Arabs tackle free speech taboo
As soon as the cameramen called it a wrap, the audience swarmed onto the TV studio set. Almost giddy with delight, several university students from Saudi Arabia went straight for chairs vacated by the performers and pretended to be stars of the show. The Doha Debates, the five-year-old hit show on BBC World News. The program...Gender discrimination in citizenship rights
MANAMA (IPS) — There is inequality in citizenship laws for women and men in the Gulf Arab states. Bahraini women chat Tuesday in front of a wall in a Shiite Muslim village that's been marked with anti-government graffiti. PHOTO: AP Here in Bahrain, women who marry foreigners cannot obtain citizenship for their husbands or...Stormy times as U.S. withdraws from Iraq
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Political violence in Iraq killed 456 Iraqis in August, the highest monthly death toll since July 2008. And with the U.S. showing no sign it plans to reverse the troop withdrawal that is now well underway, numerous struggles for power are shaping up inside Iraq. A resident watches Iraqi police secure the...
Lebanon’s PM-designate Hariri quits
September 11th, 20090 BEIRUT — Saad Hariri, Lebanon's prime minister-designate, is stepping down just 10 weeks after being asked to form a unity government. Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman (L) meets with prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri at Beiteddine palace in Beiteddine village, Mount Lebanon September 10, 2009. Hariri said on Thursday...
Thousands of worshippers shut out of East Jerusalem
September 5th, 20090 QALANDIA (IPS) — The future of East Jerusalem and of Palestinian access to it has again been brought under the spotlight. In this 2008 BBC photo, West Bank Palestinians wait to be granted access through the Israeli checkpoint at Kalandia so they can attend Friday prayers in the al-Aqsa mosque in Israeli-occupied East...In Syria, delicate preservation work is pushing against profit-driven speed
DAMASCUS — It claims to be the world's oldest capital city, outlived only by Aleppo, Syria; and Jericho, on the West Bank. The proof is there, in Mesopotamian texts that mention Damascus and in a deep urban foundation of streets, houses, and sewers from every civilization, piled on top of one another. An old Damascus...Israel evicts Palestinians to the street, moves Israelis into homes
EAST JERUSALEM (IPS) — Israel's continued policy of Judaizing East Jerusalem in order to establish facts on the ground before the future of that part of the city is decided, has left dozens of Palestinians homeless and sleeping on the streets. Israeli soldiers scuffle with Palestinian and foreign peace activists after they...Critical healthcare fails to recover
RAMALLAH — The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that unless the siege of Gaza is lifted and a political solution implemented, Gaza's badly damaged health system will go from very bad to worse. Palestinians walk past the UNRWA office, where representatives of Palestinian refugee camps conduct a sit-in protest against...Iraqi-Syrian feud political suicide for Maliki
Relations between Iraq and Syria plunged abruptly on Tuesday after Baghdad recalled its ambassador to Damascus over the recent bombings in the Iraqi capital in which 100 Iraqis were killed. Iraqi ambassador in Syria Ala al-Jawadi speaks during a news conference at his office in Damascus August 25, 2009. Iraq and Syria recalled...Copts split over presidential scion
CAIRO (IPS) — Leaders of Egypt's Coptic Christian Church have voiced support for Gamal Mubarak, son of President Hosni Mubarak, as preferred candidate for president. Concurrently, however, some Coptic activists are calling for demonstrations against what they see as official state bias against Christians. Gamal Mubarak...Iraqi religious leader dead after battle with cancer
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim died on Wednesday after being hospitalized in Tehran, the Iranian capital, after a fight against lung cancer, Humam Hamoudi and Jalaleddin al-Saghir, two senior officials from al-Hakim's political party, said. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim Al-Hakim had headed the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) since...Mubarak meets Obama to patch up U.S.-Egypt relationship
CAIRO — Until five years ago, it was an annual tradition: every spring Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would travel to Washington to meet his American counterpart, congressional leaders, and a few newspaper editorial boards. U.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Oval Office at the...Embattled Hamas shows its moderate face
RAMALLAH (IPS) — The Islamic resistance movement Hamas's rule of Gaza is facing protracted political and military opposition from within Gaza, other Palestinian territories and abroad. Palestinians greet a Fatah member (C) after his release from a Hamas-run prison in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, August 19, 2009. The...Ex-wife blamed for Kuwait inferno
KUWAIT — Kuwaiti police investigating a deadly blaze at a wedding tent that killed 43 women and children say the ex-wife of the groom has confessed to starting it. Charred clothing, shoes and other debris litter the ground in the aftermath of the fire that left 43 women and children dead in a wedding tent near Kuwait City....
Iraqi faith in security forces shattered in Baghdad blasts
August 22nd, 20090 BAGHDAD — At the site of the deadliest Baghdad bombing in 18 months, Iraqi faith that their security forces could protect them lay shattered in the wreckage. A victim of a bomb attack in a hospital cries while waiting for receiving a medical treatment in Baghdad, August 19, 2009. A series of explosions killed at least 75 people......
Reaching the next generation with ‘Muppet diplomacy’
August 15th, 20090 When Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard invaded Kuwait in 1990, they brought back some unusual war booty to Baghdad: tapes of the region's "Sesame Street" show. Troops also took a Muppet camel. The furry blue monster, Mahboub. Haneen and Karim are two of the Muppet stars in "Shara'a Simsim," the Palestinian version of...New blood invigorates Fatah leadership
BETHLEHEM (IPS) - Despite internal divisions, much criticism and against enormous odds, the Fatah movement has emerged from its Sixth Revolutionary Council here with new blood in its leadership and hopes for a fresh agenda. F Employees of the Fatah election committee count votes during the Fatah congress in the West Bank town of......
Lebanese brothers wounded by cluster bombs
BEIRUT - An undetonated cluster bomb originally fired by Israel went off on Wednesday, August 12, injuring 13-year-old Abbas Awali and his 10-year-old brother Hussein as they were gathering wood. A Cluster bomb The date marked the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions that formally outlined international law on the...Fatah: A new beginning or an imminent end?
This is hardly the rational order of things. An overpowering military occupation was meant to be resisted by an equally determined, focused and unyielding national movement, hell-bent on liberation at any cost and by any means. This is the unwritten law that has governed and shielded successful national liberation projects throughout...
Woman takes on Sudan’s ‘indecency laws’
August 7th, 20090 Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a Sudanese journalist, is at the center of a high profile trial in Sudan. She was charged by the government with "indecency" for wearing trousers. This crime carries the penalty of forty lashes from a whip. Lubna Hussein, a former journalist and U.N. press officer, talks to the media outside the court...Chance of a breakthrough with the Kurds?
WASHINGTON — A recent meeting between Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani appears to be a crucial step in lowering tensions in the country, but it has also prompted questions as to whether the two leaders can put an end to their differences. Kurdish President Massoud Barzani The......
Fatah fights for survival
BETHLEHEM — Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is fighting for its very survival as the movement faces implosion and attacks from all sides. The issues have come to the fore at the sixth revolutionary council of the party that began in Bethlehem Tuesday. Palestinian President Mahmoud...
The seven pillars of Arab vulnerability
July 31st, 20090 A Damascus bazaar BEIRUT — It's bad enough for ordinary Arabs to sense large gaps in their personal quality of life and widespread dysfunction in the public management of their societies. It is much more painful — though always useful — for such self-awareness to be documented in a credible report by knowledgeable......
Fatah’s leadership crisis deepens
Palestinians, whose houses were destroyed during the three-week offensive Israel launched last December, take part in a protest in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, July 29, 2009, calling on international donors to help in reconstructing their houses. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa WASHINGTON (IPS) — Fifty years ago, a small group...Occupation of Iraq continues despite rhetoric
"If the Iraqi forces require further training and further support, we shall examine this then at that time, based on the needs of Iraq," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently informed President Barak Obama in Washington. Iraq's Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim (L) sits alongside U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert......
