US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's highly publicized tour in the Middle East, Asia and Europe carried with it little or no surprises. But even then, one must not altogether write off the possibility of some lessons to be learned, even if indirectly. The Middle...
Grandpa’s Battered Radio
"Ramzy, I must admit it, it's so hard being a Palestinian these days." That's how a friend of mine, a dedicated individual who is spending her days and years advocating justice for the Palestinian people, ended a distressing message to me a few months back. I...
Muslim Lives are Desecrated, Not Just Their Book
The reported desecration of the Quran by US guards at the infamous Guantánamo prison, as originally reported by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, was not – as it should've been – an opportunity for a thorough examination of US army practices, and thus human...
Battling the Windmills While Iraq Burns
Cast aside the nonsensical rhetoric about U.S. President George W. Bush's ostensibly successful efforts to bolster democratic tendencies "sweeping" the Middle East, and you'll discover that the facts are not so rosy, with Iraq remaining the most horrific reminder....
US Middle East Policy: Heedless But Unequivocal
There are no conspiracies to dissect, no hidden agendas to sort through and no oblique language to skillfully decode: the Bush administration's position on illegal Jewish colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories is crystal clear. President George W. Bush did...
Gaza: The Line of Memory and Despair
I've known of Kassim Kafarneh for many years. His thick, wild beard is now neatly trimmed and his once unruly black hair is combed in an orderly fashion. His spirit, however, is as free as the day I saw him filming in our refugee camp one Friday afternoon, 17 years...
A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Iraq Edition
I visited Baghdad as a reporter a few years before the US invasion. There were posters and statues of the ousted President Saddam Hussein everywhere. But not one checkpoint. Those lucky enough, or maybe unfortunate enough to report from the occupied Iraqi capital...
Taysir Doesn’t Deserve This
Al-Jazeera's correspondent Taysir Alouni is in a Madrid jail for no other reason than challenging the Western and distinctively the American narrative of the Third World. Alouni is not a terrorist, and Spanish High Court judge Baltasar Garzon knows this very well. In...
Hariri’s Murder Only the Beginning
Indulging in speculation regarding the identity of Lebanese former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri's real assassins is of little value now. What demands urgent scrutiny is how his murder will play a large part in the remolding of Lebanon's role in the Arab-Israeli...
How Israel Is Once Again Redefining the Terms of Peace
The recent and supposedly 'successful' Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt on February 8 was anything but a triumph, as far as Palestinians, the occupied party, and genuine peace-seeking Israelis are concerned. Leave out the spectacular view of the Red Sea resort, the...