News and Analysis

Once you strip away the mujamalat – the courtesies exchanged between guest and host – the substance of President Obama’s speech in Cairo indicates there is likely to be little real change in US policy. It is not necessary to divine Obama’s intentions – he may be utterly sincere and I believe he is. It…

Haaretz, 3 June 2009 Settlers set fire to a Palestinian field and blocked a junction Wednesday just hours after security forces re-evacuated nearby illegal West Bank outposts. The settlers also returned to the site of the evacuated outposts, Maoz Esther and Ramat Migron, and erected two new outposts close by. Advertisement Maoz Esther, which lies…

By Eli Ashkenazi Published by Haaretz, 5 June 2009 Residents of the Misgav bloc of communities in the Galilee consider themselves to be liberal, peace-loving people who support coexistence with their Arab neighbors and even root for Bnei Sakhnin, the soccer club based in a nearby Arab town considered a prominent symbol of that community.…

Letter published in The Scotsman, 5 June 2009 The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) applauds the decision of the Edinburgh International Film Festival to return funding from the Israeli Embassy, and welcomes the intervention on this matter from British director Ken Loach (your report, 19 May). Standing up to the State of Israel is not…

27 May 2009, The Alternative Information Center (AIC) The Carmel Academic Center in Haifa shut down the concentration in accounting within its Department of Business Administration because a majority of the students applying were Palestinian citizens of Israel. This was revealed in a news item reported on Israeli news Channel 10 on 24 May (in…