United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for more than mere words from tomorrow’s high-level diplomatic meeting in Washington of key partners seeking a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution. Mr. Ban will be participating in his first meeting of the so-called diplomatic Quartet with top officials of the other three partners - United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; and European Union (EU) High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana, European Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Read more about Ban Ki-moon looks for more than words from Friday's high-level Middle East meeting
The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is worse now than it was in 2004, politically, economically and socially, despite their receiving more humanitarian assistance per capita than any other country in the world, says today’s report from the International Development Committee on Development Assistance and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The report questions whether the withholding of funds from a democratically-elected government in the conflict-affected Territories is the most effective response to Hamas’s refusal to accept the Quartet principles. The boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has led it increasingly to look elsewhere for funding which means it is being drawn closer to governments such as that of Iran. Read more about UK Parliamentary Report slams Western boycott against Palestine
When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared last week at the Herzliya conference that Israel could not risk another “existential threat” such as the Nazi holocaust, he was repeating what has become the dominant theme in Israel’s campaign against Iran — that it cannot tolerate an Iran with the technology that could be used to make nuclear weapons, because Iran is fanatically committed to the physical destruction of Israel. The internal assessment by the Israeli national security apparatus of the Iranian threat, however, is more realistic than the government’s public rhetoric would indicate. Read more about Israeli rhetoric on Iran mismatched with realistic analysis
A United Nations Seminar on Assistance to the Palestinian People will be held in Qatar next week in an effort to ease the social, economic and humanitarian emergencies in the Occupied Palestinian Territory stemming from the Israeli occupation. “The role of donor countries and institutions, as well as that of other international actors is of vital importance,” the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People said in a statement on the meeting it is organizing on 5 and 6 February in Doha, the Qatari capital. It had been observing with concern the deepening economic and social crisis unfolding in the territory. Read more about UN to hold seminar next week on aid to Palestinians in light of Israeli occupation
Al-Quds University organized the “International Conference on the Palestinian Refugees: Conditions and Recent Developments,” held on the 25th and 26th of November, at the main campus in Abu Dis, Jerusalem. An impressive steering committee was set up, composed of lawyers as well as social and political scientists affiliated to both Palestinian and international universities. This conference, which was very well organized, was supported by the local means of the university as Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung withdrew their funding. In fact, Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, a German foundation affiliated with the Christian Democratic party (in power), withdrew their funding five weeks before the event, while the organization of the conference began in April 2006. Read more about Why did the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation Withdraw Refugee Conference Funding at the Last Minute?
Palestinians in Gaza say they have been trapped in their homes as deadly fighting between rival Palestinian militia groups had taken over the streets. Residents are hopeful that a truce on Tuesday morning between Hamas and Fatah would bring some form of normality back to their lives. At least nine civilians, including three children, are believed to have been killed during battles between supporters of these two main Palestinian factions, which have claimed 32 lives since Thursday and left more than 110 wounded. Read more about Civilians caught in the crossfire
Another 50 Palestinians have fled to the Iraq-Syrian border following a traumatic week in Baghdad, bringing the total number stranded at the frontier to about 700. The 50 made the hazardous journey from Baghdad to the border four days after 73 Palestinians traveled the same road following the temporary detentions of 30 Palestinian men by militia in the capital last Tuesday. UNHCR also received information that two buses carrying some 75 Palestinians left Baghdad Monday morning, but at least one of them was unable to make it to the border. The bus was reportedly forced to return to Baghad because roads were blocked by crowds during the religious celebrations for Muharram. Read more about Palestinians in Iraq: More fleeing
WASHINGTON, Jan 22 (IPS) - As U.S. President George W. Bush puts the final touches on his State of the Union Address, an unusually broad group of Middle East specialists here is hoping that he will make his proposed two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a centrepiece of both his speech and his last two years in office. Despite the political weakness of both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the group, the Campaign for American Leadership in the Middle East (CALME), believes that the current moment offers a major opportunity for a breakthrough in the 60-year-old conflict. Read more about Bush Urged to Make Israeli-Palestinian Peace Now
The current public education system in Israel mirrors the wider divisions in society. It is divided into separate sectors: religious Jewish, secular Jewish, Orthodox Jewish and Arab. Although roughly one quarter of Israel’s 1.6 million schoolchildren are Arab, their parallel education system reveals fundamental inequality. The 2001 Human Rights Watch report “Second Class: Discrimination against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools” details the extent of the inequalities in funding, facilities, teacher-student ratios. Integrated schools represent a glimmer of light in this picture of a discriminatory and segregated education system. Read more about Important Lessons: Integrated Education in the State of Israel
WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (IPS) - The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) may have effectively closed up shop two years ago and its key neo-conservative allies in the administration, such as Scooter Libby and Douglas Feith, may be long gone, but the group’s five-year-old Middle East strategy remains very much alive. This is not the “Wilsonian” strategy of transforming Iraq into a model of democracy and pluralism that will then spread domino-like across the entire benighted region of autocrats, monarchs and theocrats whose oppression and backwardness have, in the neo-con narrative, been the main cause of anti-U.S. Islamic extremism. Read more about Democracy Languishes, but Neo-Con Strategy Lives
