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By Andrew Wander in Middle East on June 2nd, 2010
The Exodus 1947 carried Jewish refugees bound for Palestine

It was a military raid on a civilian ship bound for Palestine, carried out in the international waters of the Mediterranean to prevent the boat from reaching its blockaded destination.

When the soldiers boarded they met with stiffer resistance than they expected, and so they used force, killing some of the passengers and injuring many others.

The commandeered ship was towed to port and the survivors were detained, before being deported amid a storm of international condemnation.

The year was 1947, and the boat - the Exodus 1947- was carrying Jewish refugees seeking to land without the permission of the British military force in charge of Palestine.

The incident, which left three dead, is now seen as a key event in the lead up to the end of the British mandate in Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel.

Israeli historians will be hoping tha

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on June 2nd, 2010

File 2831

The Israeli military operation against the humanitarian Gaza convoy has provoked an outcry around the world and within Israel itself.
 
Five leading headlines from this morning's edition of the daily newspaper Haaretz illustrate the frustration.

Ari Shavit's 'Fiasco on the high seas', Reuven Pedatzur's 'A failure any way you slice it', Yossi Sarid's 'Seven idiots in the cabinet', and Gideon Levy's 'Operation Mini Cast Lead' - Israel's code name for its bloody war on Gaz

By Gregg Carlstrom in Middle East on May 31st, 2010
Protesters in Istanbul wave Palestinian flags after the raid (Photo: AFP)

Early Monday morning, Israel attacked a flotilla of aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip; up to 10 people were killed in the pre-dawn raid, according to organisers and media sources.

We'll be live-blogging the aftermath of this incident throughout the day; keep checking back for international reaction, news from our correspondents on the ground, photos and video. (All times are GMT, except where noted.)

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By Nour Odeh in Middle East on May 31st, 2010

With a timid smile, 16 year-old N twiddles his thumbs as he tells me his frightening story. Israeli soldiers came to his house a year ago at dawn. He was blindfolded, handcuffed, and taken away without any explanation. 

When the military jeep finally stopped, the soldiers took him to a room with chairs. They began cursing at him and using derogatory terms against his mother and female siblings. The soldiers then put sunglasses on N's eyes and a female headband on his head.

"They took pictures of me; they were laughing," he told me.

"Aren’t you going to confess?" the soldiers kept asking him… "To what?" he would reply. "To throwing stones," they would say.

Afraid of ending up in jail, N refused to confess to the alleged offence.

"I kept telling them: I didn't do it. I didn't do anything," he recalled.

Until this point, N's story sounded familiar to someone like me, who's been covering the conflict in Palestine for years.

By Gregg Carlstrom in Middle East on May 25th, 2010
Panelists discussing Israel and Palestine (Gregg Carlstrom)

One last item from this week's Al Jazeera Forum, where the Israeli-Arab conflict was surely the most-discussed issue - not just on panels, but in countless sideline discussions as well (like my colleague Andrew Wander's interviews with representatives from Hamas and Hizballah).

There was broad agreement - among Arabs, Americans, Europeans and other attendees - that the status quo is unsustainable. Most were dismissive of the current indirect talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, mediated by George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy.

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on April 8th, 2010
Photo by EPA

The leak is now credible. The New York Times has confirmed what the Washington Post published a day earlier: the Obama administration is considering proposing its own framework for a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
 
Frustrated by its failure to freeze Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, and subsequent failure to get the negotiations back on track, the US government is putting the two parties on notice: Define the contours of a solution by autumn and negotiate its details, or we shall do it for you.
 

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on March 22nd, 2010
AFP photo

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has delivered another "The US and I personally are in love with Israel" speech to America's pro-Israeli lobby  - with a twist.

Her three-part speech at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) on Monday underlined Washington's unshaken strategic and moral commitment to Israel "for ever" and, in the second part, threatened Iran with tougher sanctions and warned it will never allow it to develop nuclear weapons.

In the third, and much awaited part, of the speech, Clinton delineated a hardcore realist approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict in the context of US security in the Middle East that envisions a freeze on settlement paving the way for direct talks that culminate in two states.

By Nour Odeh in Middle East on March 14th, 2010
Photo from Reuters

Palestinian women clash with Israeli soldiers at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and occupied East Jerusalem.

To the south, Israeli soldiers clash with youth in Beit Ummar, near Hebron.

These are the latest manifestations of boiling tensions in the area, sparked by Israel's announcement of large-scale settlement expansion in Occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel has kept the West Bank under lockdown since Thursday night, the punitive measure only serving to increase tension and draw international attention to the devastating potential of a lost political horizon in the region.

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on March 11th, 2010
Photo from AFP

The US vice president's visit to Israel has to a large degree clarified the Middle East imperatives of the Barack Obama administration in its second year.
 
Joe Biden's cornerstone speech at Tel Aviv University is a major downgrade and retreat from the bold commitments made by President Obama in Turkey and Egypt.
 
The two-part speech will no doubt be read selectively. Israeli leadership will underline the appeasement, commitment and support in the first two-thirds of the speech, whilst the Palestinian leadership will emphasise the overtures and support for independence made in the last third.
 
The first part underlines the Obama administration's and Biden's own adulation and commitment towards Israel. It checks all the boxes.
 

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on February 13th, 2010

EPA photo

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