Same Song, Different Verse
A Line in the Sand
Mahmoud Abbas is fed up. Last week he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in the Palestinian Authority. I understand him. He feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama. A year ago, when Obama was elected, he aroused high hopes in the...
Demolitions Continue in East Jerusalem
OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM – "Make sure your father gets this," the municipal inspector tells a 10-year-old boy at the gate of the concrete house in an alleyway in the al-Bustan quarter of Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood right under the shadow of the...
Abbas Produces a Dubious Twist
RAMALLAH -- U.S. and Israeli failure to take either Palestinian rights or Israeli settlement expansion seriously has placed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) in an untenable situation, which could seriously damage peace prospects....
UN Affirms Israeli-Hamas War Crimes Report
A 575-page blistering report by Justice Richard Goldstone detailing war crimes in Gaza last December is refusing to die despite an aggressive Israeli smear campaign to kill it. The report, which was favorably voted by the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva last...
Mideast Peace Plan May Yet Survive New Twists
JERUSALEM -- U.S. President Obama's Middle East engagement policy reverses the unsuccessful policy of his predecessor, but the U.S. is again committing faux pas aplenty. Yet, for all the uncomplimentary ways in which the President's strategy is now viewed by many in...
A Manifesto for X Street
Obama’s Outreach to Muslim World Teetering
U.S. President Barack Obama's extraordinary efforts since his first days in office to reassure Muslims in the Greater Middle East about U.S. intentions in the region have suffered a series of setbacks that threaten to reverse whatever gains he has made over the past...
Knocking Our Heads Against a Wall in Palestine
In the face of an outraged Arab world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton backed off on her congratulation of Israel for merely pledging to limit settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. Previously, President Barack Obama, originally appearing to be much...
