Israel knows that peace just doesn’t pay
Successive Israeli governments since 1993 certainly must have known what they were doing, being in no hurry to make peace with the Palestinians. As representatives of Israeli society, these governments understood that peace would involve serious damage to national interests. Israeli settlements Economic damage: The...How to make the neocons crazy over the Middle East: Tell them the truth
Old Charlie Krauthammer, the neocon who won't go away, is at it again. Charlie Krauthammer Now he's hammering at an old favorite target — the Hamas party and its political leader, Khaled Meshal — and its new accomplice, that scurrilously liberal newspaper, the New York Times. The Times' latest moral fault (according...
Unstable Pakistan threatens the world
May 9th, 20090 America's attention has for several years been focused on the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for good reason. Thousands upon thousands of American troops, along with tens of thousands of civilians, have been killed and maimed. The consequences for the world from these ongoing wars weigh heavily upon everything from global...
The Palestinian Authority’s authoritarian turn
May 9th, 20090 Last week, less than two weeks after I had talked with him in his an-Najah University faculty office, Abdel Sattar Qassem was arrested by the Palestinian Preventive Security forces in Nablus, occupied West Bank. Palestinian dissident Abdel Sattar Qassem, C, walks with students at An Najah University on May 20, 2002 in the...More than two million refugees waiting to go home
WASHINGTON — The government of Iraq and the international community must establish safe conditions for the return of 2.6 million displaced Iraqis, says a new field report by the non-profit group Refugees International. The report, "Iraq: Preventing the Point of No Return," issued two weeks ago, notes that despite encouraging returns,...Film examines paranoia over anti-Semitism
NEW YORK (IPS) — "I have never experienced anti-Semitism myself, but it's a phrase that always seems to be in the air," begins Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir's lively new documentary "Defamation". "Three words seem to appear over and over again: Holocaust, Nazi, anti-Semitism." This phenomenon will be equally familiar to viewers in...Arabs will determine their destiny
A Palestinian boy, the son of Ammar Hudeidoun, sits near his family's belongings after the demolition of their home in Jabal Mukaber neighborhood in Arab East Jerusalem, April 22, 2009. Israel demolished the Palestinian house on Wednesday, a day after U.S. President Barack Obama called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to take...
Afghanistan could torpedo Obama’s domestic agenda
April 18th, 20090 President Obama (R) meets with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai of last year. Last week, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was revealed that the Obama administration is planning on sending an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan with no clear benchmarks for progress...Can the United States put pressure on Israel?
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama have all publicly stated that the United States seeks a "two-state" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In other words, the United States supports the creation of a viable Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza. The new Israeli government led by...
The killing of Islamic secularism
April 18th, 20090 Debate about the relationship between religion and state has been stifled by history – and the influence of a colonizing West. Ninety years ago in Egypt a new political party was formed. The Secular Party, as it was initially known, campaigned under the slogan: "Religion belongs to God, the homeland belongs to everyone." The...Feith charged with sanctioning torture
Doug Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, is best known for cooking up bogus prewar Iraq intelligence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda and 9/11. Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith But in addition to his duties stove piping phony intelligence directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney, Feith was...Hot air brings no winds of change
JERUSALEM — Last November, on the day marking the assassination of Israel's peace-making leader Yitzhak Rabin, the now outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Israelis something which, for decades, not even Rabin had dared say — we must end the occupation of the Palestinian territories and return to the 1967 borders....One more farcical tour of the Middle East
It was almost dreamlike, watching Secretary of State Hillary Clinton make her visit to Israel, one that can be called the first of many trips pretending to encourage peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. It's a dream I've had several times over; one needs only to simply fill in the names of the various U.S. secretaries of...Muslims reject terror tactics, back some goals
WASHINGTON – Strong majorities of people in predominantly Muslim countries reject terrorism but support key goals of Al Qaeda, notably expelling U.S. military forces from the Islamic world, according to a major new study of public opinion in seven nations and the Palestinian territories released here Wednesday. Nearly 90 percent...The Israeli occupation binds together Syria, Iran and the resistance
Washington is now listening intently to Syria. Last week, the Democratic Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad. And this week, Syria's ambassador to the United States visits a high level official in the State Department. There is an improvement in relations as......
Signs of a thaw, but differences run deep
WASHINGTON - Two high-level U.S. Congressional delegations are setting out for Syria to meet with President Bashar Al Assad. The trips are seen as a precursor for engagement with Syria, but the extent of possible diplomatic deal-making is still in question. U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (C) speaks during a news conference...One-state solution requires shared state of mind
In the future, Israelis and Palestinians may find it natural to live together in a single, integrated and democratic state. However, planning for a one-state solution unilaterally is bound to be risky, if not deadly. But as hope for reaching a two-state solution erodes, the one-state solution emerges as an attractive alternative. The...What Israel must do to save itself
Tantalus is punished by the Gods for reasons that are not entirely clear. He is hungry and thirsty, but the water in which he stands recedes when he bends down to drink from it and the fruit above his head continually evades his hand. Tzipi Livni Tzipi Livni is now undergoing a similar torture. After winning an impressive...One thing Iraqis hold onto
Among things that have not changed in Iraq is one that I hope never changes. After a four-year-long absence, each of my meetings here with former friends and fresh acquaintances seems to suggest that adversity has taken its toll on everything except Iraqi hospitality and Iraqi generosity. I am awestruck to find the warmth of the Iraqi......
Israeli elections reveal a shift to the right
Israelis voted with an obsession: the occupation. The results were mixed, but the overall picture is a shift to the right: use of force, not reason. Right wing parties which oppose withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem won the majority of parliamentary seats. Israel's Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu listens to...
Obama may soon have to deal with Netanyahu
February 7th, 20090 Israel's Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu smiles during a conference in Tel Aviv Feb. 5, 2009. Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party continues to lead opinion polls ahead of a Feb. 10 parliamentary election with the ruling Kadima party of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in second place. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen On Feb. 10, the......
Miracles needed in US, Mideast
The Gaza crisis unfolds as America starts a creative presidency in the face of overwhelming economic challenge, as Israel is about to elect fear-oriented leadership when courage is badly needed, and as Palestinians need to unite through civic empowerment, rather than fighting an asymmetrical war. Relatives of Palestinian farmer...Israel: Boycott, divest, sanction
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the......