In 2000, Ariel Sharon made a Jewish ‘pilgrimage’ to what he called the Temple Mount. What Muslims call Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s third holiest shrine. I’m not aware of any senior Israeli politician who had ever done so. It was a deliberate provocation. A declaration of control and sovereignty by Israel of Muslim holy sites. This […]
Palestine: Welcome to My Bantustan
There was an old Alice Cooper album called, Welcome to My Nightmare. I thought of that when I titled this post. Last week, Saeb Erekat published a long report recounting the contents of the Trump “deal of the century,” his Israel-Palestine peace plan. The New Arab published the Arabic-language original and an English summary of […]
Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan: Dead on Arrival?
NOTE: An edited version of this piece was published last week by Middle East Eye. This is an expanded version of that article. From almost the first day of his presidency, Donald Trump bragged that he would solve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Among his claims was that he could do what no U.S. president had done. […]
Iran and Syria: Best of Times, Worst of Times
Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities begins with those famous lines: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Today’s Middle East doesn’t enjoy the best of times. But relations between Iran and the west are the most promising they’ve been since 1979. We have a real opportunity to […]
