UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s recent statements on the situation in Palestine confirm that under his weak leadership the United Nations will have no role in resolving the conflict or protecting its victims. Rather, he has aligned himself with the logic that Palestinians, uniquely, must earn from their oppressors the basic human rights that for all other people are inherent. EI’s Ali Abunimah examines how Annan’s pro-Israel record has discredited the UN, and helped create an atmosphere in which Israeli war crimes are tolerated. Read more about Kofi Annan's pro-Israel policy discredits the UN 

For the past decade, political leaders — Israeli, Palestinian, American, European and Arab alike, have had one point of agreement with peace activists around the Israel-Palestine conflict. That was the axiom that “neither side would triumph by force.” But now, the dangerous duo of George Bush in the White House and Ariel Sharon in the Prime Minister’s office has embarked on their attempt to prove this false. Mitchell Plitnick from Jewish Voice for Peace argues that the potential for change remains where it has always been-in the hands of those who need only organize themselves and force their governments to change course, the hands of ordinary Israelis and Americans. Read more about Can Sharon Win By Force? 

Amidst the political storm in Israel regarding the “Gaza disengagement” plan, only one really meaningful fact emerges: Sharon received Bush’s approval to proceed with his plan for the Wall in the West Bank. Along this route, Israel is uprooting tens of thousands of trees, dispossessing Palestinian farmers of their land, and pushing them into small enclaves between fences and Walls, until, at the final stage, the Wall will surround them on all sides, as in the Gaza Strip. Israeli academic Tanya Reinhart looks at the steadily increasing number of facts on the ground and the implications of Sharon’s plan. Read more about What kind of state deserves to exist? 

Of course, why should anybody expect anything else in a week such as this one? The American commander-in-chief repeatedly misrepresented the situation in Iraq and dodged questions during his news conference of April 13. Then, the next day, with Ariel Sharon at his side he undid decades of U.S. foreign policy and placed US policy in clear violation of international law. When asked on both April 12 and 14 about settlements being an obstacle to peace he avoided the question. This is a leader who habitually is unable to give a plain answer to a plain question. Michael Brown examines the Bush-Sharon letters. Read more about The Bush-Sharon Palestinian disenfranchisement pact 

The 14 April meeting between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington sent Palestinian leaders into a flying panic. But their response reeks of desperation and self-interest rather than any real concern for the fate of the Palestinian people and their land or because the results of the meeting represented any new setback for Palestinian rights. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah examines the results of the meeting and the Palestinian Authority response, and makes sense of it all. Read more about Why all the fuss about the Bush-Sharon meeting? 

An extensive discussion has already taken place in Israel regarding the cost-benefit ratio of Yassin’s assassination. But the question of justice has hardly been raised. International conventions are one of the means people have developed for self-preservation. Without them, there is a danger that the human race would annihilate itself - first the strong would wipe out the weak, and then each other. Palestinian farmers whose land is being robbed sit on the ground in front of the bulldozers, accompanied by the Israeli opponents of the wall - the veterans of the Mas’ha camp. What could be more nonviolent than this? But the Israeli army shoots at sitting demonstrators, like in Tiennamen Square. Israeli academic Tanya Reinhart comments. Read more about As in Tiennamen Square 

I’m sure newspaper editors everywhere fantasize the day when they don’t receive a single letter charging their publication with “bias.” This notion of bias is quite vague — it can mean that a publication presents a story as too sympathetic with one side of an issue (be it abortion, affirmative action, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) or that a news source doesn’t present one side of the story at all. And because the word bias is thrown around so often, like the word “terrorism,” the meaning of the term has been pretty much diluted due to over/misuse. Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, a new documentary from the Media Education Foundation, goes beyond charging the media with bias, and takes a close look at how news coverage is shaped. Read more about New documentary takes Israeli-Palestinian conflict coverage to task