Some have commented that under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, Canada has become (at least diplomatically) the most pro-Israel country in the world. Israeli officials concur. After meeting Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, four other Conservative ministers and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in July 2009, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has openly called for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel, stated, “It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days.” Yves Engler comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Is Canada more pro-Israel than the US?
The uproar over the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report, calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, but it also leaves Hamas, the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices. Ali Abunimah comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about After Goldstone, Hamas faces fateful choice
While American officials continue to claim that the mission of US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell is by no means over, and that he will still pursue his efforts to convince the Israeli government to agree to some sort of settlement freeze, Israeli plans for further colonization of Palestinian land continue undisturbed. The latest Israeli plans call for the destruction of the West Bank village of al-Walajah for the second time in six decades. Hasan Abu Nimah comments. Read more about Al-Walajah, a symbol of Israeli ethnic cleansing
Whether or not the clumsy attempt to shelve the Goldstone report on last winter’s Gaza attacks is the tipping point for Mahmoud Abbas’s rule, the succession process has been underway for several years. However, it is being coordinated by the US and Israel and is no reflection of the wishes and desires of the Palestinian people. Abbas’s likely successor is Salam Fayyad, who somehow manages to be an even more uninspiring and unpopular character. Osamah Khalil comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about A poverty of leadership
I continue to struggle with not being cynical about the situation in Palestine and in Gaza in particular. It is not a healthy place for me to be, spiritually or emotionally. But the Gaza Strip is a heart-breaking catastrophe in so many ways and the people there have been suffering for so long. It makes me think about the ways that we in the US are irrelevant — in the sense that it is less about what we need to do and more about what we need to stop doing. Timothy Seidel comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about The things that make for peace
Succumbing to US pressure and unabashed Israeli blackmail, Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA), was reportedly personally responsible for the decision to defer UN Security Council consideration of the Goldstone report. This dashed the hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as those of international human rights organizations and solidarity movements, that Israel would finally face a long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims would have a measure of justice. Read more about UN must act on Goldstone and the PA must be dissolved
Bereft of any credible or legitimate leadership, the Palestinian people will have to look to themselves to continue their struggle for freedom, justice and equality. Indeed, their struggle has been at its best, for example, during the first intifada of the 1980s, when the official leadership — at the time in exile in Tunis — was actually least involved in it. Saree Makdisi comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Time to re-engage with people power
Just when it seemed that the Ramallah Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas could not sink any lower in their complicity with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the murderous blockade of Gaza, Ramallah has dealt a further stunning blow to the Palestinian people. The Abbas delegation to the United Nations in Geneva (officially representing the moribund Palestine Liberation Organization) abandoned a resolution requesting the Human Rights Council to forward Judge Richard Goldstone’s report on war crimes in Gaza to the UN Security Council for further action. Ali Abunimah comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Abbas helps Israel bury its crimes in Gaza
US President Barack Obama has placed restoration of the stature of the United States among his primary foreign policy goals. He has already achieved substantial progress in Europe, where polls indicate that he is widely admired. The president’s June Cairo University speech also won praise in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Yet many across the globe still await the substantive policy changes implied by his inspiring words. George Bisharat comments. Read more about Obama must match rhetoric with principle
The list of successful boycott, divestment and sanctions actions has now become too long to list, yet, there are still many out there who do not believe in this movement and have reservations on a number of grounds, offering two main concerns that are rarely tackled, and when they are it is only cursory. The first is the criticism of why a boycott movement against Israel and not countries like China, Sudan or the US. The second concerns the argument that boycott is against dialogue. Sami Hermez comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Answering critics of the boycott movement
