War in Context

Meshal offers 10-year truce for Palestinian state on ‘67 borders
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, April 21, 2008
Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshal on Monday said Hamas would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip along Israel’s pre-1967 borders, and would grant Israel a 10-year hudna, or truce, as an implicit proof of recognition […]

Carter: Hamas will accept Israel
BBC News, April 21, 2008
Former US President Jimmy Carter has said that Hamas is prepared to accept the right of Israel to “live as a neighbour next door in peace”.
After meeting Hamas leaders last week in Syria, he said it was a problem the US and Israel would not meet the […]

Choosing the right battles
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, April 11, 2008
In the world we’ve been forced to inhabit for the last eight years, international relations has become the arena in which buddies congregate to engage in grooming behavior based on fawning, flattery and patronization. Participants then, like dogs pissing against a lamppost, gather for […]

Former President Carter to meet with Hamas chief
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, April 10, 2008
Former president Jimmy Carter plans to meet next week in Damascus with Khaled Meshal, the head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in a direct rebuke of the Bush administration’s campaign to isolate it.
The disclosure of Carter’s plans by the Arabic-language […]

Mideast players differ on approach to Hamas
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, March 16, 2008
During a trip to the Middle East this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice served as an informal go-between for Hamas and its sworn enemy, the government of Israel, helping to arrange a tentative truce, according to U.S., Israeli and Arab officials.
The […]

Terror talks: would contacting al-Qaida be a step too far?
By Ian Black, The Guardian, March 15, 2008
[Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair’s chief of staff for 12 years] Jonathan Powell’s candid reflections on talking to terrorists in his book revealing an insider’s view of the Northern Ireland peace process will ring true to anyone who has […]

The bullies converge
By John Robertson, War in Context, March 3, 2008
28 and 29 February: the US parks the USS Cole off the shore of Lebanon. Uh-oh.
1 March: Israeli forces launch a major operation into Gaza, killing as many as 60 Palestinians, many of them civilians and children.
Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama daily wage verbal slugfests […]

Hamas doesn’t want a separate Gaza
By Ahmed Yousef, Daily Star, February 18, 2008
Many Western observers, politicians and journalists considered the recent breach of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt a victory for the Hamas movement. Some viewed it as the beginning of the end of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people. The statement […]

All power to Hamas …
By Sami Moubayed, Asia Times, February 2, 2008
During the years 2000-2006, Hamas obtained all the war medals it needed by steering what has become called the al-Aqsa Intifada. There was no higher reward for the leaders of Hamas than an esteemed reputation in the Islamic world, the ability to inflict pain […]

Olmert: His own shlemiel, or Bush’s?
By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, January 31, 2008
While Israel’s Winograd Commission has certainly pulled no punches in excoriating the Israeli military and political leadership for their botched war in Lebanon last summer, there appears to be a massive lacuna in its conclusions. (I’m not even going to get into the […]

Finally, a popular uprising
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, January 30, 2008
The fall of the Rafah wall was a fitting combination of planning and the precise reading of the social and political map by the Hamas government, mixed with a mass response to the dictates of the overlord, Israel.
Quite a few people in Rafah knew that “anonymous […]

Border crisis bolsters Islamists
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2008
Egypt’s main Islamist party and other opposition groups are strengthening their appeal by using images of desperate Palestinians streaming out of the Gaza Strip to provoke wider protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s 26-year-old government.
Demonstrations in Cairo and throughout the country by the Muslim Brotherhood […]

Whose monopoly now?
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, January 27, 2008
First there was delight. Senior officials in Israel said that Egypt had taken on this trouble called Gaza. You could almost hear the chadenfreude in their voices. After not wanting to hear about Gaza or its refugees for a generation, Egypt received both, explosively. Now, at last, […]

Hamas accepts invite to host Hamas-Fatah talks in Cairo
Haaretz, January 26, 2008
Hamas on Friday accepted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s offer to host talks between rival Palestinian Fatah and Hamas leaders in Cairo.
Mubarak’s offer was made in an apparent effort to raise his country’s role as Mideast peace broker and ease the pressure following an influx […]

Gaza border breach shows Israel that Hamas is in charge
By Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, Haaretz, January 24, 2008
A few Israel Defense Forces Engineering Corps officers surely shed a tear yesterday while viewing the television reports from Rafah: The barrier built by the IDF with blood and sweat along the Philadelphi Route, on the Gaza […]