Hamas

Egypt to open Rafah crossing permanently

by News Sources 05.25.2011

The Associated Press reports: Egypt’s decision Wednesday to end its blockade of Gaza by opening the only crossing to the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory this weekend could ease the isolation of 1.4 million Palestinians there. It also puts the new Egyptian regime at odds with Israel, which insists on careful monitoring of people and goods entering [...]

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Welcome Hamas’s conciliation with Fatah

by News Sources 05.24.2011

Musa Abumarzuq, deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau in Damascus, writes: The birth of the Cairo reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas was slow and painful. But Palestinians welcomed its arrival. The tragic division which occurred in our national movement constituted a chapter we hope will never happen again. It never occurred to us that [...]

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News roundup — May 12

by News Sources 05.12.2011

Sunni monarchies close ranks Reports that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is considering some form of membership for two non-Gulf states – Jordan and Morocco – confirm that the conservative Sunni monarchies of the Middle East are closing ranks against Iran, Shiite-led Iraq and the democratic wave sweeping the region. GCC secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani [...]

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News roundup — May 9

by News Sources 05.09.2011

Bin Laden’s death doesn’t end his fear-mongering value Glenn Greenwald writes: On Friday, government officials anonymously claimed that “a rushed examination” of the “trove” of documents and computer files taken from the bin Laden home prove — contrary to the widely held view that he “had been relegated to an inspirational figure with little role [...]

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Palestinian reconciliation

by News Sources 05.07.2011

Daniel Levy writes: The Palestinian factions have reached a power-sharing deal – albeit a fragile one. Regional developments helped, affecting the calculations of both Fatah and Hamas. The role of post-Mubarak Egypt and its emerging independent regional policy cannot be underestimated. Israel’s current government, though, is key to the glue binding Fatah and Hamas together. [...]

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News roundup — May 1

by Paul Woodward 05.01.2011

Gaddafi’s son’s killing puts Nato in line of fire The Libyan regime’s claims that Nato is attempting to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi have intensified following the apparent death of one of the leader’s sons and three of his grandchildren in an air strike on Tripoli. Gaddafi was at the one-storey house in a residential area of [...]

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News roundup — April 30

by Paul Woodward 04.30.2011

Syrians escaping violence flee to Turkey About 250 people raced across the Syrian border into Turkey, government officials said Saturday, a flight that reflects the fear and violence gripping the Arab nation. The people hustled to the southern Turkish Yaylidagi district in Hatay province on Friday afternoon, according to local and federal government officials. Turkish [...]

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News roundup — April 29

by Paul Woodward 04.29.2011

Scores killed on Syria’s ‘day of rage’ Dozens of people have been shot dead by Syrian security forces, activists claim, as tens of thousands took part in anti-government rallies dubbed a “day of rage”. Activists said at least 50 protesters were killed across the country on Friday, although Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the death [...]

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The Arab Spring reaches Palestine

by Paul Woodward 04.29.2011

Reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, the siege of Gaza about to be lifted, and Washington’s favorite Palestinian, Salam Fayyad, directed to vacate his position as prime minister — these aren’t the changes Obama believes in. But since all that the US and Israel have been intent on doing in the name of the so-called peace [...]

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Gaza’s Salafis under scrutiny

by News Sources 04.28.2011

Jared Malsin writes: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were shocked the week before last when an Italian activist and journalist, Vittorio Arrigoni, was kidnapped and then murdered by a self-proclaimed Salafi jihadi group. Arrigoni, a bighearted man who I met several times during a recent two-month stay in Gaza, was well known around the Strip [...]

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News roundup — April 27

by Paul Woodward 04.27.2011

Fatah and Hamas reconciliation agreement The rival Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas agreed Wednesday to reconcile and form an interim government ahead of elections, after a four-year feud, in what both sides hailed as a chance to start a fresh page in their national history. Israel said the accord, which was brokered in secrecy by [...]

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Goldstone has paved the path for a second Gaza war

by News Sources 04.08.2011

Gideon Levy writes: All at once the last doubts have disappeared and the question marks have become exclamation points. Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu Al-Aish wrote a short book in which he invented the killing of his three daughters. The 29 dead from the Al-Simoni family are now vacationing in the Caribbean. The white phosphorus was only [...]

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Where now for the Goldstone report?

by News Sources 04.06.2011

John Dugard writes: In an op-ed in the Washington Post Richard Goldstone, former South African Constitutional Court judge and Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, expresses misgivings about the central finding of the UN Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission Report on the Gaza Conflict of 2008-9 (named after its chairman, [...]

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The single demand that can unite the Palestinian people

by News Sources 03.30.2011

Karma Nabulsi writes: After another week of breathtaking demonstrations from Jordan to Yemen heralding dramatic revolutionary change, in occupied Palestine things appear much the same. The repetitions of bombing, air attacks on civilians, muted international protests, and dubious gestures towards a bankrupted peace process: all lend an air of futility and hopelessness to the trajectory [...]

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Obama weighs talking to the Taliban, Hezbollah

by News Sources 03.18.2011

David Ignatius writes: In a rapidly changing Islamic world, the Obama administration is weighing how best to talk with adversaries such as the Taliban and, perhaps, Hezbollah. One model for the administration, as it thinks about engagement of enemies, is the British process of dialogue during the 1990s with Sinn Fein, the legal political wing [...]

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Why Palestinians will protest on March 15

by News Sources 03.14.2011

Rawan Abu-Shahla writes: We are a group of Palestinian youths who have come together for the sole purpose of leaving behind our political identities and affiliations, and deciding to put our best interests above all else, united under our Palestinian flag. We have called for peaceful demonstrations on Tuesday, 15 March across the Palestinian nation [...]

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Permanent temporariness

by News Sources 03.09.2011

Alastair Crooke writes: It was in 2003 that I realised something fundamental had changed. The door to the room in which I was sitting flew open. In stalked a figure still dressed in a dark overcoat and scarf. He evidently could contain himself no longer. I was in Downing Street with the prime minister’s foreign [...]

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Intifada update

by News Sources 03.07.2011

Storming Egypt State Security The video speaks for itself. We stormed into the notorious political police main HQ in Cairo after the authorities didn’t dismantle the apparatus. We did it ourselves. The end of the video shows an former Islamist detainee who discovered an electric torture tool explaining how he was tortured on it. Glory [...]

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Troubling trends in the Middle East

by News Sources 01.05.2011

In an examination of the “five mostly troubling trends from 2010 that will probably define and plague the Middle East for the year ahead,” Rami G Khouri writes: The transformation of the formerly localized Arab-Israeli conflict into the fulcrum of a much wider regional confrontation with strong religious overtones bodes ill for the region in [...]

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WikiLeaks: Israel told US it would keep Gaza near collapse

by News Sources 01.05.2011

Reuters reports: Israel told U.S. officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza’s economy “on the brink of collapse” while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by a Norwegian daily on Wednesday. Three cables cited by the Aftenposten newspaper, which has said it has all 250,000 U.S. cables leaked to WikiLeaks, showed [...]

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How the Dubai debacle showcased Israeli arrogance and Mossad’s incompetence

by Paul Woodward 01.05.2011

In a feature article for GQ Magazine, Ronen Bergman, senior political and military analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, describes the rise and fall of Israel’s Mossad under the leadership of Meir Dagan. “Dagan’s unique expertise,” Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon once said, “is the separation of an Arab from his head.” Under Dagan’s [...]

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Wikileaks: Israel plans total war on Lebanon, Gaza

by News Sources 01.03.2011

Juan Cole writes: The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has summarized an Israeli military briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi of a US congressional delegation a little over a year ago and concludes that The memo on the talks between Ashkenazi and [Congressman Ike] Skelton, as well as numerous other documents from the same [...]

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Gazan youth’s manifesto for change

by News Sources 01.03.2011

The Guardian reports: The meeting takes place in a bare room in a block of flats in the centre of Gaza City. No photographs, no real names – those are the conditions. This is the first time that a group of young Palestinian cyber-activists has agreed to meet a journalist since launching what it calls [...]

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