The US decision to back Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas in the recent turmoil virtually guarantees an escalation in violence. Abbas has installed an unelected “emergency” government to replace the democratically elected Hamas-led national unity government. Some have portrayed, Hamas’ takeover of Palestinian Authority security compounds in Gaza as a “coup.” But many Palestinians do not view it that way. EI’s Ali Abunimah writes in The Chicago Tribune. Read more about In search of justice in the Middle East
The one-state solution for Palestine-Israel is “gaining ground,” a senior UN diplomat has admitted in a leaked confidential report. Recently retired UN special envoy Alvaro de Soto wrote “that the combination of [Palestinian Authority] institutional decline and Israeli settlement expansion is creating a growing conviction among Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, as well as some Jews on the far left in Israel that the two State solutiuon’s best days are behind it.” EI cofounder Ali Abunimah analyzes an unreported aspect of De Soto’s leaked end of mission report. Read more about One-state solution "gaining ground" UN envoy admits
“Forty years ago today was the last day the citizens of Israel were a free people in their own land,” wrote Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar on June 4. “It was the last day we lived here without living other peoples’ lives.” This sums up the cherished mythology of what is still called the Israeli left and much of the international peace process industry — that prior to the 1967 war, Israel was pure and on the right path. EI’s Ali Abunimah challenges the idea that had Israel not “become an occupier” the region would have had a happier history. Read more about It's not just the occupation
Yesterday I wrote a piece entitled “Israel’s House of Horrors” about the openly murderous statements of Israeli cabinet ministers. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, I read a news article on the website of The Jerusalem Post that Israel’s former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu – one of the most senior theocrats in the Jewish State “ruled that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings.” EI’s Ali Abunimah comments. Read more about Top Israeli rabbis advocate genocide
Reading an account of an Israeli cabinet meeting in Ha’aretz is like a trip through a House of Horrors. Here is a choice excerpt: “Ministers Meir Sheetrit and Rafi Eitan proposed Wednesday that Israel produce its own version of the Qassam rocket to be fired at targets inside the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket fire on its southern communities.” EI’s Ali Abunimah asks: Which other government could openly hold such discussions to such overwhelming silence from the so-called “international community”? Read more about Israel's house of horrors
Thousands of Palestinian refugees are fleeing from Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon as five days of fighting by the Lebanese army and a militant group known as Fath al-Islam has left dozens of soldiers and fighters and an unknown number of civilians dead. As the situation of these Palestinian refugees worsens, 59 years after they were first expelled from their homeland into Lebanon, the world looks on in silence. Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah spoke with As’ad Abukhalil, the creator of the Angry Arab News Service blog on the origins of Fath al-Islam, the events that led to the violence and what it means for Lebanon and the region. Read more about Interview: As'ad Abukhalil on the Nahr al-Bared siege
When my mother was nine years old, she and her family mounted the back of a pickup truck and left their village of Lifta, adjacent to Jerusalem, under threat from Zionist militias. My grandmother covered the furniture in the family home that my grandfather had built. Anticipating a short absence until fighting in the area died down, they took only a few clothes. That was almost six decades ago. Like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, they were never allowed to return, and their property was seized by Israel. Read more about A political marriage of necessity: A single state of Palestine-Israel
The Israeli state and the Zionist movement have begun their latest assault in their century-long struggle to rid Palestine of its indigenous people and transform their country into a Jewish supremacist enclave: the persecution of Azmi Bishara, one of the most important Palestinian national leaders and thinkers working today. This case has enormous significance for the Palestinian solidarity movement. Bishara is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, one of more than one million who live inside the Jewish state, who are survivors or their descendants of the Zionist ethnic cleansing that forced most Palestinians to leave in 1947-48. Read more about What the persecution of Azmi Bishara means for Palestine
“What does it mean to be Palestinian when you have never been to Palestine?” That question was posed during a recent visit to Qatar where I met a number of Palestinian high school students living there. Although each had a very strong sense of pride in his Palestinian identity — as well as an awareness that he was denied access to other nationalities and identities — none had ever visited Palestine. Like millions of other Palestinians in exile these students are forbidden from even visiting the country their families left, due to racist laws that make it freely accessible only to those Israel recognizes as Jews. Read more about Film review: Belonging
