Lebanon’s Sunni bloc built militia, officials say
The Future Movement used a security firm to assemble a private force, officials say. But the fighters were no match for Hizbullah. BEIRUT For a year, the main Lebanese political faction backed by the U.S. built a Sunni Muslim militia here under the guise of private security companies, Lebanese security experts...New Israeli scholars face up to country’s origins
A former French ambassador reviews a wealth of texts documenting Israel's ugly history In the 1980s in Israel, a new generation of men and women who had not lived through the Holocaust or the creation of their country came of age intellectually and embarked on a remarkable period of change. This change...Siege hits Palestinians before they are born
GAZA CITY (IPS) The Israeli siege of Gaza that has restricted access to food, water and medicine is now beginning to hit unborn children and newborn babies. "Many babies are born suffering from anemia that they have inherited from their mothers," Dr. Salah Al-Rantisi, head of the women's health department at the Palestinian...Iran shifts attention to brokering peace in Iraq
Details from a secret meeting between top Iranian and Iraqi officials signal Iran's aim to 'stop arming' militias ISTANBUL and BAGHDAD Iran's role in helping broker a cease-fire in Baghdad's Sadr City may be the first sign that it is acting to fulfill recent promises to stop arming Iraq's militias and...The Israeli project has failed in Lebanon
Note: This is the third installment in Franklin Lamb's extraordinary series. The fourth installment will appear in the next issue. Dahiyeh Despite the media hype these days, many Middle East analysts as well as the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by former presidential candidate Joe Biden...
Bush hails Israel on 60th anniversary visit
May 16th, 20080 On his second trip to Israel, President Bush will address the issue of settlement building and try to push for progress on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. JERUSALEM President Bush landed here Wednesday to join the Jewish state in its 60th anniversary gala part of his drive to propel...
Transformation in Lebanon
May 16th, 20080 Events in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon continue to move erratically, with simultaneous gestures of political compromise and armed clashes that have left 46 dead in the past week. The consequences of what has happened in the past week may portend an extraordinary but constructive new development. If Lebanon shifts from...Israel is suppressing a secret it must face
How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago end up throwing filth at cowering Palestinians? By Johann Hari When you hit your 60th birthday, most of you will guzzle down your hormone replacement therapy with a glass of champagne and wonder if you have become everything you dreamed of in your youth. In a few...The Israeli project has failed in Lebanon
Why the Bush administration wants to negotiate now with Hizbullah Note: This is the second installment in Franklin Lamb's extraordinary series. The third and fourth installments will appear in the next two issues. Dahiyeh As discussed below, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the Bush administration...Troubles pile up in Yemen
This year, Yemen's President Ali Abdallah Saleh, 66, celebrates his 30th year in power a record of political longevity beaten among Arab heads of state only by Muammar al-Qadhafi, Libya's ruler since 1969. But, whereas Qadhafi's Libya, flush with oil money, is enjoying an unprecedented boom, Yemen, the Arab world's poor...The prospects for Syrian-Israeli peace
Turkey's prime minister seems determined to bring Israel and Syria to the negotiating table A faintly hopeful aspect of the current frost between Syria and Israel is that Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems determined to bring the two countries to the negotiating table. Turkey has emerged over the...Pressure to cut costs, troops strains “surge”
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Growing impatience in Congress over the enormous costs being racked up by the Iraq war, as well as the Pentagon's belief that it needs more troops in Afghanistan to fight insurgents there, is putting the vaunted success of the George W. Bush administration's "surge" strategy to the test. Although the House of...
Lebanon on the brink as violence erupts
May 9th, 20080 Nasrallah hits out at government BEIRUT Hizbullah's leader Hassan Nasrallah has warned that any crackdown by the government on the Shi'a organizaion would be tantamount to a "declaration of war." Hassan Nasrallah's comments were broadcast on television on Thursday, as street clashes in Lebanon between government loyalists and...A human rights crime in Gaza
The world is witnessing a terrible human rights crime in Gaza, where a million and a half human beings are being imprisoned with almost no access to the outside world by sea, air, or land. An entire population is being brutally punished. This gross mistreatment of the Palestinians in Gaza was escalated dramatically by Israel, with...A day to remember in Jericho
Caritas Jerusalem celebrates Mother's Day for members of the Ramallah Elderly Day Care Center with a special outing to Jericho JERUSALEM Catholic relief group Caritas Jerusalem took members of its elderly day care center in Ramallah to Jericho on March 30 to celebrate Mothers Day. The Ramallah......
Why Palestinian unity is not an option
Just days after the HAMAS-Fatah clash last June in Gaza, Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas looked firm and composed as he shook hands with members of his new emergency government. He made sure his move appeared as legitimate as possible, issuing decrees that outlawed the armed militias of HAMAS, and also suspended...
Bush to Nasrallah: An offer Hizbullah cannot refuse?
May 3rd, 20080 The Bush administration no longer believes there is a viable military option American, Israeli or combined for destroying Hizbullah "The Bush administration parking a flotilla from its U.S. 6th fleet off the coast of Lebanon was made necessary, it claims, to demonstrate Washington's 'commitment to......
Tunisia strives for religious tolerance
TUNIS In Tunisia, synagogues and churches stand side by side with mosques. Jewish and Christian minorities freely practice their religious rituals. This tolerant climate is ensured by the constitution which provides for habeas corpus, guarantees freedom of conscience and protects freedom of religious practice. But this open...Israel told to tackle West Bank plight
JERUSALEM Israel is coming under concerted international pressure to give swift agreement to specific measures to improve Palestinian life in the West Bank which senior diplomats believe could eventually make or break negotiations between the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas....Shirin Ebadi on Iran and the world
While Bush administration's actions and threats of "regime change" increase the repression by the Iranian state, and economic sanctions only hurt the people, Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi says there are ways the outside world can support reform in Iran. At least 400 dissidents, activists and intellectuals a...Christian divisions complicate politics
BEIRUT (IPS) The political crisis gripping Lebanon has chipped away at what has been viewed by most since the 2005 parliamentary elections as an unlikely alignment of two political heavyweights. The recent falling out between Michel Aoun, head of the Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Michel Murr, the Greek......
Greek Orthodox patriarch looks to the future
JERUSALEM (AP) The Greek Orthodox Church in the Holy Land is trying to recover from a moral and financial crisis, its top clergyman, Patriarch Theofilos III, told The Associated Press in a rare interview. In recent years, the church has been shaken by secretive real estate deals with Israelis, by Palestinian laymen angry about...The ten commandments of Iraq
The Iraq war is over. The failure of Bush's surge to produce political reconciliation in Iraq, combined with the unsustainable stress on our military and Congress' unwillingness to keep writing checks for $12 billion a month, all point in one direction: withdrawal. Even if John McCain is somehow elected president and for that to......
Assassinations shake Christian town
BEIRUT (IPS) - The lush Bekaa Valley is nestled between snowy Mount Lebanon and the Syrian border. The region, reputed for its wine production, was this week the witness to a violent crime in the Christian city of Zahleh, where two members of the anti-Syrian Kataeb party (Phalangists) were gunned down. In the courtyard of Zahleh's...The new walls of Baghdad
The new "surge" strategy in Iraq, led by General David Petreaus, has been heavily marketed as an example of the U.S. military's application of the "lessons of history" from previous counterinsurgencies to Iraq, foremost among them the need to win the population over from insurgents through cultivating human relationships, addressing......
