As Middle East envoy of “the Quartet,” Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, has been charged with helping to “build up” Palestinian institutions. It is a cruel irony that one of the handmaidens of the destruction of those very institutions is now being dispatched with the portfolio of resurrecting them. Yet, this should not come as a surprise. In spite of Blair’s passionate rhetoric to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict during his decade of rule, he joined Washington in actively subverting Palestinian institutions and their hopes for self-determination. Read more about Toward a Palestinian-led rebuilding 

These days the Hamas acting government and Fatah “emergency government” are sapping the interest from any news story that might report on Israel’s criminal acts inside Gaza and the West Bank. Both these Palestinian enclaves are still under Israel’s military occupation — one shunned and isolated by political intrigue and the other apparently working at cooperating with the occupier, and there’s the tragedy of it all. Nothing that has happened in the last fortnight has stopped Israel in its tracks. Read more about Who will save Palestine? 

On Friday, 8 June 2007, my husband Ian flew to Israel. He is in fact on his way to an IT conference in Vienna, but we thought that it would be nice for him to make a short three-day detour to Tel-Aviv to visit my brother and his family and in particular meet my seven and five year old nieces for the first time. At Ben-Gurion airport Ian’s Australian passport was confiscated with no explanation. He was taken to a small interrogation room and had to endure an intimidating questioning about non-existent Saudi and Lebanese visas in his passport. Read more about The Israeli police state 

No time in the recent history of the Palestinian people has appeared darker or more devoid of hope. Internally divided, splintered across the globe, and lacking effective representation, the Palestinian national movement is arguably at the lowest point in its history. Moreover, Palestine today serves as the harbinger of the future of an Arab world under siege, occupied by external forces allied with internal collaborators intent on sowing and feeding divisions. Yet, if there is to be hope it is in the desiccated and ostensibly defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to which Palestinians must turn. Read more about The revolution starts now 

As the enemies of the Palestinian people have been attacking them on every front – Israel with its inquisition against Azmi Bishara and with him Palestinian resistance to the racist basis of the Jewish state inside the green line, or Hariri Inc. and its 14 March allies intent on proving the might of the Lebanese army at the expense of Palestinian civilian lives in Nahr al-Bared, and the continued siege by the Israeli military occupation and its US sponsor of the occupied territories – the latest attack came from Palestinian collaborators with the enemy: the Fatah leadership abetted by the United States. Read more about Subverting democracy 

“A true friend of the State of Israel,” said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of his outgoing British counterpart Tony Blair. He was appointed this week as special envoy for the Middle East Quartet with a portfolio focused on Palestinian economic and political reform. “Tony Blair is a very well-appreciated figure in Israel,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. According to an Israeli government statement, Israel “will provide [him] with all necessary assistance in order for him to carry out his duties.” EI’s Arjan El Fassed looks at Blair’s history and finds that it does not bode well for the Middle East’s future. Read more about Tony Blair: A true friend of Israel 

What if regime change was not the point of the sanctions on the Hamas government? And if so, what goals were Israel and the US pursuing? The parallels between Iraq and Gaza may be instructive. After all, Iraq is the West’s only other recent experiment in imposing sanctions to starve a nation. And we all know where it led: to an even deeper entrenchment of Saddam Hussein’s rule. True, the circumstances in Iraq and Gaza are different. Nevertheless, it may be that the US and Israel drew a different lesson from the sanctions experience in Iraq. Jonathan Cook analyzes the US and Israel’s designs on Palestine. Read more about Divide and rule, Israeli style 

Is a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict possible? Some say that the reality that Israel has created on the ground is irrecoverable and that the partition of the historical Palestine into two states is no longer practical. Others argue that it is the one-state solution which is infeasible, as Israelis will never agree to a power-sharing deal of the Northern Ireland type. Both arguments are wrong — nothing is impossible, comments Yigal Bronner; as we do not know the future, we have no way of ascertaining the impossible. Read more about Everything is possible 

The lightening success of Hamas in forcefully taking over the supposed symbols of Palestinian power in Gaza cannot and ought not obscure the fact that, given the overbearing presence of Israel’s military occupation, the bloody clash between the Islamist group and its secular counterpart, Fatah, and irrespective of motives, has descended into a feud between two slaves fighting over the crumbs thrown to them, whenever they behave, by their common colonial master. EI contributor Omar Barghouti comments on the crisis and the imminent dissipation of the illusion of national Palestinian sovereignty under Israeli hegemony. Read more about The Light at the End of the Gaza-Ramallah Tunnel 

Mutual accusations are hurled by Abbas and Haniyeh that the other side launched a coup against the legitimate authority. An international community worried by the ‘coup’ accusation might endorse the Fayyad government as the seemingly correct position. But the ‘coup’ claim stumbles over a basic problem — that Abbas’s appointing a new prime minister was itself entirely illegal. The new ‘emergency government’ is illegal, too. Virginia Tilley analyzes the situation and assesses the international community’s options. Read more about Whose Coup, Exactly?