Israel/ Palestine

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – President Obama put some further hints out there on Tuesday about how he might proceed on Israeli-Paletinian relations in his final two years. Asked if he’d be willing to go through the United Nations to achieve Palestinian statehood, he replied, “We’re going to do that evaluation . . […]

Apartheid

Netanyahu’s Victory did us the favor of ending the Charade

contributors

By Yigal Bronner | (Informed Comment) – (Jerusalem) | The results of the Israeli elections are good for everybody. Good, because any remaining fog has cleared, and we now have a perfect view of where the country is heading. The elections were won on two straightforward and simple principles. First, as Netanyahu said very clearly, […]

Apartheid

Jim Crow in the Holy Land

contributors

By Phyllis Bennis | (Foreign Policy in Focus) – The last days of the campaign sounded an awful lot like the Jim Crow South, when African Americans had officially won the right to vote but still faced massive discrimination. On election morning, a powerful white official running for re-election urged his followers to get out […]

Featured

Mideast Apocalypse 2030: Why Obama wants the Palestine Issue Solved. Now.

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – It began in Hebron, which Palestinians call “al-Khalil,” the city of Abraham. Hundreds of thousands of Israel squatters had been enticed into this Palestinian city of 400,000 by the Likud government with cheap rent in cookie-cutter apartment buildings constructed on stolen Palestinian land. The raids on Palestinian olive […]

Israel

Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories ‘must end’ – White House chief of staff

contributors

RT | – US officials continue to maintain that American policy towards Israel will undergo changes in the wake of pre-election comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he stated that no Palestinian state would be established on his watch. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories has lasted for nearly five decades and “must […]

Featured

All the Wars and Coups of President Ted Cruz

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one of three Cuban-Americans in the Senate, is throwing his hat into the ring for the 2016 presidential race today. Cruz has made a career out of slamming President Obama for being weak and presiding over the collapse of countries like Yemen (as though […]

Apartheid

Israeli control of their water a continuing threat to Palestinians: Report

contributors

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Palestinians are suffering from unfair distribution of water resources as Israel is consuming the vast majority of Palestinian water, Palestinian officials said Sunday. A Palestinian farmer harvests wheat during the annual harvest season in Tequa village in the West Banker city of Bethlehem on June 2, 2012. (MaanImages/File) The Palestinian Central Bureau […]

Barack Obama

Obama with Drama: Translating his comments on Israel’s Netanyahu from the Vulcan

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Now that Leonard Nimoy is most unfortunately no longer with us, Barack Obama is the primary exemplar in American popular culture of the maddeningly calm, excruciatingly logical way of speaking that Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry forever associated with the alien race, the Vulcans and the character Mr. […]

Israel

Jerusalem a Tinderbox that could Explode: EU Report

contributors

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) – A leaked EU report cautioned that Jerusalem has reached its highest point of “polarization and violence” since the Second Intifada in 2005, according to international news sources. Describing the upsurge of a “vicious cycle of violence … increasingly threatening the viability of the two-state solution,” the report blames increasing tensions on the […]