Palestine – Features

(source: Ma’an News Agency)

Hamas leader Khalid Mash’al said Monday that Arab officials had urged the movement to accept the International Quartet’s conditions and recognize Israel in exchange for amendments to the Egyptian-backed unity deal.

"Whoever asks us to recognize Israel will be disappointed," Mash’al, the senior-most Hamas leader said during a speech marking a week of Prisoners Day activities in Damascus, where he has lived since his August 1999 expulsion from Jordan.

"I tell the Americans, the Zionists, and everyone … we will not succumb to your terms. We won’t pay a political price no matter how long the blockade lasts. God is with us and he will grant us victory."

Read More »Mashal hamas wont recognize Isarael

By Ramzy Baroud

(source: ZNet)

Each time Israel fails to keep its ‘side of the bargain,’ the Palestinian Authority responds with the same redundant language. The cycle has become so utterly predictable that one wonders why the Palestinian Authority officials even bothers protesting Israeli action. They must be well aware that their cries, genuine or otherwise, will only fall on deaf ears. They know that their complaints could not possible contribute to a paradigm shift in Israel’s behavior, or the US position on it.

Let’s take a look at the context for the language of the Palestinian Authority’s complaints. In a speech made in early July, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas referred to any direct talks with Israel as ‘futile.’ Thousands of newspapers and news sites beamed this ‘headline’, highlighting the word ‘futile’ between inverted commas – as if it constituted some kind of earth-shattering revelation. But anyone following the Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular already knows that such talks will be ‘futile’. More, Israel has hardly made secret its lack of desire for a peaceful and just settlement.

Mr. Abbas, however, has managed to insert his relevance as a ‘player’ in the conflict, using one cleverly coined word. This word has had as much of an impact in Arabic as has in English.

Of course, none of this means that Abbas has actually adopted a serious shift in course. One need not dig up old archives to remember that the PA president felt the same way about the so-called ‘proximity talks’ with Israel last May. Before they began, he also expressed his opinion that the talks would be futile. He further insisted that no talks, direct or otherwise, would resume without a complete Israeli halt in settlement constructions in occupied East Jerusalem. After this grand declaration, Abbas went along with the proximity talks charade, while Palestinian families continued to be uprooted from their homes in their historic city. Only one barrier was removed before embarking on the proximity talks: Abbas and his men quit complaining.

Read More »The palestinian authority redundant but dangerous language

By Firoz Osman

The Media Review Network is inspired and astonished at the rapidity of the uprising against the unelected and unrepresentative rulers in Egypt, Algeria and Libya following the ousting of the despotic Ben Ali leadership, in Tunisia, a few weeks ago.

The revelations of the Palestinian Papers, leaked by Al Jazeera, demonstrates the depth of depravity of the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, who were being moulded by the Israelis, the USA and the UK, into another corrupt regime to serve the interests of the Western masters.

These36are reminiscent of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 which changed the dynamics of the regional and international world order. In fact, these sensational36in North Africa have the potential of having an even broader impact on the role of the power-brokers in the Middle East.

The retreat of the US military in Iraq, its failure in Afghanistan, the rise and brilliant outmanoeuvring of the US by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon, and the failure of Israel to crush Hamas in Gaza, all point to the weakening of the vice-like grip over the oppressed Arab masses.

The thrones of the illegitimate rulers of the region have undoubtedly begun to sink in the shifting desert sands. But more than them, it is the illegal, Apartheid entity of Israel that has been protected by the illegitimate Arab regimes that will feel most vulnerable.

There is the possibility that the dictators and the sponsors will use immense brutality to suppress or manipulate the leadership of the uprising, but there is no doubt that a threshold for the downtrodden masses have been reached. The foreign policies of the Western world led by the USA, UK and Israel have obviously failed miserably.

The MRN urges the South African government to consider the new reality of the volatile region and engage robustly with the movements such as Hamas, Hizbollah, Ikhwan-al-Muslimeen and Al Nahda. Given our still admired struggle credentials, South Africa can make a much-needed contribution in the region.

Read More »Press statement the arab world pot on the boil

By Robert Fisk

(source: Information Clearing House)

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America’s new role in the region. It was pathetic. “What is this ‘role’ thing?” an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. “Do they still believe we care about what they think?”

And it is true. Obama’s failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab “spring”, save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain’s cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia. And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions.

Read More »Who cares in the middle east what Obama says?