Hebron: A British volunteer shares her experience of visiting the city of Hebron in the West Bank
In a region with no shortage of tensions, the city of Hebron exceeds anywhere else in the intensity of its conflicts. It is the site of the most ideologically extremist Israeli settlers, dubbed the ‘ultra-Zionists.’ They believe that Biblical Israel in its entirety – including the West Bank and Gaza Strip – have been promised [...]
Qalandia: The thoughts of a British volunteer in the West Bank
Ramallah is about 9 miles north of Jerusalem. The journey to the holy city should be a short one. In the last few years, the construction of the Israeli Separation Wall has meant that the opposite is true. Jerusalem has been physically cut off from Ramallah, and most Palestinians cannot reach their holy city unless [...]
Why Iran failed to export its Islamic Revolution
The recent discovery of an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States has brought back into the spotlight the existence of practices from another age and has only partially surprised commentators and analysts given Iran’s track record of politically sanctioned state violence. At a time where Iran’s role in the [...]
Down with the Benevolent Dictator! But what is to come thereafter?
What will replace these dictatorial regimes once the Arab Spring is over? This is a question luring in the background that is vital to answer. It all relies on how these states transition, aside from the fact that many of these countries, like Libya, are suffering from a power vacuum, which can and has led [...]
Egypt’s best double-agent
The recent demise of Hosni Mubarak will maybe usher a new era in relations between Egypt and Israel. Thirty-three years after the signing of the Camp David Accords, it can be useful to look back at an aspect of the Yom Kippur War that is often neglected: the Egyptian deception campaign that enabled the Israeli [...]
U.S. water doctrine: the actual goal in Libya
Naomi Klein wrote the Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in 2008 to describe how America’s “free market” policies have dominated the globe by exploiting countries in times of disasters. The United States has pulled strings to take advantage of shocked peoples with rapid speed—through “corporate reengineering” of societies. This “shock doctrine,” as Klein [...]
Middle-East Crisis: Rethinking the deeper causes and the current interpretations
It is not new that for a long time now many discussions have been raised about the nature and the success of the current peacebuilding agenda and about the correlation of peace and development. Hence, before starting analyzing the specific cases of the ongoing middle-east crisis it would be useful to set the general [...]
Israel’s dead: Should Israel Start Composting?
The biblical description of the Land of Israel as one which “eateth up the inhabitants thereof” is very much liked by Israelis today. Generally used as though we Israelis live in a deterministic void, this account from the Book of Numbers has been proven to be a very useful catchall phrase. With it, one can [...]
Shirin Ebadi: The role of women in promoting peace in the Middle East
This is a review of a lecture given by Iranian lawyer, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. It took place at the School of Oriental and African Studies on 2 February 2011. When she came into the room, Shirin got a rapturous welcome from the crowd, packed into the stairwells, in the [...]
Gaza: One small step towards the breaking of the siege
Exactly one year after the “Operation Cast Lead” in December 2008, where 1400 Palestinians were massacred by Israeli war crimes, 1400 international peace activists from more than 40 countries gathered with the one common aim to break the siege of Gaza in a non-violent freedom march against the ongoing blockade, which forces the 1.5 million inhabitants of [...]
