Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper’s government publicly supported Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and voted alone at the UN Human Rights Committee in defense of Israel’s actions three weeks ago. Now Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy. Literally. In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel need not worry since Ottawa plans to help out. On 29 January, The Jerusalem Post reported that “Israel’s interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy.” This means Canada is officially Israel, at least in Venezuela. Yves Engler comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Canada becomes Israel 

To end the Palestinian political impasse, elections for the Palestine National Council should be the top priority for all Palestinian parties. The 669-member Palestinian “parliament-in-exile” has not held a meeting since 1998 and its members have never been elected. Once a central body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, what is left of the PNC lacks all legitimacy. Arjan El Fassed comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Breaking the Palestinian impasse 

In spite of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, in Palestine and throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, Hamas and the resistance option it represents is immeasurably stronger. The ridiculous no-longer-president-of-anything Mahmoud Abbas, and the gangs loyal to Fatah warlord Muhammad Dahlan, are much weaker. It wasn’t Abbas but Hamas political chief in exile, Khaled Meshal who represented Palestine at the Doha emergency summit last month. While the Abbas-Dahlan traitors arrested Hamas activists, and tried (and largely failed) to suppress solidarity demonstrations on the West Bank, the resistance was standing firm against Zionist terror. Robin Yassin-Kassab comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about The resistance option 

Israel’s deadly 22-day assault on Gaza killed more than 1,300 persons, mainly civilians, and left nearly 5,000 injured. The damage caused to public and private infrastructure was massive, and the agricultural sector suffered a nearly insurmountable amount of devastation. The day after Israel unilaterally declared a ceasefire on 18 January, the agriculture minister in Gaza declared that 60 percent of the Strip’s agricultural land was destroyed, along with 80 percent of all agricultural products for this season, with a total economic loss for the sector alone estimated at $170 million. Gen Sander comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Fair trade, not aid, is the way forward 

“The BBC cannot be neutral in the struggle between truth and untruth, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, compassion and cruelty, tolerance and intolerance.” Thus read a 1972 internal document called Principles and Practice in News and Current Affairs laying out the guidelines for the BBC’s coverage of conflicts. It appears to affirm that in cases of oppression and injustice to be neutral is to be complicit, because neutrality reinforces the status quo. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad comments. Read more about BBC's "impartiality" anything but 

The status of Israel as the enemy of the Arabs has largely depended in the last six decades on its enmity or alliance with Arab regimes and not with the Arab peoples. Insofar as Israel threatened Arab regimes, it was depicted by them as the enemy, insofar as it did not, it was welcomed as a friend. Joseph Massad comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Israel and the politics of friendship 

US President Barack Obama’s appointment of former Senator George Mitchell as his new Middle East envoy is a good choice. Mitchell helped broker the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the key to ending decades of strife in Northern Ireland. Because of historical similarities, that peace agreement is an important precedent for Palestinians and Israeli Jews. But will Mitchell be allowed to apply its lessons? The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah comments. Read more about Can Mitchell turn Jerusalem into Belfast? 

The Arab peace initiative, adopted by the Arab League at its 2002 summit in Beirut, misses fundamental ingredients that would make the blood of vitality flow through its weak veins. After long years of Arab marketing, repetition and explanations (often very boring), we are still at the starting line. Large segments of Arab public opinion view the initiative with suspicion and doubt, and the Israelis — for reasons beyond my comprehension — want to avoid it as much as possible. Ahmad Hijazi comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about A real Arab peace initiative 

It is utterly misleading and dishonest to pretend — as so many now do — that the sum total of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a confrontation over what expired Palestinian Authority President and Israeli puppet Mahmoud Abbas himself referred to as “silly rockets.” To pretend that stopping the supply of rockets will make any difference to the course of a conflict that results from the historic dispossession — the Nakba — of an entire nation, and its replacement with a racist rogue state that has exiled, occupied and massacred the survivors for 61 years is the height of delusion. Hasan Abu Nimah comments. Read more about The shortcut to peace