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...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......
Israel’s ‘targeted assassinations’ strategy
Israel has made something of a specialty of "targeted assassinations" � that is to say sending hit teams to kill its enemies abroad in the evident belief that the best way to deal with Arab resistance movements is physically to eliminate their leaders. Over the past several decades, scores of Arab activists, intellectuals and scientists...U.S. troops to stay in Iraq beyond 2008
WASHINGTON � U.S. forces will remain in Iraq beyond the end of 2008, but a continued U.S. troop presence will not tie the hands of a future U.S. president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a newspaper column this week. "It is clear ... that U.S. forces will need to operate in Iraq beyond the......
Assad meets top U.N. official on Iraqi refugees
DAMASCUS � Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres this week to discuss the plight of Iraqi refugees in Syria, official news agency SANA reported. They discussed "cooperation between the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and Syria with regard to improving the conditions (of refugees)...Bahrain-based bank to build Libyan Energy City
TRIPOLI � Bahrain-based Islamic bank Gulf Finance House (GFH) has won a contract to build a multi-billion dollar city in Libya offering support services for oil firms, the state news agency JANA said on Monday. The 3.8 billion dollar Energy City will feature residential and business facilities over 1,300 acres in the Sabratha district,...Hamas renews call for ceasefire with Israel
JERUSALEM � A Hamas official this week renewed calls for a ceasefire amid mounting Israeli demands for a broad military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Ahmed Yussef, a Hamas foreign policy advisor, called for a long-term ceasefire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces. Sderot solidarity...For the world, Gaza is reality TV
GAZA CITY (IPS) � "We are being starved, killed, tortured, and besieged � and all this while the world just watches," says Abu Wael at the funeral of the latest group of Gazans killed by Israeli forces. The death toll is mounting, even if much of the media is taking little note of killings on the Gaza side. Palestinian woman waits......
A ‘grand bargain’ for U.S. and Iran?
There are welcome signs of a coming thaw in America's hostile and ice-bound relations with Iran � if not in the remaining months of George W. Bush's presidency, then under his successor. For the first time in many years, such a possibility is being actively debated and envisaged by American policy-makers and influential think-tanks. An...Will Netanyahu surge oust Olmert?
OAKLAND, Ca (IPS) � One day after the Jan. 30 release of the Winograd Commission report, which in part detailed some of the failures of the Israeli government and the military during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign. "The committee concluded......
Mughnieh murder could trigger retaliation
February 16th, 20080 'This is something that Hizbullah cannot let pass' Beirut � A shadowy senior Hizbullah commander, thought to have masterminded spectacular terrorist attacks in the 1980s, was killed Tuesday in a Damascus car bombing that will almost certainly trigger a retaliation from the militant Shi'a group. Hizbullah top military leader Imad...U.S.-backed groups challenge government
BAQUBA (IPS) � U.S. backed Sunni militants have challenged the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad, and demanded political power after two women were killed by government forces. Tensions rose earlier this month when men dressed in Iraqi security personnel uniforms kidnapped two women. Their naked bodies were found later. After the......