45 Articles

Thursday, August 7, 2008
The 'Security Vacuum' in Jerusalem
The Israeli – made "security vacuum" in Jerusalem is self – inflicted and Olmert himself, or whoever would succeed him, holds the Palestinian key to offset it

Thursday, June 5, 2008
Five Years on, Saddam's Successor Resurfaces Heading Iraq Resistance, Al-Baath
(1 comments) For the first time since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003, the deputy of Saddam Hussein, the late President of Iraq, Izzat Ibrahim Addouri has resurfaced, despite a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head, in a lengthy interview with Abdel-Azim Manaf, the editor-in-chief of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Mawqif Al-Arabi, not a mainstream, on May 26 to lay out the strategy and tactics of the Iraqi resistance

Sunday, June 1, 2008
Palestinians Trapped at Crossroads
The Palestinian national movement finds itself in a deteriorating state of paralysis. "There's almost no Palestinian leadership," Kadoura Fares, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister and a leading member of President Abbas' Fatah party, told the Washington Times on May 15

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Chief Palestinian Negotiator to Israel: Acknowledge 'Right of Return'
Agreeing to the Israeli neo-historian Ilan Pappé's interpretation of the term "Nakba," Palestinian chief negotiator Ahmad Qurei urged Israel to reach a solution for the Palestinian refugee problem "based on the principle of acknowledging the Right of Return, and compensation for the sufferings of the Palestinian people"

Thursday, December 27, 2007
A Peace-killing Linkage, De-linkage
(1 comments) Linking the "aliyah" to what the Jewish literature has been describing as Eretz Israel or Yisrael HaShleima (Greater Israel) to the Israeli colonial settlement of the Palestinian land, which the Hebrew state occupied in 1967, while at the same time negating the Palestinian Right of Return, is torpedoing whatever prospect is left for a peaceful solution for the Arab – Israeli conflict

Sunday, November 11, 2007
NATO Expands into Arab South, Hindered by US-created Chaos
Discreetly but progressively and confidently the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is expanding south and southeast almost uncontested -- after the collapse of the former USSR-led Warsaw Pact -- outside the mandate designated by its statute into the Arab Middle East as well as into the Caspian Sea regions, but hindered by U.S.-created chaos

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Palestine Drops Gift in Israel's Lap
(1 comments) The intra-Palestinian war of words and between the Hamas-led government of the Gaza Strip and the Fatah-led government of the West Bank have presented Israel with a huge propaganda prize. Not to mention their mutual violations of the freedom of press and expression.

Thursday, September 13, 2007
Sustaining Palestinian Division, Reviving a Partner
Saving a Palestinian partner, whom they have rejected until Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June, has become the most important mission preoccupying the U.S. Administration and the Israeli government, a mission which nonetheless Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is taking seriously, against all the odds, pursuing a "hope" that their preoccupation could yet be a window of opportunity.

Friday, August 17, 2007
Politics Unmercifully Trespass Humanitarian Borders in Gaza
(16 comments) The major political players who are involved in sealing off 1.5 million Palestinians into an open air prison in the world's most densely populated 360-square-kilometre area of the Gaza Strip are unmercifully trespassing humanitarian borders there; they perceive in the collapsing economy of the Mediterranean coastal strip, which is rapidly developing into a humanitarian crisis, a political "window of opportunity."

Sunday, August 5, 2007
Converging Interests in Iraq Allow Bush an 'Iranian Option' - Arabs Threatened
(1 comments) A potential "Iran option" for Bush, whether it emerges out of a diplomatic engagement or a military confrontation, be it on Iraq or on Iran per se, would embroil Arabs adversely and directly because both protagonists are waging their political as well as military battles on Arab land and skilfully using Arab wealth, oil, space, diplomacy and even Arab proxies to settle their scores.

Friday, July 20, 2007
India's Non-Alignment on the Balance, Communists on Alert
The accelerated pace of India's liberal economics and pragmatic ties with the United States and Israel risks polarizing Indian domestic politics and invoking a deep-seated communist as well as Islamist anti – Americanism with a realistic potential for a foreign policy strategic shift leading to creating an internal political environment that could be receptive for the first time to the agitation of the extreme violent Islamist

Saturday, July 14, 2007
Indian - Israeli Ties Could Neutralize Delhi's Palestinian Policy
A seminar on "Palestine: 1967 and After" organized by the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) and the mission of the League of Arab States (LAS) in New Delhi on June 22 highlighted India's still unwavering historical support for the Palestinian people, but failed to address the potential political effects of the growing Indian – Israeli ties on New Delhi's policy on Palestine.

Friday, June 15, 2007
'Cleansing' the Two-state 'Vision' in Jerusalem
(1 comments) "Israel Slides towards the Disastrous One State Trap," The Baltimore Sun's editorial concluded on June 5. The conclusion is no more true than in Jerusalem, where systematically and persistently Israel is accelerating her "Israelization" plans for eastern Jerusalem.

Monday, May 28, 2007
Franco – Arab Ties Could Yet Survive Sarkozy's U-Turn
(1 comments) The pro-Israel and pro-America statements of Nicolas Paul Stephane Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa, who was sworn in as the new President of France on May 16, as well as his Jewish connection and that of his foreign policy team, have alerted Arab capitals and public opinion to a possibly imminent break with his country's more than a five-decade old balanced approach to Arab conflicts

Friday, April 20, 2007
Squeezing Palestinians out of Existence
The Israeli 40-year old military occupation and the more than a year-old economic siege are eroding the national existence of Palestinians and squeezing the Palestinian leadership into an almost impossible mission of securing law and order.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Arab Perspective: Playing US Politics with Iraqi Blood for Oil
(1 comments) Bracing for 2008 presidential election, US Democrats in opposition and the ruling Republicans have embroiled the American public in a political crisis between the executive and legislative powers over deadlines for combat operations in Iraq that could develop into a constitutional showdown, but for Arabs and Iraqis in particular it is merely playing electoral politics with Iraqi blood for oil.

Thursday, March 29, 2007
Arab Leaders: Peace Making Could Not Be Unilateral, Divisible
Flanked by international and regional non-Arab dignitaries representing the UN, EU, OIC, NAM and the leaders of Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan as well as the foreign minister of Iran, the leaders of the 22-member League of Arab States on Wednesday re-launched in Riyadh their five-year old Arab Peace Initiative, determined to reactivate it with mechanisms and a follow-up diplomatic campaign.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007
This Time, Israel Is Missing an Historic Opportunity
Fulfilling a 60-year old Israeli dream and an American unwavering strategy, the 22-member League of Arab states are now in consensus on a potentially groundbreaking Arab Peace Initiative (API), which pledges their collective and full recognition of the Jewish state, but both Washington and Tel Aviv are not forthcoming.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007
"Turnabouts" in Middle East Policy Just More of the Same
The administration's two-pronged tactics of confrontation and engagement which unfolded last week, described by some in the media as "turnabouts" in the strategy of containment, are just old diplomatic manoeuvres pulled out of the drawers of the State Department.

Friday, February 23, 2007
U.S. Diplomacy Misses Peace Opportunity in Jerusalem
Instead of building a diplomatic momentum on the political breakthrough mediated by their Saudi Arabian ally who succeeded in developing an Arab and Palestinian consensus on going along with the U.S.-steered Quartet efforts to revive the deadlocked peace process, the American diplomacy has turned their sponsored Palestinian – Israeli summit meeting in Jerusalem on Monday from a promising event into a missed opportunity.

Monday, February 12, 2007
Israeli Politics of 'Archeology' in Jerusalem
(3 comments) Israeli bulldozers embarked on Thursday on an eight-month excavations project some 50 meters from the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, but on the grounds of the Islamic Haram al-Sharif, Islam's third holiest site in Jerusalem

Wednesday, February 7, 2007
'Quartet' Corners PLO, Hamas into Critical Options
(1 comments) The Middle East Quartet of peace mediators promised the Palestinian people more of the same devastating status quo, perpetuating their 40-year old Israeli occupation, prolonging the international siege imposed on them, exacerbating their internal divide, and thus cornering them into a situation that they can only shake off either through civil war or unconditional surrender to the U.S.-backed Israeli-dictated fait accompli.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Lebanon Crisis Playing into Israel's Hands
A second civil war looms in Lebanon while Israel waits in the wings to wrap up last summer's "inconclusive" war.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
In Iraq, US Has Never Let Its Eye Stray from the Prize: Oil
(3 comments) Without a decisive military victory, the U.S. occupation of Iraq seems to be about to grab its oil prize by establishing a new sharing arrangement between a major national producer and the multi-national giants.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Paradoxes Doom Bush's 'New Strategy' in Iraq
President George W. Bush's paradoxical "new strategy" in Iraq is doomed by its own contradictions as much as by Iraqi and regional paradoxes and would in no time prove that the U.S. president's go-it-alone approach will only extend the failure of the 2003 military invasion in developing into a permanent occupation

Thursday, January 4, 2007
Exploiting the Fatah-Hamas Rift in Palestine
The U.S. and Israel are accelerating their coordinated meddling in the internal Palestinian divide between the Fatah-led presidency and the Hamas-led government.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Somalia: New Hotbed of Anti-Americanism
(1 comments) U.S. foreign policy blundering has created a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the turbulent Horn of Africa by orchestrating the Ethiopian invasion of another Muslim capital of the Arab League, in a clear American message that no Arab or Muslim metropolitan has impunity unless it falls into step with the U.S. vital regional interests. Terrorist attacks against American targets are expected as a result.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006
A Counterproductive U.S. Advice to Palestinians
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' decision to go without national consensus to early presidential and parliamentary elections was divisive, counterproductive and conforms to U.S.-Israeli plans to remove the Islamic Resistance Movement "Hamas" from power or pressure it into accepting what its rival Fatah had accepted: A peace process on their dictated terms and conditions

Tuesday, November 14, 2006
No Arab Cheers Yet for U.S. Democrats
Arabs, at least at the non-official level, were quick to hail President George W. Bush's mid-term electoral defeat and the humiliating downfall of his war architect Donald Rumsfeld, but cheering the Democrats' victory has yet to wait and may not be voiced at all.

Friday, November 10, 2006
Saddam's Trial in Context: Episode of Victors' Injustice
Democrats' crushing victory in the U.S. mid-term election was the latest proof that his administration's gimmick of orchestrating trials of Saddam Hussein was a failure that clearly turned the pre-planned verdict against Saddam into a popular verdict against Bush himself, in a referendum on his performance in the war on Iraq that broke his grip on power in Washington by depriving him of ruling with his own Republican party.

Thursday, October 26, 2006
Lieberman Is Not an Israeli 'Internal Affair'
(1 comments) The absence of a proportionate Palestinian reaction to the ascendancy of Israel's far right leader, Avigdor Lieberman, into the mainstream strategic decision-making in Tel Aviv has indicated of how dangerously the inter-Palestinian divide is overshadowing the Israeli threats and encouraged the visiting European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, to legitimize with a public meeting the man who could abort his mission

Thursday, October 19, 2006
Iran Sparked Islamic Divide, Iran Only Can Defuse It
None could argue the historical fact that the Islamic revolution in Iran had sparked a sectarian divide that only Iran can defuse, restrain and contain

Thursday, October 12, 2006
Abusing the Arab Peace Initiative
The failed Qatari mediation in the still unresolved inter-Palestinian divide was in practice an American success in turning the Arab Peace Initiative (API) into a pressure tool that further exacerbates fractures both in Arab and Palestinian ranks

Thursday, October 5, 2006
Removing Hamas: Brinkmanship Tactics or Coup D'etat; A View From Ramallah
Within the context of a U.S.-Israeli determined campaign to remove the elected Islamic Resistance Movement from power, the best of the Palestinian mainstream anti-occupation activists of Fatah and Hamas are being polarized into a deadlocked divide that is already threatening an historic national unity with a looming civil war as a result of either risky brinkmanship tactics or what Hamas says a coup d'etat.

Thursday, September 28, 2006
Bush and Islam: Words versus Deeds
(1 comments) The wide gap between U.S. President George W. Bush's words and deeds vis-à-vis Islam and Muslims doomed to failure his speech at the United nations on September 19, which could neither appease Muslims nor pacify the ever growing Islamophobia

Thursday, September 21, 2006
A Catholic Stamp to a U.S. War
(1 comments) Pope Benedict XVI has erred and the damage is done: His anti-Islam remarks are out and cannot be retracted, like bullets that cannot be retrieved once shot, adding a Catholic stamp to the Evangelist "Islam versus the West" justification for the U.S. neoconservative-led "WWIII on Islam"

Friday, September 15, 2006
Are Tehran and Washington in collusion or in collision in Baghdad
(1 comments) When President George W. Bush never stops repeating that "success in Iraq is necessary for the security of the United States" (1) and his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledges "full security" (2) for Bush's Iraqi regime, one could not but wonder whether Iran and the U.S. are in collusion or in collision in Iraq.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Palestinian Donors: What Mission?
The Palestinians have been too grateful and too helpless for too long to be critical of the political agenda of their donors who have practically nailed them down as political hostages to the donors' money, which was promised initially to help build an independent Palestinian state, but ended as a political instrument effectively used by the Israeli occupying power

Friday, August 25, 2006
Again, Arabs to Fish in a 'Dead Sea'
(1 comments) Undeterred by any historic experience, the Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo on July 15 seemed intent not to desist from fishing in the "dead sea" of the United Nations and decided to send a delegation to a ministerial meeting of the UN Security Council in mid-September with the aim of launching a new Middle East peace process.

Thursday, August 17, 2006
Palestinian Self-defeating Unilateralism
The Palestinian leadership missed an opportunity to tie Palestinian goals to the Lebanese treaty

Thursday, August 10, 2006
Lebanon War Produces Repercussions in Iraq
The Israeli war on Lebanon has shaken the sectarian pillar of the U.S.-Israeli regional plans, especially in the Iraqi launching pad of the U.S.-promoted "New Middle East," -- threatening any "progress" the US has made in Iraq.

Thursday, August 3, 2006
De-Arabization of Arab League
(1 comments)

Sunday, July 30, 2006
Alienating the Beating Heart of Middle East
The Bush administration's approach to the "New Middle East" is doomed to failure because it rules out addressing Syrian national strategic concerns and Syria as a regional key player, irrespective of who rules in Damascus.

Sunday, July 23, 2006
Context of Israeli Wars in Lebanon, Palestine: Back to Roots
writing from Ramallah The ongoing Israeli wars on Arabs in Palestine and Lebanon are just the latest rounds of the cycle of violence that has raged in and around Palestine since 1917, and are vivid and bloody evidence that imposition of political realities by military means won't last and that "Whoever takes by the sword, by the sword will be taken."

Friday, July 14, 2006
PLO-U.S. Connection: Time to Make or Break?
Several indicators have shown recently how fragile the "connection" between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the United States has been. And because Washington could deliver but won't and the Palestinian people can not be held forever hostage to waiting for the American Godot, time seems ripe to make or break this futile connection.