As cosmopolitan as his name, Juliano Mer-Khamis was the son of a Jewish mother who had fought with the elite Palmach force during the 1948 war that created Israel, and a Christian Arab prominent in the Israeli Communist Party. When he was shot and killed by masked men on Monday, he was sitting in his car outside the theater he had …
palestine
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 …
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 …