Israel’s furious diplomatic activity to sabotage a decision taken by the United Nations General Assembly last December to seek the opinion of its highest judicial body, the International Court of Justice, on the legality of Israel building its separation wall across large swaths of occupied Palestinian territory began to pay dividends at the weekend. By the Friday deadline for submitting affidavits, 31 states had joined Israel in rejecting the court’s authority to rule in the matter: 15 member states of the European Union, 10 further members-in-waiting, as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, South Africa and Cameroon. Britain, Germany and France presented their own, separately written affidavits.

Saturday, February 7th, 2004 - 05:22pm GMT

Anyone who follows the news has no doubt come across the claim that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” Usually, this claim is followed by its logical inference: “As an island of freedom located in a region controlled by military dictators, feudal kings and religious leaders, Israel should receive unreserved support from western liberal states interested in strengthening democratic values around the globe.” Over the years, some of the fallacies informing this line of argument have been exposed. Whereas many commentators have emphasized that foreign policy is determined by selfish interests rather than by moral dictates, few analysts have challenged the prevailing view that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

Wednesday, February 4th, 2004 - 10:46pm GMT

Last summer was long and hot in the West Bank. It was also very dry. Palestinian summers typically are dry, and water for crops and drinking has always been scarce. But for Palestinians suffering under a double yoke of drought-level rainfall and the Israeli occupation, these years are drier and thirstier than ever. The only permanent surface watercourses in the area are the Jordan River and the Lake of Tiberias. The waters are allocated, under the terms of a 1996 agreement, between Jordan and Israel. The Palestinians living along the Jordan River’s west bank are entitled to not a drop of it.

Wednesday, February 4th, 2004 - 03:01pm GMT

Israel has committed litany of atrocities during its occupation of Palestine, but the crimes visited daily upon the innocent civilians of Rafah are among the most heinous. Even in the wider context of the occupation as a whole, Rafah?s situation is particularly tragic, and the conditions imposed on its citizens increasingly desperate. There can be no doubt that Israeli policy in Rafah amounts to a process of ethnic cleansing, and, as has been so often the case throughout history, a humanitarian catastrophe is being allowed to continue unimpeded as the world sits idly by.

Monday, February 2nd, 2004 - 05:07pm GMT

Imagine if someone had submitted to the Los Angeles Times a well-crafted op-ed that rationally and calmly argued the following: “If only the Arabs of 1948 had united more tightly, had planned more carefully, and had done a better job enrolling strategic and powerful allies to their cause, Israel as a Jewish state would never have seen the light of day, and we would have never had to endure one of the most thorny and tragic problems in modern history ? the Arab-Israeli conflict.” If such an op-ed were being submitted to the opinion editors at the Los Angeles Times, do you think the newspaper would have published it?

Friday, January 30th, 2004 - 04:49pm GMT

Sharon, in his speech, did not budge an inch towards the resumption of negotiations under the roadmap. On the contrary, his purpose was to deliver an ultimatum to his hypothetical Palestinian interlocutors: “We hope the PA abides by its obligations. But if after several months they have still not done their part under the roadmap then Israel will be forced to take a unilateral security step to disengage from the Palestinians.” It hardly takes great effort to read between these lines. Essentially, Sharon is telling the Palestinians, “Either you come to the negotiating table prepared to sign away a large portion of your territory and legitimate rights, or Israel will annex your land unilaterally.”

Friday, January 16th, 2004 - 04:49pm GMT

In the pensive hours of the night, I am struck by the varying values that mankind chooses to allot to life - as was my son Tom. Earlier this month, I read with mixed feelings the news that local Palestinian militia had dynamited an Israeli defence force watchtower in the town of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. It was from this watchtower, which has been responsible for untold misery to many innocent families in Rafah, that Tom was shot in the head last April. At the time he was trying to help Palestinian children to safety. He now lies in a vegetative state in a hospital in London with no hope of recovery.

Note: Tom Hurndall died on Tuesday January 13th 2004.

Sunday, January 11th, 2004 - 09:17pm GMT

Mikoyet Zighaya is an Israeli with a grievance. Dressed in army fatigues, his black beret tucked onto his shoulder, he joined a protest this week of more than a thousand Ethiopian Israelis. They demanded that their relatives be brought to Israel in keeping with a government decision last year to expedite the immigration of about 20,000 Ethiopians waiting to join previous waves and trickles of Ethiopian immigrants. But the problem is that some leading Zionist politicians don’t think that they’re ‘Jewish’ enough. What’s the real problem here?

Friday, January 9th, 2004 - 05:36pm GMT

Rhetoric about demography so dominates Israel’s political discourse that one might be tempted to assume that Israel has abandoned its preferred designation as the Jewish democratic state in favour of the Jewish demographic state. The mania is rooted in the Zionist’s need to maintain a Jewish majority capable of implementing a democracy that will absorb the Diaspora, accommodate pioneer settlement and the assumption of a common history, one that allows for the fetishisation of military service. Without any of the above Israel would have to practice government by the minority, which inevitably leads to apartheid or racial segregation, to government by a national minority that sees the state as the embodiment of its legitimacy.

Friday, January 9th, 2004 - 03:02pm GMT