Arab/Palestinian – ME

The other day, the question was put to me that if the Palestinian “right of return” was taken out of the current Palestinian – Israeli conflict, could one list other major obstacles to a peaceful solution to the conflict In writing the article below, I relied on the intellectual property …

An ISIS large-scale attack in the northern Sinai Peninsula demonstrates well the improvement in its operational capabilities and the weakness of the Egyptian security forces. ….   ISIS’s attack in Bir al-Abd and its activity following it is the most outstanding activity as part of the wave of attacks referred …

After Israel defeated the attacking Jordanian army in June 1967, it allowed the Jordanian Islamic Waqf to have administrative control of the Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem while Israel controlled the security of the area. In 1980, Israel officially applied sovereignty and reunited the city of …

Palestinian Arabs often share a series of maps which show that “their land and country” are in a perpetual state of shrinking when the opposite is the truth. Local Palestinian Arabs never had self-rule until 1995. The Ottomans ruled the region from 1517 to 1917 and then the British until …

In May 2016 I spoke at a panel event on the possibility of a two state solution.  My talk focused on the key issue of the entire conflict – the reason the ‘Palestinian refugee’ situation can never end.  At the time I called for the ridiculous definition of a Palestinian …

Though the definite origins of the word Palestine have been debated for years and are still not known for sure, the name is believed to be derived from the Egyptian and Hebrew word peleshet. Roughly translated to mean rolling or migratory, the term was used to describe the inhabitants of …

On the 5th April, 2020, Yahya Sinwar, terror leader of Hamas in Gaza promised that if one “Palestinian” died in Gaza he would ensure that 6 million Jews would be rendered by his forces unable to breathe. Low-base Arab-media-ready histrionics aside, this article asks if there is or was ever …

FACT: Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is reputed to have said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Since her time, the truthfulness of those words has been demonstrated repeatedly. and it was again last month when the Palestinian Authority said it would …

Perhaps Israel should just take their Nobel Prizes and go home to cry because we didn’t invent falafel? We just mechanised production first; were the first to market it to Europe and America and adapted it for local conditions as street food. The Palestinians certainly didn’t invent it either. You …

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was created in December 1948 as a temporary agency to handle shelter, medical assistance and education for the roughly 700,000 Arabs who left what became Israel. Over seventy years later it continues to artificially extend its mandate. UNRWA’s term …

On March 30, 2020, the Toronto Star wrote an article “Fearing Gaza coronavirus spread, Hamas preps for mass quarantines” which painted Hamas as a reasonable and responsible government caring for its citizens. The article opened with a woman returning to Gaza from Egypt who was surprised that Hamas had set …

In 2004,  shortly before the death of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, the Pope’s ambassador in Jerusalem, also known as the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, invited me to his  home on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem to present a document that he had received from Arafat. The document, in Arabic, …

FACT: As in the specious claim that Israel is refusing to help Palestinians in the West Bank contain the coronavirus, similar lies are being disseminated about Israel’s treatment of those in Gaza.  The Guardian reported, for example, “An Israeli blockade, in place since 2007 although eased in recent years, has …

Press Release Islamic Waqf Takes Advantage of Temple Mount Closure to Conduct Digs Photos uploaded yesterday to the official Facebook page of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf showed them conducting unauthorized digs on the Temple Mount. “Despite the closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Haram esh-Sharif due to coronavirus, the staff, workers and …

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced the appointment of Philippe Lazzarini of Switzerland to be the new head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Upon hearing that the head was going to be from Switzerland and not England which …

The Times ran an exclusive in May 2018 about a young child, an aspiring footballer in Gaza being shot whilst playing football with his friends. A few months later the World Health Organisation (WHO) published an embellished version on their website -having the Israeli soldier deliberately shoot the child after …

Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist and candidate for United States president, has been vocally against the Israeli government which he has called “racist,” and against Israel’s “military occupation” of Palestinian land which denies the Palestinians “dignity.” Whether one agrees or disagrees with the notions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu …

The latest US proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been predictably rejected by the Palestinian side. In fact, it was rejected before it was even tabled.  Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced the day before the plan was released, ‘We reject it and we demand the international community …

For two days now, there have been a stream of articles calling Trumps ‘peace plan’ everything from a conspiracy to Apartheid.  Quite a few of the ‘predictable’ politicians from the UK and US have bitterly attacked the initiative.  Judging by Emily Thornberry’s comments in parliament it seems that many of …

The Trump administration put forward a new Middle East Peace Plan as the latest instalment of a series of frameworks over the years to try to find an enduring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.  Like every proposal before it, it was declared dead on arrival. The Israelis had made …