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By Barbara Walters
$19.77
By Mason Currey
$16.96
$22
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Flickr / Barack Obama
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A report published in Newsweek on Monday reveals that President Obama secretly sold 55 deep-penetrating bombs to Israel in 2009, while publicly pressuring Israeli leaders to pursue concessions with Palestinians. (more)
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AP / Seth Wenig
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One year ago, President Obama stood before the U.N. General Assembly and called for international recognition of a Palestinian state. On Wednesday, to the exasperation of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and millions struggling for democracy in the Arab world, he declared his opposition to that idea. (more)
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations Security Council next week, a move that intensifies already considerable tensions in one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts. (more)
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Flickr / josh.ev9
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The Israeli prime minister said the Palestinian Authority should not make peace with Hamas after five years of enmity. (more)
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AP / Majdi Mohammed
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A boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank gained some heft Saturday when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas threw his executive weight behind the campaign, calling on all Palestinians to stop buying settlement-made products.
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AP / Nasser Nasser
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The prospect of Palestinian-Israeli “proximity talks” in the Middle East has hit another expected bump: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will not attend any such talks unless Israel halts settlement construction.
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AP / Muhammed Muheisen
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Mahmoud Abbas, who was to leave office in a month, will remain the Palestinian president. The Palestinian Liberation Organization indefinitely extended his term to avoid a constitutional crisis after elections planned for late January were delayed.
Posted on Dec 17, 2009
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Flickr.com / World Economic Forum
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In the face of failing peace talks with Israel and a stalemate with rival Hamas, reports suggest that a frustrated Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will not seek re-election early next year.
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AP / Charles Dharapak
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So much for President Obama’s hopes to make progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this week. After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama had little to show for his time with the two leaders beyond the symbolic level of a tentative handshake to open their discussion at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Dashing the president’s hopes to restart the peace process, Palestinian leaders said they would not talk to Israel until there is a “total settlement freeze.” Obama has been pushing for just that, but recently indicated a willingness to compromise. In the words of one Fatah leader: “I would say, Mr. Obama, we love you ... but I am sorry, this is not enough. ...”
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Both Israel and Hamas vowed to stop fighting two weeks ago, but since then attacks have continued. Before his country launched airstrikes on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had warned Hamas of a “disproportionate Israeli response” to Hamas rocket and mortar attacks. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, is headed to Cairo, though his influence is surely weakened by the recent fighting.
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AP photo / Lefteris Pitarakis
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Now that the war in Gaza has ground to a halt, local and international groups are assessing the needs of tens of thousands of embattled and displaced Palestinians, some of whom have gone for many days without water or power, and are preparing to send aid as soon as possible.
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AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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The war in Gaza has taken on another deadly dimension, as Israeli troops have moved into several districts of Gaza City, the BBC reported Tuesday, sparking street fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants.
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AP photo / Hatem Omar
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More than 150 people were killed and hundreds more wounded Saturday during Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, which were launched in retaliation for last week’s rocket attacks on Israel by the Palestinians, according to Israeli officials.
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With Condoleezza Rice fast approaching on a peace mission, Israel offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a show of support on Monday by freeing 198 Palestinian prisoners. The group included Israel’s longest serving prisoner. Israel holds roughly 9,000 Palestinians.
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Is former President Jimmy Carter on a peace mission or a mission impossible? As this Mosaic Intelligence Report explains, Carter will try to mediate the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit as a goodwill gesture on the part of Hamas, which is reported to be seriously considering Carter’s proposal.
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A Palestinian gunman opened fire during dinner at Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav seminary on Thursday, killing eight people and wounding nine before he was shot to death. President Bush condemned the attack, as did Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, while Hamas officials reportedly praised it but didn’t claim responsibility.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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In keeping with the tradition of U.S. presidents attempting to forge peace agreements during their last years in office, President Bush remains optimistic about securing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in the final 10 months of his administration despite the recent outbreak of violence in the Middle East.
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AP photo / Adel Hana
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Attacks by Israeli forces killed more than 70 Palestinians on Saturday as fighting intensified in northern Gaza, prompting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to call the incursion “more than a holocaust.” Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded, the Israeli military reported. Updated.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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President Bush has arrived in Israel, where he plans to do some legacy shopping and see if he can’t just solve this Mideast conflict everyone is always talking about. Everyday Israelis and Palestinians, however, remain skeptical that their leaders will find a solution before the end of 2008, as promised.
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Now that the Annapolis peace summit is over, the Mosaic Intelligence Report investigates the fallout from lowering the diplomatic bar, putting the slapstick back in world affairs and the conspicuous absence of Iraq, Iran and Hamas.
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By Robert Fisk — Haven’t we been here before? Isn’t Annapolis just a repeat of the White House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises in which two weak men, Messrs. Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words of Oslo.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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If Israeli and Palestinian officials can’t find a way to establish a Palestinian state, the state of Israel won’t survive, according to Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. These words of warning came on the heels of Olmert’s meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and President Bush in Annapolis, Md., during which the three leaders laid out plans and set goals for formal peace talks.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report’s Jamal Dajani heads to Jerusalem to find out why the Bush administration’s highly vaunted Annapolis peace summit has generated little more than skepticism in the Middle East.
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foreignpolicy.com
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The Israeli government has dismissed a petition calling for a cease-fire with Hamas. The document, which was written by some of Israel’s leading writers and intellectuals, notes that “Israel has in the past negotiated with its worst enemies.”
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Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
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AP Photo / Kevin Frayer
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By Chris Hedges — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel and the U.S. are making a ghetto out of Gaza, hoping that cutting the territory off from the rest of the world will weaken democratically elected Hamas. They are wrong, and the innocent people of the Gaza Strip are paying the price.
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cbc.ca
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A new poll shows that 70 percent of Israelis favor peace with the Palestinians along the lines of a two-state solution, but only 39 percent think peace will be achieved in the near future. Meanwhile, a majority of Israelis favor strengthening ties with Mahmoud Abbas’ (above left) Fatah regime in the West Bank.
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By Robert Fisk — Tony Blair has moved out of 10 Downing Street and is moving on to a position as Britain’s Middle East envoy—which strikes reporter Robert Fisk as astonishing news, since, as he puts it in this article from Britain’s The Independent, Blair “is a politician who has failed in everything he has ever tried to do in the Middle East.”
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By Robert Fisk — The Independent’s Middle East correspondent looks into the current state of “Palestine” and the West’s complicated—and contradictory—relations with the region and its leaders.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sworn in a new government that excludes Hamas, a move praised by both the U.S. and Israel. But the emergency government is likely to preside only over the West Bank because Hamas—which Israeli officials described as a “terrorist entity”—retains control of Gaza.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Hamas’ exiled political leader has recognized rival Mahmoud Abbas as the “legitimate” president of the Palestinian people, but the militant group, which now controls Gaza, has also called Abbas’ dissolution of the government illegal. Tensions remain high in the divided Palestinian territories, despite a pledge from Hamas to work with Abbas “for the sake of national interest.”
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Following days of violence between Hamas and Fatah forces in Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas put an end to the recently established “national unity government,” which for three months had attempted to balance the two factions in an official coalition, and fired Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
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Factional clashes between Hamas and Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank escalated to the boiling point on Thursday, when Hamas gunmen captured various Fatah outposts and the ongoing violence caused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve his government and declare a state of emergency throughout the region.
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J.J. Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the venerable progressive Jewish daily the Forward, joins the podcast this week to talk about the complexity of Zionism, the misguided intentions of neoconservatism and why AIPAC isn’t quite as sinister as you might think.
Posted on Mar 19, 2007
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rtbf.be
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Condoleezza Rice concluded a highly vaunted two-hour meeting with no firm commitment other than an agreement to maintain communication. The elephant in the room was Abbas’ recently announced deal to share power with Hamas, an arrangement that prompted the U.S. and Israel to threaten a boycott.
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The U.S. and Israel have agreed not to recognize or support a new Palestinian unity government unless it first recognizes Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will have to do some political tightrope-walking in the days ahead as he attempts to make peace with Hamas at home and improve relations with Israel and its allies abroad.
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from theepochtimes.com
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The United States will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for a casual three-way chat aimed at reviving Bush’s failed “road map” to peace. A successful outcome seems unlikely, with Abbas and Olmert both suffering from political weakness and with the conspicuous absence of Hamas.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Hamas and Fatah have announced a deal meant to end the fighting between the two Palestinian factions, yet the violence persisted throughout Sunday. Hamas described the agreement as a cease-fire. Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Abbas continued to push for new elections in an attempt to oust Hamas from the government.
Posted on Dec 17, 2006
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nytimes.com
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Clashes between the two main Palestinian forces continued on Friday as Hamas accused Fatah of attempting to assassinate the Palestinian prime minister. Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Abbas, who recently said he may call for early elections in order to oust Hamas from the government, is close to revealing his plan for addressing the political standstill between the two groups.
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npr.org
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Citing the collapse of unity talks, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to call for early elections less than a year after Hamas took control of parliament. A leading member of Hamas called the move “a clear coup against democracy.”
Posted on Dec 10, 2006
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Tony Blair has been busy, meeting with both Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert in recent days?all while fending off controversy at home over when he?ll step down. For their part, the Palestinian president and Israeli prime minister have agreed to meet with each other.
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The Palestinian president has given Hamas 10 days to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and will submit the plan to referendum if the Islamic militants refuse. The plan implies a recognition of Israel, but does not renounce violence or accept past peace accords—the two other conditions the Palestinian government needs to meet to do business with the West.
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Guantanamo Prisoner’s Case Demonstrates Unfairness of Military Commissions
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