U.S. takes aim over Jordan’s shoulder
MUWAQQAR, Jordan (IPS) — In the bleak and seemingly endless desert expanse that unfolds east of Jordan's capital city, Amman, lies a crucial cog in the ambitious regional designs of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East. The controversial police training center in Jordan.Commonly known by its acronym JIPTC, the Jordan...
U.S. credibility as peace broker eroding by the day
November 20th, 20090 WASHINGTON (IPS) — In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, movement in the standoff between the two sides can be backward as often as it is forward. The past couple of weeks have seen moves from both sides that have garnered the attention of the world, but forward progress remains elusive. A laborer works at a construction site...Abbas resignation may be a stunt
RAMALLAH - U.S. and Israeli failure to take either Palestinian rights or Israeli settlement expansion seriously has placed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) in an untenable situation, which could seriously damage peace prospects. AbbasOn Thursday, November 5, Abbas announced his...
U.N. affirms Israeli-Hamas war crimes report
November 18th, 20090 UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - A 575-page blistering report by Justice Richard Goldstone detailing war crimes in Gaza last December is refusing to die despite an aggressive Israeli smear campaign to kill it. Mansour The report, which was favorably voted by the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, received...Another legal setback for Arar torture case
NEW YORK (IPS) — A federal appeals court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit brought against a former U.S. attorney general by a Canadian citizen who sought damages for being unlawfully detained by U.S. authorities in New York and then secretly shipped to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year and allegedly tortured. Maher...
Israel rations Palestinians to trickle of water
November 4th, 20090 Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies. A Palestinian boy drinks water from a public tap in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 27, 2009. Human rights group...J Street meet draws foreign policy heavyweights
WASHINGTON (IPS) — J Street, the relatively new "pro-Israel, pro-peace" advocacy group, exceeded expectations for its inaugural conference here in Washington with over 1,500 participants attending the four-day event. Turnout surpassed the organizers' 1,000 expected participants, despite a series of attacks accusing the group of...U.N. body backs war crimes charges on Israel, Hamas
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - The 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) approved a resolution last week endorsing war crimes charges against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as spelled out in a report by a four-member international fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone. A Palestinian man walks past a...US-Israeli missile war games begin
The United States and Israel began this week more than two weeks of tests to simulate missile attacks on the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons. Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai (R) is briefed by an Israeli army officer during a tour of fortifications near the Israeli-Lebanese border, October...
Rabbis take on settlers
October 24th, 20090 AWARTA, West Bank (IPS) — Away from the media spotlight that focuses on the widening chasm between Israelis and Palestinians, a group of Israeli humanists is quietly working to break down barriers with their Palestinian neighbors. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Israel’s Rabbis for Human Rights. Rabbi Arik Ascherman,...
Veteran army officer urges Afghan troop drawdown
October 16th, 20090 WASHINGTON (IPS) — A veteran Army officer who has served in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars warns in an analysis now circulating in Washington that the counterinsurgency strategy urged by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal is likely to strengthen the Afghan insurgency, and calls for withdrawal of the bulk of U.S. combat forces from the...Cold Turkey could change political balance
JERUSALEM — It's long been among the most durable, strategic relationships in the Near East - perhaps because it was the most unlikely. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutogluFor decades, the two regional superpowers, Turkey and Israel, have quietly stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the common strategic challenges facing them....Libya war report request denied
The UN Security Council has rejected Libya's request to hold a special session on the Goldstone Report but agreed to advance a periodical meeting to address the issues it raises. Judge Richard Goldstone Published at the end of September, the UN-sanctioned Goldstone Report identifies war crimes committed during Israel's war...Muslims make up 25 percent of world population
The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people in the world practice Islam, according to a report Wednesday billed as the most comprehensive of its kind. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report provides a precise number for a population whose size has long has been subject to...
4,000 U.S. troops to exit sooner from Iraq. More ready for Afghanistan?
October 8th, 20090 WASHINGTON —The top U.S. commander in Iraq is accelerating the number of troops he is sending back home even as he remains cautious that violence could threaten January's elections there. U.S. Colonel Martin D. Seifer (L) and Samir al-Haddad, Secretariat for Committee for Receiving Real Property, sign documents during a hand......
Riyadh ‘offers airspace’ for Israel attack on Iran?
Israeli fighter jets will be allowed to use Saudi airspace to launch go-it-alone air strikes on Iranian nuclear installations, says a recent report. The issue has been discussed in a closed-door meeting in London, where British Intelligence Chief Sir John Scarlett, his Israeli counterpart, Meir Dagan, and a Saudi official were...EAST JERUSALEM — A diplomat visits, and listens
EAST JERUSALEM — The U.S. consulate on Agron Street is something alien in the carefully calibrated diplomatic world of Arab-Israeli politics. No state has its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. Israel insists the eastern part of the city which it annexed in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israel War is an integral part of its "re-united"......
Has Netanyahu out-maneuvered Obama or vice versa?
WASHINGTON (IPS) — While Israeli officials claimed a major win in U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to shelve his long-held demand for a freeze on Israeli settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, some analysts here believe it may yet prove a Pyrrhic victory for the hard-line government of Prime Minister Benjamin...
Qaddafi slams U.N. Security Council, Iran hits out at Western ‘terror’
September 30th, 20090 Libya's president has attacked the permanent members of the United Nations' Security Council during his first ever address to the U.N. General Assembly. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi pretends to rip a Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice as he addresses the 64th United Nations General...Israel taking sharp measures over Iran
JERUSALEM (IPS) — Questions about Iran's nuclear thrust are tumbling out, echoing around the world in several directions. - Is Iran now "either very near or in possession" of enough low-enriched uranium to produce one nuclear weapon, as a senior U.S. diplomat warned? - Will the six world powers involved in the Iranian nuclear...
U.N. team on war crimes condemns Israel, Hamas
September 19th, 20090 UNITED NATIONS (IPS) — A four-member United Nations fact-finding mission, which has just concluded an investigation into last year's brutal conflict in Gaza, makes a strong case for war crimes charges against Israel for its unrelenting 22-day military attacks on Palestinians, largely civilians, including women and children. A......
New settlements plan heightens tensions
WASHINGTON (IPS) — The White House reprimanded the Israeli government Friday over reports that Israel plans to build hundreds of new housing units in West Bank settlements, the latest in a series of showdowns between Washington and Jerusalem over settlement construction. Eight-year-old Achinoam Ziegel stands in front of her...WCC issues call to freeze, dismantle settlements
In a public "Statement on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," passed in Geneva, Switzerland, at the end of its 26 August – 2 September meeting, the World Council of Churches' central committee called upon the government of Israel to "urgently implement an open-ended freeze in good-faith on all settlement......
Pakistani Taliban attack Shi’a children
September 11th, 20090 Taliban militants killed four schoolchildren in a remote town in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt on Tuesday. Local officials say the attack has sectarian dimensions as militants – who hail from the majority Sunni sect – targeted students of the minority Shi'a sect. Previously, the Taliban have singled out minority sects as part...A distinctly Tunisian women’s day: New York celebration explores Arab World feminism
NEW YORK — Serving up a women's rights movement retrospective with a dollop of harissa, a New York celebration of feminism last month had a distinctly Tunisian kick. Director of the NYC Tunisian Cultural and Information Center Naima Remadi speaks during a celebration of Tunisian Women's Day in New York on Aug. 20. The NYC......