Israel

Senior Fatah official Marwan Barghouti has joined Hamas members and other Palestinian prisoners on an open-ended hunger strike in Israeli jails. According to the former Minister of Palestinian Prisoners...

Turkey was the first Muslim state to recognise Israel after its inception in 1948, and later established full diplomatic relations with it. The strict secular regime supported by the...

The new activism of a young generation in the US has largely come out of the multiplicity and consistency of a new media narrative confidently mushrooming from a new...

The head of Lebanon's Maronite church will make history this month when he becomes the first such figure to visit Israel since its foundation in 1948. The announcement that...

It is time for the Palestinian leadership to reconsider its losing bet on the United States, which oscillates from being an opponent that is biased towards Israeli strategy and...

Like previous agreements, the Palestinian reconciliation deal has been described as "historic". Officially, the damaging political split between Palestinians is over, but will this latest agreement be any better...

Soon after the signing of the Wye River Agreement in 1998 Israel's minister of infrastructure in the first Netanyahu government, the late, unlamented Ariel Sharon, urged settlers to "seize...

There is nothing imaginary about Israel's threat to attack Gaza. It is real; both the Hamas-led administration and civilian population in the enclave have had to live with it...

Has the Israeli government crossed a red line in its dealings with the US? It is a reasonable assumption after Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon's recent derisory comments about Secretary...

If he succeeds with his current "peace" initiative, John Kerry would have killed three birds, not two, with one stone. With the stroke of a pen his "proposed framework"...

Israel's international isolation has finally become a reality. Within the past week this was cemented by the absence of senior Israeli politicians from Nelson Mandela's funeral, followed in rapid...

There are certain events in the life of nations that define their history for generations. In South Africa, the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre and the 1976 Soweto Uprising are prime...

US Secretary of State John Kerry's current visit to Palestine was foreshadowed by a familiar dark cloud; every such high-level American visit results in more pressure on the Palestinian...

This week's decision by the Israeli daily Maariv to publish a report which claimed that John Kerry supported the organisers of the Freedom Flotilla was significant in many respects....

As happened in 2000, the Palestine-Israel negotiations are about to end with another eruption of civil unrest because of Jerusalem. The main difference on this occasion is that the...

Rampant political instability and deadly civil wars in the Middle East have turned the Mediterranean Sea into a graveyard. More than 500 refugees have been drowned while trying to...

Israelis did not have to wait long to find another 'national treasure' in Egypt. For several weeks now their national media has been awash with commentaries on Egypt. Most...

Palestinians of all political persuasions welcomed the release of 26 prisoners last night. They are the first of 104 pre-Oslo life prisoners due to be released over the next...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had precious little to celebrate on the 100th day of his Likud-led coalition government. The occasion was marked this week with a vote...

It was inevitable that Syria's bloody civil war would engulf the 530,000 Palestinian refugees in the country. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near...

Palestine was shaken by a number of diplomatic tremors this week. The aftershocks were felt as far away as Washington, forcing US Secretary of State John Kerry to postpone...

The battle of wills between Fatah's elite and the former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Salam Fayyad, has finally ended with the appointment of his successor,...

The stage setting was as good as it gets; they hardly come bigger. US Secretary of State John Kerry chose the backdrop of the Davos conference of the World...

Inevitably, the 65th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba – Catastrophe – was overshadowed by calls to exercise refugees' right of return. Although the vast majority of Palestinians live in...

Israel's ethnic cleansing polices in the Naqab (Negev) region have entered a new and dangerous phase. A ministerial council for legal codes this week cleared the way for a...

Whenever Israel and America welcome an Arab initiative it must be in their favour. This is exactly what has happened with the Arab ministerial delegation to Washington offering to...

Israel's efforts to isolate the Gaza Strip politically are not working. Not even the recruitment of the US secretary of state has been enough to persuade Turkey's Prime Minister,...

Israel's "independence" celebrations are always underlined by an inescapable subtext; it is also the Palestinian Nakba – catastrophe. As Israelis celebrated their 65th anniversary this week, tens of thousands...

Despite the drums of war on the Korean Peninsula, US Secretary of State John Kerry has been busy shuttling back and forth to the Middle East. His latest visit,...

After months of delay the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, Hamas, has completed its internal elections and returned Khaled Meshaal as head of the political bureau. More than 70...

The obviously orchestrated decision by the American and Israeli governments to release millions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority (PA) may be too little too late. If the purpose...

Now that the Obama show has left town the Middle East can return to reality. All eyes are focussed on the 24th meeting of Arab heads of state due...