By IRIN – Ramallah Rasmiyye Hamande has lived in a cave in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) for most of her life, which may have been a blessing in disguise. ‘This cave,’ she says, ‘can’t […]

By Uri Avnery Binyamin Netanyahu may be crazy, but he is not mad. Ehud Barak may be mad, but he is not crazy. Ergo: Israel will not attack Iran. I have said so before, and […]

By Stuart Littlewood ‘People in public life are not always as clear as they should be about where the boundaries of acceptable conduct lie.’ – Nolan Committee. "Who will own Mitt Romney if he is […]

By Richard Johnson – Geneva As the crisis spawned by the on-going Syrian conflict deteriorated, with ‘a sharp rise in the number of Syrians fleeing to Turkey and Jordan’, the United Nations announced August 17 […]

By Yousef Al-Helou – Gaza In the wake of August 6 Sinai attack that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead at the hands of unknown attackers, Egyptian authorities closed the Rafah border crossing- Gaza’s only terminal […]

By Eric Walberg The US ‘withdrawal’ from Iraq last year and the planned ‘withdrawal’ from Afghanistan in 2014 cannot help but change the face of Central Asia and the Middle East. But how does Russia […]

By Jamal Kanj Last week’s defection of the Syrian prime minister was a public relations blow to the regime of Bashar Al Assad, but had no other significance. In Syria, power is in the hand […]

By Shahira Amin – Cairo The month-long suspension of a privately-owned Egyptian TV channel for “defamation and incitement to violence” has triggered an outcry in Egyptian media circles amid fears of regression in freedom of […]

By Bernhard Schell A new report paints a rather gloomy picture of post-Gaddafi Libya: fighting between tribes, ethnic groups and rival militia has accounted for instability at a local level; and flare-ups continue to occur […]

By Ramzy Baroud In US political circles, the Syria conflict is increasingly being presented as a discussion pertaining to Israeli interests. This attitude is not substantially different from the way US politicians and media weighed […]

By IRIN When mortar shells slammed into Yarmouk, Syria’s largest Palestinian camp, in early August, killing at least 20 people, many Palestinians in Syria saw it as a wake-up call. “It was the third time […]

By Ramzy Baroud Two Toyota Land Cruisers filled with about 15 well-built gunmen in ski masks and all-black outfits appear seemingly out of nowhere. Behind them is vast, open desert. They approach a group of […]

By Jim Miles (Laurel E. Miller, Jeffrey Martini, F. Stephen Larrabee, Angel Rabasa, Stephanie Pezard, Julie E. Taylor, Tewodaj Mengistu. RAND National Defense Research Institute, 2012.) This monograph from the Rand, "a nonprofit institution that helps […]

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani – Cairo Throughout the course of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, which culminated in the ouster of longstanding President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, female protesters stood on the […]

By Felicity Arbuthnot – London ‘The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.’- Former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark. On 4th May 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Chaired a Security […]

By Graham Peebles Detention without trial, the presumption of guilt, denial of family visits, solitary confinement, torture, violent interrogation, and denial of access to appropriate health care, such is the Israeli judicial system and prison […]

By Stuart Littlewood Not long ago I quoted American journalist Grace Halsell in an article about the damaging influence of the Scofield Bible, not realising how sorely she was made to suffer for setting out […]

By Stephen McCloskey The Gaza Strip is inching toward a humanitarian crisis as Israel’s five year blockade of the territory has been exacerbated by a dispute over fuel supplies.  Gaza’s young people are on the […]