As it does when a Palestinian government makes a move Israel doesn’t much like, the Jewish state is withholding millions in tax revenues ordinarily passed along as a matter of course. In this case, the government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding back $89 million from the faction that runs the West Bank, Fatah, because it …
Israel
The Other Shoe? Egypt Moves to Ease Gaza Siege
Egypt’s announcement that it will open its border crossing with the Gaza Strip — loosening the siege of the Palestinian enclave Egypt has helped Israel carry out — has the sound of the other shoe dropping. Coming one day after word that the post-Mubarak government had brokered a tentative unity accord between rival Palestinian …
How Soccer Explains the Middle East
A soccer game was held yesterday in the West Bank. That may not be quite out of the ordinary in this soccer-mad part of the world, but the teams competing were: on one side, you had Thailand, and the other, Palestine. A qualifying tournament for the 2012 Olympics, this was the first ever internationally-sanctioned game in the Occupied …
Global Briefing, Mar. 7, 2011: War Crimes, People Power and Governments Behaving Badly
Forgotten Genocide: In the New York Times, New Delhi correspondent Lydia Polgreen reports from Bangladesh about the country’s belated efforts to investigate the massacres that led up to its independence in 1971, when over a million people (up to three million, by some estimates) may have been killed by the Pakistani army and its Bengali …
Is the Obama Administration Losing its Fear of Islamists?
Has President Barack Obama, as the old saying goes, stopped worrying and learned to love the Muslim Brotherhood? Not exactly. But the Washington Post reports Friday on the first green shoots of what may turn out to be a maturing of the United States’ response to Islamist movements in the Middle East. In light of the possibility that …
An ‘Interim’ Peace Deal? Israel’s Netanyahu Tries to Reheat a Souffle
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be forgiven for feeling just a wee bit lonely, right now. Events in the Middle East are increasingly passing him by, leaving him on the sidelines as the region’s history is being remade. And on Wednesday, one of Israel’s most senior veteran diplomats, Ilan Baruch, resigned from the …
After Egypt, A Palestinian Techie Takes to the Streets
Like most Palestinian children, Mohammad Khatib was raised to avoid politics, widely understood as a shortcut to an early grave or an Israeli prison. Khatib took the advice and bent to his studies. But on Feb. 2 he noticed that a friend had updated her Facebook status to say she was going to demonstrate in solidarity with Egyptians …
Obama’s Tall Order: A Democratic Mideast That Shares U.S. Priorities
President Obama has reportedly told White House aides that he wants a “new Middle East policy” — one that urges beleaguered allies threatened by popular rebellions to “enact reforms that would satisfy the popular craving for change while preserving valuable partnerships on crucial U.S. interests, from soil security to counter-terrorism …
Can Facebook Rescue the Palestinian Authority?
Israel’s deputy foreign minister meant it as a put-down a couple of months ago when he said the Palestinian Authority was on its way to establishing a “Facebook state.” At the time a flurry of governments, many of them South American, were giving a calculated boost to Palestinian aspirations by upgrading PA diplomatic missions …