A Middle East regime needing change
If the Middle East is to be spared another disastrous explosion of violence, one might argue, the one regime that urgently needs changing is that of Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak. Bernard Lewis, 93, historian, scourge of Islamic radicalism and spiritual god-father of America's neocons, gave a word of advice to Israel's Prime...Support ebbs for West’s nuclear hard line
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Public support for stronger measures, including possible military strikes, to curb or destroy Iran's nuclear program has declined significantly in most countries around the world compared to 18 months ago, according to a new survey of public opinion released Tuesday by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)....Kidnapped Iraqi archbishop dead
Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop in Iraq who was kidnapped last month, has been found dead near the northern city of Mosul. An Iraqi police officer and morgue official confirmed reports that the archbishop's body had been found buried near Mosul, where he had been abducted. The Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI...
How long can we stay in Iraq?
March 14th, 20080 The week Central Command Commander Admiral William Fallon resigned under pressure from the Bush Administration. Fallon, who was in charge of the entire Middle East region, has held critical views on the surge and on Bush's Iran war-option policy. Other war politicians believe in the magical effects of the surge. Violence in...U.S. sends mixed signals over rights
CAIRO (IPS) — While in Egypt last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the release of 100 million dollars in suspended financial assistance to Egypt. The monies — part of an annual U.S. foreign aid package — were frozen in December following Israeli claims that Cairo had failed to secure its border with the Gaza...Israel defies freeze on illegal settlements
JERUSALEM — Israel approved plans this week to build 330 new homes in a suburban West Bank settlement north of Jerusalem. The move was denounced by the Palestinian Authority as "a slap in the face of the peace process" and called on the Quartet of the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia to "act to get Israel to...Time to step back from the brink
WASHINGTON (IPS) — Describing the current Lebanese political impasse as a moment "pregnant with incredible danger," a U.S. expert this week urged rival factions and their international patrons to adopt of a formula of "no victim, no vanquished" in order to mitigate a possible descent into civil war. "When I think back to...
Is a third intifada brewing?
March 14th, 20080 Bethlehem — Fadi al-Amour and his friends – high school seniors – spent more time last week on the street than in class. Every day, they marched on Rachel's Tomb, guarded by Israeli soldiers, and, along with hundreds of other young Palestinians, pelted the nearest symbol of Israeli power with rocks and Molotov cocktails. "We were...Current lull provides opportunity
BEIRUT — Out of crisis comes opportunity, which describes the current brief lull in the war between Israel and the Palestinian resistance movements in Gaza. Rather than just trying to calm things down, this is the moment to push hard diplomatically towards more serious negotiations, on the basis of a new, more credible, balance of...The mega prisons of Palestine
In several articles published by The Electronic Intifada, I claimed that Israel is pursuing a genocidal policy against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, while continuing the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. I asserted that the genocidal policies are a result of a lack of strategy. The argument was that since the Israeli political...
U.S. conspired to cause civil war in Palestine
March 8th, 20080 Journalist David Rose outlines Iran-Contra-style plot in April issue of Vanity Fair United States officials including President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice participated in a conspiracy to arm and train Contra-style Palestinian militias nominally loyal to the Fatah party to overthrow the...Massacres continue in Gaza
Israel killed 116 Palestinians in Gaza last week in an orgy of air strikes and ground incursions, turning the besieged and starved Strip into an unbearable inferno. Hundreds more Palestinians were wounded. At least half the dead and wounded were civilians, including many young children. So great was the catastrophe that Egypt,...Iran sanctions vote signals a global rift
Some developing nations may be starting to sour on push by world powers to control lucrative nuclear technology. United Nations — The passage this week by the United Nations Security Council of a third set of sanctions against Iran places a spotlight on two trends in the international community's dispute with Tehran's...U.S. warship worries Lebanese
Regional crisis likely, given Saudi Arabia's threat to boycott Arab summit Beirut — Washington's decision to deploy the USS Cole off Lebanon's coast is kindling grim memories of a past conflict here — and fresh concerns over another war. While the U.S. State Department says the Cole and other warships are being sent to...Iraqi Christians cling to last refuges
BARTELLA — The bullets lay on the desk amid Bibles and rosaries. They're for two pistols owned by Father Ayman Danna. "The only solution left for our people is to bear arms. We either live or die. We must be strong," says the Syriac Catholic priest at the Church of Saint George in Bartella, a northern Iraqi town in a swath of......
If it bleeds in Israel, it leads in America
But most Palestinian resistance to the occupation is non-violent Recent actions by Palestinians in Gaza seemed designed to expose bias in the American media. Last weekend, they organized a non-violent, symbolic protest at Gaza's borders. Later in the week, Hamas began launching retaliatory rockets into Israel,...Why Lebanon hasn’t slipped into civil war
Rival factions have worked hard to defuse points of conflict. Washington — Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, was killed by a huge explosion near downtown Beirut in February 2005. Since then, the country has seen – in addition to the Israeli bombardments of summer 2006 – more than a dozen other mysterious assassinations.......
Strategic alliances in Iraq remain elusive
WASHINGTON (IPS) — The George W. Bush administration has ballyhooed recent legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament as a sign that its troop escalation strategy has indeed created space for political reconciliation. But observers say a closer look at the legislation in the context of the grander Iraqi quagmire suggests that the...
Children killed as Israel pounds Gaza
March 1st, 20080 A boy sits next to the body of 6-month-old Palestinian baby Mohammed al-Borai in a mosque before his funeral in GazaGAZA CITY — Israel pounded the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Thursday, February 28, killing four children and 10 militants, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to make the Islamists pay a heavy price for rocket...
U.S. positions warships near Lebanon
March 1st, 20080 The U.S. has sent three warships, including the USS Cole, to take up positions off the coast of Lebanon in a show of force over the ongoing political deadlock in the country. A senior U.S. official said Washington was "very concerned" about the situation in Lebanon and the move was a "support for regional stability." The U.S....A bridge between two tears
This country begets nothing but funerals. It bids farewell to one martyr and returns to the bickering and feuding while it awaits the fall of another. Neither the living nor the martyrs can unite it. This is a country that strips the martyr of his national halo. It draws limits to his blood. It turns him into the martyr of a confession,......
The Shi’a-Sunni divide: myths and reality
As the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq enters its fifth year, conflicts and political rivalries in the region appear to be assuming a sectarian edge unseen since the 1982-1989 war between Iraq and Iran. Lebanon's Sunni Muslim mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Kabbani and Shi'i Muslim mufti Abdel Amir Kabalan The debate over why this...U.S. detention of Iraqis grows without end
The United States is, once again, expanding the size of its largest detention center in Iraq. According to an October 31 report by the military paper Stars and Stripes, U.S. forces will be increasing the capacity of detainees at Camp Bucca from 20,000 to 30,000. A policeman checks the papers of newly released prisoners in......
Border breach raises fundamental questions
CAIRO (IPS) — Authorities sealed the border with the Gaza Strip earlier this month after more than a half million Palestinians flooded into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in late January. But while most have since returned home, the episode served to highlight Egypt's tenuous control over its border with the troubled territory next door....One third of settlements on private land
Not long ago the greengrocer in Ramallah recalled — between weighing locally grown zucchini and stripped hyssop leaves — that his family owned the land on which the gas station at the old entrance to the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank is located. A Palestinian boy hurling a stone at Israeli troops He would not be......