2015 began with Palestinian leaders having submitted the paperwork to become signatories to the Rome Statute, the document that governs the International Criminal Court (ICC). Last week, United Nations…
The New Year always provides an opportunity for both introspection and speculation. So it seems a good time to consider what the big stories are likely to be this year. Some of the five major stories I…
Israel is a deeply divided society, a fact reinforced by separate schools for Jews, Arabs and Christians. In 1984, the Hand-in-Hand movement began working to build peace via a network of integrated, bilingual…
Israel’s Knesset has voted to dissolve itself, and a general election is due to be held on March 17 2015. Binyamin Netanyahu’s third government was a fractious one from the start, with many coalition members…
The latest violent episode between Palestinians and Israelis has prompted Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to assert that Israel is in the midst of a “battle for Jerusalem”. This is a city divided…
Escalating confrontations in Jerusalem centred on the al-Aqsa Mosque, 1500 more homes to be built in settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and a sharp deterioration in Israel’s relations with Jordan have…
The attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in which four Jewish worshippers were killed and eight were injured has sparked new fears that fighting between Israel and Palestinian could flare up once more. The…
The seven-week Gaza War ended inconclusively on August 26. Israel declared victory saying that Hamas was seriously weakened and had achieved none of its aims whereas Hamas claimed to have repelled Israel…
Does this month’s escalation in violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank mean that a third intifada – a Palestinian uprising against the Israel’s occupation, following those of 1987 and 2000 – is imminent…
In the near three decades that I have been involved with Gaza and her people, I have never seen the kind of physical and psychological destruction that I see there today. In all Gaza’s long and tormented…
When, in armed conflict, civilians are killed on a large scale, when schools are attacked and children are orphaned, charges of genocide are often not far behind. In discussions about Operation Protective…
As the dust settles in a bloodied Gaza, after what one US official described as not so much another military exercise in “mowing the lawn” as “removing the topsoil”, Palestinians greeted the ceasefire…
With the August 26 ceasefire between Israeli and Palestinian forces holding, both sides have resumed their relentless pursuit of political advantage. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, Palestine…
There is an old British saying: “It never rains but it pours”. One of Britain’s former protectorates may well have to consider adopting the phrase as its new national slogan. In Qatar, it hardly ever seems…
In 1988, I was in Kathmandu in Nepal when I found out that war was raging in the occupied territories; it would soon become known as “the intifada”. And when, in a small corner shop I spotted in one of…
Ever since the first New Labour administration of 1997, successive British governments have declared their commitment to so-called “ethical” arms sales. But recent decisions about which countries should…
While an open-ended ceasefire agreement is currently holding between Israel and the Palestinian factions, it is clear that the rule of international law has failed in Gaza. The international community…
While Israel and Hamas are still looking for ways to end their Gaza war, the UN Human Rights Council appointed a three-member panel to investigate allegations that humanitarian law was violated in the…
With a tenuous five-day ceasefire now underway, the pause in the Gaza War allows each side to consider its position. The Israeli Embassy in London reported on August 11 that: All known tunnels, 32 in total…
Prejudice sometimes takes gross forms, like physical violence, but it is not always so blatant. Scholars talk about “institutional” racism, sexism, or homophobia, since attitudes can militate against some…