Middle East

By Manon Dark | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus) – The current controversy over Iran’s nuclear program is one of Trump’s lingering foreign policy legacies that has proved particularly difficult for President Joe Biden to resolve. The U.S. withdrawal in May 2018 from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear […]

Cold War

Why the Suez Canal, now blocked, is so Important to the Global Economy and World History

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The super-super tanker Ever Given is stuck kitty-corner in the Suez Canal, having apparently run up on a sand bar. It is blocking dozens of other ships from going through the canal. The ship, one of the largest in the world, is a quarter of a mile long and can […]

Turkey

Turkey’s Erdogan abruptly pulled out of Convention on Violence against Women; Women aren’t going Quietly

The Conversation

By Devran Gule and Leïla Choukroune | – In a single-paragraph statement issued at around 2am on March 20, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pulled his country out of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. Thus, at a stroke – and going completely against Turkey’s constitution […]

Israel/ Palestine

Law of the Occupier: Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians of East Jerusalem

Ramzy Baroud

( Middle East Monitor) – A Palestinian man, Atef Yousef Hanaysha, was killed by Israeli occupation forces on 19 March during a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in Beit Dajan, near Nablus, in the northern West Bank. Although tragic, this news reads like a routine item from occupied Palestine, where the shooting and […]

Epidemics

Israel’s Discriminatory Vaccine Push Underscores Need for Action on behalf of Palestinians

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch Statement – Item 7 General Debate ( Human Rights Watch ) – As millions of Israelis slowly return to normalcy, with the majority of citizens vaccinated, millions of Palestinians just a short distance away in the occupied territory return to lockdown, with the prospect of mass vaccination nowhere in sight. The Israeli […]

Featured

Israelis cancel VIP Pass for Palestinian Foreign Minister for consulting with Int’l Criminal Court

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Naila Khalil reports at al-`Arabi al-Jadid (The New Arab) reports from Ramallah that Israel has withdraw the VIP Pass from Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki. The government of Binyamin Netanyahu was apparently angered that al-Maliki and other Palestine officials conducted talks in the Hague this past Thursday with Fatou Bensouda […]

Featured

Tens of Thousands Protest “Crime Minister” Netanyahu in Israel as his Political Survival hangs in Balance

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Thousands of Israelis demonstrated Saturday at various places against Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is being tried for corruption, as the country goes to the polls Tuesday. This was the 39th consecutive weekly demonstration against the beleageured prime minister, who polls suggest faces an extremely close election. If he […]

Israel/ Palestine

How Israel’s Occupation of Young Palestinians is Damaging their Mental Health and Wellbeing

Asa Winstanley

( Middle East Monitor ) -There is a major mental health crisis brewing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. A study published in a medical journal in 2014 gives the grim and shocking figure that as many as a quarter of Palestinian adolescents living in those territories have attempted to take their own […]

Israel/ Palestine

Can Gaza’s Venerable Almond Groves survive the Israeli Occupation?

Middle East Monitor

By Wafa Aludaini | – ( Middle East Monitor) – As we headed to the east of Deir AlBalah, a town in the middle of the Gaza Strip, I was shocked to see barren land. The area was once home to thousands of almond trees that dotted the landscape but farmers have been forced to […]