Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa has been spending more time in Lebanon recently than any other Arab country outside his home base of Egypt. But the time he spends seems to be inversely proportional to number of issues he resolves. His latest trip this week was expected to bring the Lebanese factions to implement the latest Arab initiative launched in Cairo. Lip-service endorsements were all he got. Read more about Meet the Lebanese Press: The Arabs to the rescue?
Ever since his sentencing on 21 November, I have been ruminating on the extreme injustice perpetrated on Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar by the US government and the federal court in Chicago culminating in a draconian sentence of 135 months for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience. Michael E. Deutsch, who was one of the counsel for Dr. Ashqar’s co-defendant Mohammad Salah, comments on the punishing of a man motivated by love for his people and their right to resist an illegal occupation of their land. Read more about The Grand Jury and the persecution of Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar
Today, two movements for the promotion of human rights in Sudan and Palestine seek to emulate the successful role played by boycotts, divestment and sanctions in achieving democracy and equality in South Africa. The two movements, however, have received radically different receptions on Capitol Hill. This double standard testifies to official Washington’s selectivity when it comes to promoting human rights around the globe and its tendency to overlook the faults of its allies while using human rights as a pretext to punish its adversaries. Josh Reubner comments. Read more about Double standard on divestment
This week US President George W. Bush embarks on a tour of some of the US’ Middle East allies, including his first visit while in office to Israel. The trip has been presaged by a lot of media guesswork about what exactly Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will discuss, and one of the likely topics will apparently be the so-called “illegal outposts.” EI contributor Ben White finds that the recent focus on so-called “illegal outposts” risks clouding far more crucial issues that go to the heart of the conflict. Read more about An American President and the outposts of Zion
One of the most legendary figures of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation, Leila Khaled was recently in the Palestinian refugee camps of northern Lebanon. Visiting for the first time since last summer’s battle between the non-Palestinian Islamist group Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army, during which the Nahr al-Bared camp was destroyed, Khaled sat down with EI editor Matthew Cassel to discuss Annapolis, Nahr al-Bared, and how the Palestinian movement must move forward. Read more about "Injustice every day": An interview with Leila Khaled
It apparently never occurred to anyone in our leading human rights organizations or the Western media that the same moral and legal standards ought be applied to the behavior of Israel and Hizballah during the war on Lebanon 18 months ago. Belatedly, an important effort has been made to set that right. Jonathan Cook comments on a new report that unearths evidence that Israel committed war crimes not only against Lebanese civilians but also against its own Arab citizens. Read more about Evidence of Israel's "cowardly blending" comes to light
As two of the authors of a recent document advocating a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli colonial conflict we emphatically intended to generate debate. Predictably, Zionists decried the proclamation as yet another proof of the unwavering devotion of Palestinian — and some radical Israeli — intellectuals to the “destruction of Israel.” Some pro-Palestinian activists accused us of forsaking immediate and critical Palestinian rights in the quest of a “utopian” dream. Ali Abunimah and Omar Barghouti comment. Read more about Democracy: An existential threat?
The person who destroyed the Oslo process and initiated the second intifada, the person who demolished the Israeli peace camp from within, by spreading legends about a “generous offer” rejected by the Palestinians, by persuading the Israelis that he “unmasked” Arafat and that there was no Palestinian partner — this person still calls himself “the leader of the Israeli peace camp.” That’s one of Israeli “Defense” Minister Ehud Barak’s most dangerous traits: his inherent untruthfulness, his presenting himself as the very opposite of what he actually is. Read more about Beware of Barak
After seven years of rumors and self-serving memoirs, the Israeli media has finally published extracts from an official source about the Camp David negotiations in summer 2000. For the first time it is possible to gauge with some certainty the extent of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “generous offer” to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat’s reasons for rejecting it. In addition, the document provides valuable insights into what larger goals Israel hoped to achieve at Camp David and how similar ambitions are driving its policies to this day. Jonathan Cook analyzes the document for EI. Read more about Ungenerous occupier: Israel's Camp David exposed
The tranquil Christmas nativity scene so familiar to us is not at all evident in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel’s occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike. Yet, many Christians will again ignore the misery suffered by the Palestinians in the Holy Land and will celebrate Christmas without remembering that it was amongst this people and in their land that Jesus was born. Sonja Karkar comments for EI. Read more about In the same prison together
