Israel

سامر العيساوي والسلطة الفلسطينية

The Kurdish Question and Turkish-Israeli Relations: An Interview with Professor Cihan Tugal

In his Nowruz message on 21 March, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, declared a ceasefire and called on armed militants to withdraw from Turkish territory. He said, “Today we are waking up to a new Middle East, a new Turkey, and a new future” and added, “The Middle East and Central Asia are looking for a new order. A new model is a necessity, like bread and water. It’s inevitable that Anatolia and Mesopotamia will be pioneers in building this model.” Öcalan’s ...

A Tale of Two Movements: Divergent Trends at the World Social Forum-Free Palestine

From 28 November to 1 December 2012, around three thousand people from all over the world gathered in Porto Alegre, Brazil for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine (WSF-FP). Like any mass gathering, this Social Forum served both as a point of contact for activists to network and plan new initiatives, as well as bring out the movement’s inner tensions and challenges in strange—and sometimes uncomfortable—moments. In particular, the unprecedented size and ambition of this convergence spread a distinct air ...

Ghosts of Comfort and Chaos

When I was invited to write this article for the series Visuals in 1500, I was asked to begin with an image that would help clarify my thinking about the work I do as a visual artist. I decided to focus on a little-known painting that I first became familiar with through a reproduction in Kamal Boullata’s book Palestinian Art: 1850-Present. The painting is attributed to the Palestinian artist Daoud Zalatimo, who was born in Ottoman controlled Jerusalem in 1906 and died in Israeli controlled ...

The Infrastructure of Israeli Settler Colonialism (Part 1): The Jordan Valley

Since its establishment, Israel has distinguished the persons under its civil and military jurisdiction based on religion. Throughout Israel Proper and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), comprised of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Israel applies a different set of laws to its Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants respectively. By bifurcating Jewish nationality from Israeli citizenship, the State is able to afford demonstrable and significant privilege to Jewish persons ...

Noura Erakat and Rashid Khalidi on US-Israeli Relations: Interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes

This week US President Barack Obama made his first Middle East visit of his second term in office. It was also his first trip to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) since coming into office in 2008. The purpose of the trip was to warm chilled relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, as well as to reiterate the US position towards Iran's nuclear power ambitions. In many ways, the trip signaled Obama's retreat from the region rather than the first step in an intensified ...

UNICEF Report: Children in Israeli Military Detention

[The following report was issued by UNICEF on 6 March 2013.] Children in Israeli Military Detention: Observations and Recommendations Executive Summary  All children in contact with judicial systems should be treated with dignity and respect at all times. For several years, national lawyers, human rights organizations, United Nations experts and treaty bodies have been publishing reports of illtreatment of children who come in contact with the Israeli military detention ...

Open Letter from Family of Jailed Palestinian Cartoonist Mohammed Saba'na

[The following update on the status of jailed Palestinian cartoonist Mohammed Abdel Ghani Saba'na was issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists on 1 March 2013. Below the update is an open letter from Saba'na's family, published by Cartoon Movement on 25 February 2013.]  Update on Status of Mohammed Abdel Ghani Saba'na A military court in the city of Ashkelon extended the detention of Mohammad Saba'aneh, a Palestinian cartoonist for Al-Hayat al-Jadida, on February 28, 2013, for a second ...