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Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraqi security forces have since Friday evening instituted extra measures to protect the four grand ayatollahs who serve as spiritual leaders of the Shiite community in Iraq, and who live in Najaf. The precautions were taken after an assassination attempt against the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Karbala […]

by Joel Beinin About 3:00 am on Wednesday morning Jan. 23, well-coordinated explosions demolished the iron wall built by Israel to seal the southern border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt (the Philadelphi axis). Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed across the border and entered the Egyptian side of the town of Rafah, which had […]

The USG Open Source Center summarizes and translates a posting on a jihadi web site of Iraqi guerrillas vowing to “avenge Gaza” by targeting American troops and the Iraqis that cooperate with them. ‘HAMAS-Iraq Launches ‘Avenging Gaza’ Campaign Against US Forces in Iraq 19 JanJihadist Websites — OSC SummaryThursday, January 24, 2008 . . . […]

The Egyptian government mounted a small demonstration of defiance of the Olmert government in Israel on Thursday. Palestinians destroyed the blast walls that artificially box them in to the tiny, slummy Gaza Strip and cut them off from their natural markets in Egypt. Perhaps a fourth of Gaza’s population then flooded into the nearby Egyptian […]

The humanitarian impact of Israel’s electricity blockade of the Gaza Strip. Raw sewage in the streets, which will soon seep into houses; asthmatics choking; hospitals on the verge of switching off life support. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group is eloquent in the Boston Globe/ IHT on why this Israeli tactic is self-defeating. But […]

It is a perfect time for the Israeli government to commit a war crime on the miserable civilians of the Gaza Strip. The US primary season has created a news blackout on US television about foreign news (apparently the public of the world’s sole superpower is not estimated by corporate news executives to be able […]

As Clinton and Romney win the Nevada primaries, Justin Elliot asks at Mother Jones why the leading candidates don’t have more to say about crucial Middle East policy, including Israel-Palestine issues. The new issue of Arab Media and Society is available online. It is an exciting journal, and this crop of articles is especially germane […]

See Charles Smith’s important comments on Bush’s Arab-Israeli diplomacy at our Global Affairs group blog. The USG Open Source Center translates excerpts from opinion pieces in the Lebanese press concerning Bush’s visit to the Middle East (he did not visit Beirut, where politics is so polarized that parliament has been unable to elect a new […]

Mike Huckabee says he wants to amend the US constitution to bring it into line with the divinely revealed law of the living God: ‘ “I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to […]