The rationale for Israel’s war with Hamas has a shelf life. The higher the death toll of innocent civilians rises, the less Israel’s friends will be able to claim that the ends justify the means. The Israeli…
Right-wing Israelis protesting against left-wing Israelis.
EPA/Abir Sultan
One of the main features of the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza is an explosion of emotive, poorly informed claims and counter-claims – finger-pointing attempts to excuse today’s violence by recourse to…
While there is violent disagreement about who is to blame for the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza, there is less argument about its consequences. A rapidly rising – primarily civilian – death toll is difficult…
Occupation is brutalising Israelis as much as it is Palestinians.
EPA/Jim Hollander
Times are very rough for both Israeli and Palestinian families. The death toll in Gaza currently stands at around 620, 74 of whom are children. The death toll in Israel stands at 30, two of whom were civilians…
Israeli tank engaged in Operation Protective Edge.
EPA/Abir Sultan
When the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused Hamas of using “telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause”, he overlooked an element of the conflict that could not be skewed for the…
Rockets launched from the Gaza strip.
EPA/Jim Hollander
Fawaz Gerges, London School of Economics and Political Science
After days of oscillation over an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, the conflict between Israel and Hamas has escalated into a full-on Israeli ground offensive in Gaza. According to authorities in Gaza, 258…
The fresh outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas has not emerged out of a vacuum, and may yet worsen.
EPA/Atef Safadi
The prospect of another Israeli-Gazan conflict is upon us with the beginning of Israeli ground operations in Gaza. There have been suggestions that the Israeli action will be limited to the destruction…
The world was no longer watching – at least, that was what both Israelis and Palestinians seemed to feel when I visited Jerusalem and the West Bank late last month. Yet the people on both sides of the…
Anyone reading the news from Israel and the Gaza Strip could be forgiven for thinking it’s November 2012 rather than July 2014. Back then, Operation Pillar of Defence was conducted in the Gaza Strip over…
“We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard.”
EPA/Mohammed Saber
The scorch marks and angry graffiti seemed familiar. The rubbish underfoot in the dust on the hard summer ground did, too. The calm suggested that something had changed. That impression grew. The officer…
The discovery of the bodies of three kidnapped Israeli teenagers – Eyal Yifrah, 19, Naftali Frenkel, 16, and Gilad Shaar, 16 – in the West Bank town of Halhul has left relations between Israel and the…
Day of catastrophe: but little is being done to heal the wounds.
EPA/Abed Al Hashlamoun
This year Nakba Day marks 66 years since the displacement of Palestinians prior to the establishment of the state of Israel. The passing of an-Nakbah (literally, “the Catastrophe”) arrives amidst failed…
PLO representative Azzam Al Ahmad with Hamas prime minister Sheikh Ismael Haneiya and Ahmad Nahar.
EPA/Mohammed Saber
At a ceremony in Gaza on Wednesday, representatives of the two main rival Palestinian political factions, Fatah and Hamas, signed a reconciliation agreement. Predictably, the news was met with stern criticism…
You’ve come a long way, baby: David Cameron signs Shimon Peres’s visitors book.
EPA/Dan Balitly
Addressing the Israeli Knesset recently, David Cameron proclaimed himself “a British prime minister whose belief in Israel is unbreakable, and whose commitment to Israel’s security will always be rock…
Keep calm and Cameron: PMs in the Knesset.
EPA/Jim Hollander
David Cameron’s long-planned visit to Israel was overshadowed in the UK by Ed Miliband’s Europe speech but Cameron did have an opportunity to address the Knesset. Cameron made a strong plea for Israel…
Brutal interrogations of Palestinian children by Israeli forces have the apparent aim of obtaining a confession that the child engaged in stone-throwing.
EPA/Mohammar Awad
Anyone who watched the ABC Four Corners episode Stone Cold Justice last night could not help but be moved by its vivid portrayal of the plight of many Palestinian boys at the hands of the Israeli army…
Israel is mourning one of its political and military giants. With help from Tony Blair and Joe Biden – but accompanied by a markedly less impressive roll call of world leaders than travelled to South Africa…
Ariel Sharon, right, with Menachem Begin.
Israeli GPO
To his critics he will forever be the “Butcher of Beirut”, the master of Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the man responsible for the horrendous massacre of hundreds of Palestinians…
Land under threat: Palestinian shepherds in the Jordan valley.
AP Photo/Oded Balilty
When US secretary of state John Kerry returned to the Middle East last week, it was with the assurance from senior officials that “nobody has an intention of sticking a finger in Kerry’s eye” on the issue…
Positive moves: The Elders at Chatham House last week (l-r: Maati Ahtisaari, Lakhdar Brahimi and Jimmy Carter.
Jeff Moore/The Elders
When US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that talks about talks to revive peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians would begin soon in Washington, veteran commentators greeted the…