Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, approved last week the upgrading to university status of a college in a settlement located deep inside the West Bank, a move certain to further undermine Palestinian confidence in the peace process. The decision, authorizing the...
JERUSALEM - In the past, whenever there was even a semblance of pressure from Washington on Israel, nerves in Jerusalem went all a-jangle. Nine months ago, true to form, tensions rose appreciably when then-new U.S. President Barack Obama and then-new Israeli leader...
JERUSALEM -- In the absence of any progress towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians, leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are adopting a reasonable approach as a way of building up international pressure on Israel to get it back to the negotiating table....
JERUSALEM - After Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank torched a mosque and desecrated copies of the Koran in the Palestinian village of Yasuf last Friday morning, they ran into a wall of condemnation. The attackers were consensually branded as extremists, even...
U.S. special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed an announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday that Israel will impose a 10-month "moratorium" on settlements, but warned that the...
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...
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...
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...
AWARTA, West Bank -- Away from the media spotlight that focuses on the widening chasm between Israelis and Palestinians, a group of Israeli humanists is quietly working to break down barriers with their Palestinian neighbors. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Israel's...
JERUSALEM - "Nobody can usurp the right to determine the fate of the nation on their own – not the Palestine Liberation Organization, nor anyone else. It is the will of the Palestinian people that must determine our future," declares Hamas political...
