This headline in today’s Independent is unintentionally hilarious: Israeli moves give Blair hope of rebuilding political trust The idea that Tony Blair is taken seriously in the region is ludicrous. Arabs have not forgotten his support for the Iraq war and 2006 Lebanon war. Besides, the so-called progress between Israel and the Palestinians is virtually…
Showing all posts tagged Lebanon
The chances of Washington seeing sense (hint: very low)
Joseph Bahout, professor at Sciences-Po Paris and researcher at Academie Diplomatique Internationale, writes in Bitterlemons: Obama’s Middle-East sherpas would be well advised to get quickly rid of three illusions regarding a Lebanese-Israeli process. Any serious authority in today’s Lebanon is one that will not ignore Syria’s own progress in talks. Any talks that ignore Hizballah…
Telling Australia how to behave well
The following article appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Several Labor MPs have expressed concerns about Julia Gillard’s upcoming trip to Israel, where the Deputy Prime Minister will lead a delegation to hold a dialogue with Israeli leaders. The MP for Fowler, Julia Irwin, an executive member of the Australian Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group,…
Lower expectations, don’t buy the spin
Jennifer Loewenstein (no relation) writes in Counterpunch that we shouldn’t expect too much from Obama when it comes to the Middle East: Obama’s brilliance in embracing the self-same rejectionist stance of his predecessors, by employing the language of the two-state solution, is equaled only by Netanyahu’s honesty in rejecting any such reality. For Obama, the…
If they renounce violence, when will you?
Interesting analysis from the MEC Analytical Group about Britain, Hamas and Hizbollah: There are indications of some flexibility in British policy towards Hamas and Hizbullah. On 21 May the Foreign Secretary David Miliband made a speech at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (text here) in which he called for “a coalition of consent” between…
The Zionist kiss of death
Foreign Policy blog The Cable details: Israeli media are reporting that a small and unconventional Iran office in the Israeli Ministry of Defense will be shut down. The 30-year-old office has been headed by 83-year-old Uri Lubrani, who was de facto Israeli ambassador to Iran in the 1970s and famously predicted the fall of the…
What the hell happened to the Jewish mind?
Tony Karon in Rootless Cosmopolitan on the Israeli government’s seeming descent into madness: Haaretz’s Aluf Benn today reinforces the case I made earlier for Obama to keep Netanyahu on a tight leash concerning Iran. First, he reports, Netanyahu continues to talk up a frenzy of public expectation in Israel that leads only to military action.…
Who is bombing whom here?
The Angry Arab: So Zionist and Saudi media are insisting that people of the world should feel threatened by the Iranian missile test. Saudi media (echoing as usual the Zionist handlers) are citing “experts” (typically in Zionist bastions in the West) to the effect that the missile test is a threat “not only to Israel.”…
So what do we call Israeli terrorism?
An editorial in Lebanon’s Daily Star that should be read in full and without comment: While it remains to be seen whether Israel’s handing over maps of cluster bomb locations in southern Lebanon will put a definitive end to this bleeding wound of an issue, it’s not exactly the kind of move that inspires hope…
What would peace truly look like these days?
This could be a major development in the Middle East…or just one more bogus attempt to resolve a conflict that Israel has no interest to truly change: America is putting the final touches to a hugely ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, aimed at ending more than 60 years of conflict between Israel and…