Israel/ Palestine

CNN reports on racist letters emanating from ultra-orthodox rabbis or their wives in Israel. Thirty wives of rabbis called on Jewish-Israeli women not to marry Palestinian-Israeli men, alleging that they would universally be subjected to physical abuse. The incident follows an earlier one in which rabbis urged Jewish-Israelis not to rent to Palestinian-Israelis (can you […]

The Palestine Authority roundly rejected on Monday the suggestion by Israeli Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that an ‘interim agreement’ between Israel and the PA might be achievable even though the moment was not propitious for a comprehensive peace settlement. Three big issues appear to stand in the way of progress. The first is the Israeli […]

Distribution of the Druze communities in the Levant.. For more on the Druze religion see this link.

The some 50,000 Christians in the West Bank continue to labor under Israeli military occupation this Christmas, though somewhat improved tourism and prosperity have lessened the penury in which they labored in 2005, at the end of the Palestinian uprising or Intifada. Christian Arabs in Israel proper continue to be second-class citizens. In Nazareth (the […]

Human Rights Watch has issued a new report on racial discrimination against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. HRW writes: ‘Israel operates a two-tier system for the two populations of the West Bank in the large areas where it exercises exclusive control. The report is based on case studies comparing Israel’s starkly different treatment of […]

Palestinian authorities on Thursday protested the resolution passed by the US congress on Wednesday condemning movement toward a unilateral declaration by Palestinians of a Palestinian state. The congressional resolution was actually fairly weak, showing the tensions between the US and the far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu, since it did call for the establishment of […]