 armed and masked Israeli soldiers raided their home in the West Bank village of Hares, during the early hours...

When our friend made a statement calling for the Rafah crossing to be opened to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, he was faced with accusations of slander in...

Israel announced on Sunday that it has discovered a tunnel under its border with the Gaza Strip. The end of the tunnel is about 300m inside occupied Palestine. Israeli...

Israel imposed a stifling blockade on the Gaza Strip after the success of the Islamic Resistance Movement in the 2006 Palestinian elections; its grip was tightened in the summer...

In the Middle East, long-established alliances are shifting dramatically. As one political leader in the region said to me recently: "The ground is shaking under our feet and we...

Sex selection is a dirty phrase in Western countries, but Middle Eastern couples are jumping on fertility technology as changing attitudes make it easier and more acceptable to 'make...

Iraq's Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation have published a summary report of ex-post assessment of the prevalence of birth defects, still-births and miscarriages in the country...

Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has made no secret of his feelings about the apparent détente between Iran and the US. In a speech to the UN earlier this...

Negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians are, we are told, getting nowhere. It's taken some people 20+ years to understand that simple fact, but there you go. Ever since...

In a small motel room in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, within sight of the mountains of Syria, a former Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighter sits with his...

Careful scrutiny of opposition groups that have come to power or who are fighting to gain power reveals that they are often mirror images of the tyrants they replace....

Saudi Arabia has turned into a country of political surprises and shocks almost overnight. First its Foreign Minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, refused to give his speech at the UN...

No one, neither inside or outside the occupied territories, would argue over whether or not the Islamic Resistance movement, Hamas, was living through a severe political and economic crisis....

Change is happening in the Middle East, much more than is reflected in a fifteen minute phone call between Iran's President Hassan Rouhani and his US counterpart Barack Obama...

Whilst peace talks between Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are currently underway, internationally deemed illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to mushroom....

The impact of Turkish and Iranian rapprochement will cause the Gulf States to face pressure from Iran and complicate the situation in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. These pressures and...

In March last year Israel became the first country ever to sever ties with the UN Human Rights Council. The decision came after the body decided to investigate Jewish...

Today, they said, was a "quiet day". There was a child with shrapnel wedged in her neck, a man in the ICU with amputated limbs and an FSA fighter...