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By David Rothkopf
$17.16
$22
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Flickr / dweekly
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The Palestinian Liberation Organization has approved indirect talks with Israel, opening the door for the first peace negotiations in a year and a half. One may remember the “proximity talks” that fizzled in March when Israel unexpectedly announced an expansion of illegal settlement plans in East Jerusalem.
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Flickr / International Monetary Fund
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Who would have thought that peace could be good for the economy? Ask Stanley Fischer, Israel’s central bank chief, who delivered that startling pronouncement in a speech this weekend, arguing that a peace deal between his country and the Palestinians would actually help Israel achieve “one of the most advanced economies in the world.”
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vimeo.com
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By John Cheney-Lippold — M.I.A.’s controversial nine-minute, banned-from-YouTube music video fails to show that discrimination is about real, historical inequalities.
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AP / Oded Balilty
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Some Israeli settlers are taking Zionism to a whole new level. Some 200 settlers, living illegally on occupied Palestinian land, marched on the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem to assert their supposed right to live on occupied land as well as to affirm “Jewish sovereignty over the whole city.”
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What lessons can the West learn by examining the history of the Arab experience through the voices and eyes of Arabs themselves?
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AP / Ariel Schalit
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A new order from the Israel Defense Forces will enable the government to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank. The military order defines anyone who is in the West Bank illegally as an “infiltrator,” and gives the IDF the ability to deport or arrest Palestinians without other cause.
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Many in the Western media present Palestinian politics as a primitive, suicide-bombing expression of anti-Israeli anger. But nothing could be further from the truth. Watch a long-form debate between the two largest political factions, Fatah and Hamas, as they discuss reconciliation and the future of resistance.
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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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Flickr / Tanya N
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Israel has extended its lockdown on the occupied West Bank amid high tension between Palestinians and Israelis stemming from Israel’s announcement that it would construct 1,600 more homes on Palestinian land. The lockdown had been scheduled to end Saturday night.
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AP / Nasser Shiyoukhi
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A new round of “proximity talks” between Israel and the Palestinians may be announced as early as Monday, with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden expected to arrive in Israel on a mission to get indirect negotiations going between the two sides.
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AP / Adel Hana
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U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., has criticized the White House, Israel and even his congressional colleagues after three trips to the Gaza Strip, commenting on the lack of action by the international community and the ignorance that most U.S. politicians have toward the plight of the Palestinians.
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AP / Bernat Armangue
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Some Palestinians in Billin, the West Bank town famous for its civil disobedience, have taken a cue from the movie “Avatar.” Demonstrators have painted themselves blue, citing a parallel between their cause and that of the film’s indigenous protagonists, who fight against a foreign occupying force.
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AP / Emilio Morenatti
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is allegedly trying to sabotage the possibility of a two-state solution in the Middle East by insisting that Israel would continue to maintain a military presence along the borders of any future Palestinian state.
Posted on Jan 21, 2010
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AP / Emilio Morenatti
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Possibly inspired by that thing on the U.S.-Mexican border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that Israel will construct a $1.5 billion fence along sections of its border with Egypt, claiming it will “ensure the Jewish and democratic character” of Israel.
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Flickr / Creap
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A U.S. proposal to resume Middle East peace talks without preconditions has been shot down by the Palestinian National Authority, which insists that Israel must first freeze settlement activity in the Palestinian territories.
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Joe Sacco’s graphic treatment of the 1956 massacres of Palestinians by invading Israeli soldiers melds tough-minded journalism with philosophical reflection into a gut-wrenching banquet of a comic book.
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AP / Muhammed Muheisen
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By Robert Fisk — The story of the Protestant "settlements" in Ireland provides a ghostly narrative of those modern-day "settlements" in the West Bank, where the Israelis insist on fighting the world’s last colonial war with the assistance of that great anti-colonial nation known as the United States.
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AP / Nasser Ishtayeh
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Two separate incidents have left six Palestinians dead at the hands of Israeli soldiers, marking a significant escalation in violence that comes almost exactly a year after the Israeli army began a bloody attack on the Gaza Strip.
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Flickr / Tanya N
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Even after the hoopla of President Barack Obama’s executive order barring torture, evidence is surfacing that CIA agents are cooperating with, and potentially supervising, Palestinian security agents who are detaining and allegedly torturing Hamas supporters in the West Bank.
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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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Flickr / ISM Palestine
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Under heavy U.S. pressure and threat of being denied critical communication infrastructure by Israel, Palestinian officials have removed their support for a U.N. report that criticized as war crimes some of Israel’s actions during its war in Gaza.
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guardian.co.uk
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The Israeli government has conditioned the introduction of a second cell phone provider in the West Bank on one little thing: the Palestinian Authority withdrawing its request that the International Criminal Court investigate alleged war crimes during Israel’s assault on Gaza early this year.
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AP / Ben Curtis
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Protest returned to the streets of Iran Friday after an annual rally in support of the Palestinian cause turned into a massive demonstration against the government and the disputed presidential election three months ago.
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AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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In a strong rebuke of Israeli policy, the White House has expressed “regret” over an announcement by Israel that it will expand its illegal settlements in Palestinian areas. Hundreds of new housing units are expected to be approved for construction in the West Bank in a move seen as placating the rightists in power.
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wordpress.com
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Because if it’s not in the history books, it didn’t happen. Today’s Orwell Award goes to the Israeli government, whose education minister has decided to remove references to what Palestinians call the “catastrophe”—when Israel defeated five Arab nations in a 1948 war and expelled 700,000 Palestinians—from textbooks given to Arab schoolchildren.
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Radio Nederland Wereldomroep
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The United Nations is facing a $4.8 billion shortfall in funding for humanitarian aid to some of the world’s poorest peoples. At the top of that list are the inhabitants of Zimbabwe, Palestine and Kenya, which face increasingly dire financial needs. Although emergency relief donations have risen, the global credit crunch has made it harder for developed countries to keep pace with the need.
Posted on Jul 21, 2009
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Flickr / samdaq (AT) hotmail
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Palestinian Authority PM Salam Fayyad set the date for creation of a Palestinian state at two years “at most,” with East Jerusalem as its capital. Meantime, Israeli protesters blocked aid and food from entering Gaza to demand the release of an Israeli soldier captured three years ago.
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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According to ex-British prime minister turned Middle East envoy Tony Blair, a Mideast peace deal is possible “within the year.” Following President Obama’s speech in Cairo and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s response in which he finally agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state (under very tight conditions), Blair is confident that with continued discussions and proper mediation Israelis and Palestinians can come to an agreement.
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prophetictrends.com
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On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for the first time of the possibility of a two-state solution, but only under certain conditions: the Palestinian state cannot have a military or control of its borders and airspace and it must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Palestinian officials aren’t exactly thrilled by these terms.
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White House / Pete Souza
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President Barack Obama —
I’m grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. And I’m also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum. Update: Now with video
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aljazeera.net
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Tensions have been mounting between the U.S. and its usual BFF, Israel. President Obama’s demand for an end to the construction of settlements in the West Bank was rejected by Israel earlier this week. Obama has responded by suggesting that Israel’s intransigence endangers U.S. security.
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Flickr/Creap
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In a surprisingly strong statement Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank. On Thursday, an Israeli government spokesman insisted that while they would cease building new settlements, “normal life” (read “new construction”) would continue in those that already exist.
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guardian.co.uk
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Investigators with the U.N. Human Rights Council may be forced to enter the Palestinian territories from Egypt because Israel is likely to refuse cooperation in the U.N.’s mission to investigate potential war crimes by the Israeli military and Hamas.
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While the cameras rolled, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu huddled at the White House on Monday and waxed diplomatic about the usual lineup of regional concerns: Israeli-Palestinian relations, Iran and the possibility of peace in the Middle East.
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By William Pfaff — Israel has always believed in “creating facts on the ground,” whose existence may later come as an unpleasant surprise to others. Iran now seems to have learned from this Israeli precedent, to Israel’s disadvantage.
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Clearly, several dozen delegates at the United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva, Switzerland, disagreed with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s assessment of Israel as a “racist government” on Monday.
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It hasn’t taken Benjamin Netanyahu long to show his true colors by creating new hoops for the Palestinians to jump through in order to resume peace negotiations with Israel. This week’s “Mosaic Intelligence Report” has the story.
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timesonline.typepad.com
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By Robert Fisk — The BBC Trust’s report on Jeremy Bowen’s dispatches from the Middle East is pusillanimous, cowardly, outrageous, factually wrong and ethically dishonest. But I am mincing my words.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Israel’s new super-duper-ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday dismissed a 2007 agreement with Palestinian officials aimed at discussing the creation of a Palestinian state. Lieberman claims the agreement, made in Annapolis, Md., has “no validity.”
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AP photo / Hassan Ammar
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Despite the arrest warrant recently issued for him by the International Criminal Court, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has made a defiant move by showing up in Qatar to attend the 21st Arab League summit meeting, at which United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was also slated to appear.
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telegraph.co.uk
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By Robert Fisk — Tom Hurndall was one of a bunch of “human shields” who turned up in Baghdad just before the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, the kind of folk we professional reporters make fun of. Tree huggers, that kind of thing. Now I wish I had met him because Hurndall’s journals show a remarkable man of remarkable principle.
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churchtimes.co.uk
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Human rights investigators are adding yet another alleged war crime to existing accusations of Israel’s war-time exuberance, as Amnesty International officials believe Israel’s military forces engaged in “wanton destruction” of civilian homes during the bloody assault on Gaza.
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guardian.co.uk
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In a political blast from the past, former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been chosen to form Israel’s next government, ending a nine-day struggle between the candidates and paving the way for a coalition arrangement with a strong right-wing bent.
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AP photo / Sven Kaestner
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By Robert Fisk — The organized persecution of a group is despicable whether the victims are the Jews of World War II or today’s Gazans.
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European Pressphoto Agency / Abed Rahim Khatib
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In probably the least appropriate metaphor for relations between Israel and Palestine, Israel has allowed, for the first time in a year, Gazan flower companies to export 25,000 carnations to Europe in time for Valentine’s Day, though the volume pales in comparison to previous annual exports of 60 million flowers.
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guardian.co.uk
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On the heels of Israel’s election and its bloody three-week assault on the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority is pressing the International Criminal Court to investigate the possibility of war crimes committed by Israeli commanders.
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AP photo / Alessandro Della Bella
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By Sandy Tolan — Dear Mr. Prime Minister: I write with grave concern over your impertinent remarks to the president of Israel at the World Economic Forum last week, which threatened to delay dinner for hundreds of extremely important global thinkers.
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The New York Times / Shawn Baldwin
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A crossing point on the Egypt-Israel border has turned into a parking lot for supplies since Israel virtually halted the transport of aid and equipment for Gaza. Medical items are being allowed to pass, but well-drilling equipment, blankets and food are being blocked.
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Maan Images / Mohamed Al-Zanon
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About 1,300 Palestinians dead, $2 billion in damage and thousands of devastated families later, Israel claims it has officially pulled its troops from the Gaza Strip after its three-week assault—with no formal deal between Israel and Hamas and thus no real change in relations between the two sides.
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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