Ferry Biedermann

TABA, Egypt – The leader of an Israeli rescue team points to the rubble of what was the lobby of Hilton hotel. "Look, you can see clearly where the car exploded." Commander Shalom Bar-Arieh of the search and rescue school of the Israeli army’s central command is a veteran of such operations. "This is exactly … Continue reading “Sinai Attacks: Al-Qaeda Hand, Palestinian Shadow”

NABLUS – The narrow streets amid the breeze-block shacks of the Balata refugee camp on the edge of the large West Bank City of Nablus have been a focus of Palestinian militancy throughout the current Intifada (uprising) that was triggered four years ago. Balata is the birth place of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the … Continue reading “Hezbollah Active Among Palestinians”

JERUSALEM – Three yellow Palestinian taxi vans stand forlornly near the checkpoint between Israel and the West Bank a day after Tuesday’s suicide bombing in the city of Beer Sheva. The attack caused 16 fatalities, and Israel closed the approach to the city for Palestinians. Normally, the drivers say, they earn a living ferrying people … Continue reading “Sharon Speeds Up Wall After Attack”

BAGHDAD – The latest round of fighting in Iraq is the first real test for the country’s new government after it took over from the U.S. and British-led occupation authority in the last days of June. The initial relative calm that greeted the handover has been slowly disintegrating across the country. The opposition against the … Continue reading “Insurgents Get Support of Homegrown Media”

BAGHDAD – The grass has all but disappeared off what used to be the football field of the Palestinian Haifa sports club on the edge of Baghdad. After more than a year as an improvised refugee camp that at one point housed some 2,000 people, it looks sun-bleached and bent by the wind. Hardly a … Continue reading “Iraq’s Palestinians Dispossessed Again”

RAMALLAH – A bullet hole in the curtain of the television room at Palestinian opposition figure Nabil Amr’s luxurious villa still attests to the shooting last Wednesday in which he was heavily wounded. Amr survived and is in hospital in Jordan, but Palestinian politics may be in a terminal crisis. “They were shooting to kill, … Continue reading “Conflict Spreads Within Fatah”

BAGHDAD – On what was to have been the day of the handover of sovereignty back to the Iraqi government, another symbolic handover took place. The U.S. army formally transferred Iraq’s former leader Saddam Hussein to the legal custody of the new government. “I know just what I want done to Saddam,” says Hamid Faraj … Continue reading “Saddam Dragged to His Past”

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s new minister of the interior Falah al-Nakib and his staff were so taken by surprise by the unexpected handover of sovereignty by the U.S.-led occupation Monday that they failed to make it to the brief ceremony. They stayed in their office, an air-raid shelter meant for one of Saddam Hussein’s daughters, and … Continue reading “Handover, Yes, But to What?”

BAGHDAD – The daily mortar attacks on Camp War Eagle of the U.S. First Cavalry at the edge of the seething Shia Muslim Sadr City tapered off over the weekend. Just a few dry pops of exploding mortar grenades could be heard in the late afternoons. During the week the attacks had been so intense … Continue reading “As Violence Rises, an Unexpected Ceasefire”

JERUSALEM, (IPS) – The Israeli attack on Rafah in the Gaza Strip did not come in a political and military vacuum. The Israeli army’s “operation rainbow” is now only “paused” and all indications are that the struggle that has continued between Israel and the Palestinians along the Egyptian border for more than three years now … Continue reading “Only a Lull Before Another Storm”