Strategic alliances in Iraq remain elusive
WASHINGTON (IPS) — The George W. Bush administration has ballyhooed recent legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament as a sign that its troop escalation strategy has indeed created space for political reconciliation. But observers say a closer look at the legislation in the context of the grander Iraqi quagmire suggests that the...
Children killed as Israel pounds Gaza
March 1st, 20080 A boy sits next to the body of 6-month-old Palestinian baby Mohammed al-Borai in a mosque before his funeral in GazaGAZA CITY — Israel pounded the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Thursday, February 28, killing four children and 10 militants, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to make the Islamists pay a heavy price for rocket...The Shi’a-Sunni divide: myths and reality
As the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq enters its fifth year, conflicts and political rivalries in the region appear to be assuming a sectarian edge unseen since the 1982-1989 war between Iraq and Iran. Lebanon's Sunni Muslim mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Kabbani and Shi'i Muslim mufti Abdel Amir Kabalan The debate over why this...U.S. detention of Iraqis grows without end
The United States is, once again, expanding the size of its largest detention center in Iraq. According to an October 31 report by the military paper Stars and Stripes, U.S. forces will be increasing the capacity of detainees at Camp Bucca from 20,000 to 30,000. A policeman checks the papers of newly released prisoners in...Border breach raises fundamental questions
CAIRO (IPS) — Authorities sealed the border with the Gaza Strip earlier this month after more than a half million Palestinians flooded into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in late January. But while most have since returned home, the episode served to highlight Egypt's tenuous control over its border with the troubled territory next door....One third of settlements on private land
Not long ago the greengrocer in Ramallah recalled — between weighing locally grown zucchini and stripped hyssop leaves — that his family owned the land on which the gas station at the old entrance to the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank is located. A Palestinian boy hurling a stone at Israeli troops He would not be...Israel’s ‘targeted assassinations’ strategy
Israel has made something of a specialty of "targeted assassinations" — that is to say sending hit teams to kill its enemies abroad in the evident belief that the best way to deal with Arab resistance movements is physically to eliminate their leaders. Over the past several decades, scores of Arab activists, intellectuals and scientists...U.S. troops to stay in Iraq beyond 2008
WASHINGTON — U.S. forces will remain in Iraq beyond the end of 2008, but a continued U.S. troop presence will not tie the hands of a future U.S. president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a newspaper column this week. "It is clear ... that U.S. forces will need to operate in Iraq beyond the...Assad meets top U.N. official on Iraqi refugees
DAMASCUS — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres this week to discuss the plight of Iraqi refugees in Syria, official news agency SANA reported. They discussed "cooperation between the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and Syria with regard to improving the conditions (of refugees)...Bahrain-based bank to build Libyan Energy City
TRIPOLI — Bahrain-based Islamic bank Gulf Finance House (GFH) has won a contract to build a multi-billion dollar city in Libya offering support services for oil firms, the state news agency JANA said on Monday. The 3.8 billion dollar Energy City will feature residential and business facilities over 1,300 acres in the Sabratha district,...Hamas renews call for ceasefire with Israel
JERUSALEM — A Hamas official this week renewed calls for a ceasefire amid mounting Israeli demands for a broad military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Writing in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Ahmed Yussef, a Hamas foreign policy advisor, called for a long-term ceasefire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces. Sderot solidarity...For the world, Gaza is reality TV
GAZA CITY (IPS) — "We are being starved, killed, tortured, and besieged — and all this while the world just watches," says Abu Wael at the funeral of the latest group of Gazans killed by Israeli forces. The death toll is mounting, even if much of the media is taking little note of killings on the Gaza side. Palestinian woman waits...A ‘grand bargain’ for U.S. and Iran?
There are welcome signs of a coming thaw in America's hostile and ice-bound relations with Iran — if not in the remaining months of George W. Bush's presidency, then under his successor. For the first time in many years, such a possibility is being actively debated and envisaged by American policy-makers and influential think-tanks. An...Will Netanyahu surge oust Olmert?
OAKLAND, Ca (IPS) — One day after the Jan. 30 release of the Winograd Commission report, which in part detailed some of the failures of the Israeli government and the military during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign. "The committee concluded...
Mughnieh murder could trigger retaliation
February 16th, 20080 'This is something that Hizbullah cannot let pass' Beirut — A shadowy senior Hizbullah commander, thought to have masterminded spectacular terrorist attacks in the 1980s, was killed Tuesday in a Damascus car bombing that will almost certainly trigger a retaliation from the militant Shi'a group. Hizbullah top military leader Imad......
U.S.-backed groups challenge government
BAQUBA (IPS) — U.S. backed Sunni militants have challenged the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in Baghdad, and demanded political power after two women were killed by government forces. Tensions rose earlier this month when men dressed in Iraqi security personnel uniforms kidnapped two women. Their naked bodies were found later. After the...Lebanon cleric advises ‘modern Shi’a’
BEIRUT — The ayatollah has a simple piece of advice for any Muslim woman being abused by her husband: Hit him back. "A woman can respond to physical violence inflicted on her by a man with counter- violence as a self-defense measure," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's senior-most Shi'i cleric, wrote in a fatwa late...Cairo welcomes Iranian overtures
CAIRO (IPS) — In recent months, Washington has tried hard to convince Arab leaders of the threat to the Middle East posed by Iranian regional ambitions. Nevertheless, several recent visits to Egypt by top-level Iranian officials suggest that Cairo, despite U.S. objections, may be close to restoring diplomatic ties — severed for almost 30...Nasrallah: We’re ready to fight
As Hizbullah mourns official, March 14 bloc observes anniversary of Hariri murderBEIRUT — In a speech to supporters mourning the death of a senior commander, the secretary-general of Hizbullah has said that his movement is ready for open warfare with Israel, accusing Israel of killing Imad Moghniyeh in a car bomb blast in the Syrian......
The tragic future of Iraq
Any analysis of the current state of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq that relied solely on the U.S. government, the major candidates for president or the major media outlets in the United States for information would be hard pressed to find any bad news. In a State of the Union address which had everything except a "Mission...Dimona signals Palestinian defiance
Moral judgments notwithstanding, the suicide bombing in Dimona on Monday is another chink in the siege imposed on all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and it represents a continuity of the Palestinian rebellion that breached the wall between Gaza and Egypt last week. The fact that two fighters succeeded in reaching Dimona in......
Hordes of street kids no longer ignored
Cairo — Kareem and Mustapha were little more than toddlers when their parents sent them onto Cairo's streets to sell mints and tissues. They had begun on the path trod by Cairo's growing thousands of street kids — sleeping on streets, joining gangs for protection, underfed and covered with the filth of a city packed with 18 million...Lebanon: The show must go on
BEIRUT (IPS) — A bomb tears through the bustling Chevrolet area on the outskirts of Beirut. Bad news travels fast: Captain Wissam Eid from the Internal Security Forces has been killed in the blast. This is a typical day for Lebanese citizens. The year 2007 has already been grim for most Lebanese businesses. Crisis after crisis has......
