October 06, 2009

Goldstone's careful documentation & argument

I've had the chance to be reading more of the report of the Goldstone Commission Report (PDF). It's 425 pages long, so not an easy or light read! But I've...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:53 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

September 17, 2009

Gaza, the Obama administration, and the present

I was reading this account from Reuters of the way that Obama's ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, today tried to sideline and bury the important report of the Goldstone...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:51 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 15, 2009

Goldstone Commission reports on Gaza-war war-crimes

The Goldstone Commission, appointed in April by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that were committed during last...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:13 PM | Fulltext link (23 comments)

September 12, 2009

A testimony the world needs to hear

Amira Hass had a searing report in Thursday's Haaretz. It's about the killing and slow death during last winter's Gaza war of Ahmed Samouni, age 4, and his father Atiyeh....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:12 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 11, 2009

IPS piece on the rights war over Gaza

... is here, also here. My last word on this important subject for now....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:49 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

July 07, 2009

Women in the war zone: Gaza

Kudos to the BBC for publishing an agonizing (and agonized) short interview with Tihani Abed Rabbu, described as "bereaved mother' in Gaza. Scroll down here to find it. (But can...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:05 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

April 19, 2009

The IDF's 'Dahiyah Doctrine', applied in Gaza

Kudos to Inter-Press Service's Daan Bouwens for this piece of reporting in which he reminded readers that Israel's strategic decisionmakers had integrated a policy of major, intentional destruction of civilian...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:22 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

April 17, 2009

My IPS piece on Gaza three months on

... is here....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:32 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

Gaza, three months on

On January 18, Israel and Hamas each separately announced its decision to halt the hostilities they had been engaged in since December 27. That un-negotiated, parallel ceasefire remains fragile and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:58 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 27, 2009

Problems of the west's extreme casualty aversion, Afghanistan and Gaza

The extreme aversion of the US and Israeli armies to own-soldier casualties has huge and often unintended consequences in the realms of both strategic effectiveness and ethics. This is now...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:15 PM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

March 21, 2009

Those revelations of IDF violations in Gaza

Kudos to Haaretz for publishing the first English-language accounts of the "spill the beans" session held at Oranim Academic College February 13 in which dozens of IOF soldiers who had...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:10 PM | Fulltext link (27 comments)

"Gaza first" on the horizon?

With respect to the Egyptian-Palestinian-Israeli triangle as it manifests regarding Gaza, I'd add the following general notes: 1. Egypt and Hamas share a strong interest in preventing Gaza's 1.5 million...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:18 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 16, 2009

Cassese, Goldstone, Ntsebeza, Robinson call for international investigation of Gaza atrocities

A very high-octane group of 16 prosecutors and judges associated with various recent international atrocity investigations and prosecutions has now called for for a full international investigation into alleged abuses...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:45 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

March 10, 2009

Congratulations, George Galloway and friends!

Five thousand miles and 23 days later, the large aid convoy spearheaded by British MP George Galloway yesterday arrived in Gaza. The main problem that Galloway and his group encountered...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:42 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

March 02, 2009

Reconstruct Gaza? A Likud adviser says 'No'

Egypt is today hosting a big conference in Sharm al-Sheikh to rally (mainly pro-western) donors to the task of rebuilding the large amounts of housing and public infrastructure in Gaza...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:25 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

February 27, 2009

Arab League war crimes investigators in Gaza

The Arab League has shown a surprising burst of initiative and has been deploying a fact-finding mission to Gaza to investigate Israeli war crimes, according to this news release from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:48 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

February 23, 2009

Amnesty's great campaign for Israel-Hamas arms embargo

Huge kudos to Amnesty International for having pulled together a well-researched and intelligent report on the international arms suppliers who were complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:26 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

February 16, 2009

Syria's position strengthening internationally, regionally

Syria's place in the world community-- which the ideologues in the Bush White House did so much to attack and delegitimize-- has been strengthening noticeably in the past few days/weeks....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:28 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

Israel-Hamas prisoner talks, intra-Palestinian reconciliation, etc

Ha'aretz, Reuters, and others are now reporting that Israel seems close to presenting a prisoner-exchange proposal involving Hamas-held Israeli POW Gideon Shalit and a large number of Palestinian prisoners and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:04 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 08, 2009

Egypt: Free Philip Rizk!

I tried to call Philip Rizk in Cairo today, but he didn't answer. Philip is a courageous and principled young man, of joint Egyptian and German nationality, who has done...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:09 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 07, 2009

Zahar in Egypt; timing of ceasefire?

Gaza-based Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, who was named Foreign Minister in the all-Hamas government in summer 2007, today emerged from his "secure location" in Gaza to cross into Egypt....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:00 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

At IPS: 'Mideast: A truce too big to fail?'

My latest news analysis for IPS, "Mideast, a truce too big to fail?", went up on their website yesterday. Doing these weekly pieces for them is an interesting experience so...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:59 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 05, 2009

Gaza ceasefire-consolidation talks update

I've been busy recently: I've been in New York with editors and (separately) the new grandbaby... Also, preparing for my next reporting trip to the Middle East, which starts this...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:10 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 04, 2009

Obama: What if this happened to your girls?

When he was on the campaign trail, Pres. Obama gave Israel nearly "carte blanche" to act as it wanted against Gaza by saying-- in southern Israel-- that if his daughters...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:33 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

February 03, 2009

ICRC head Kellenberger (and Rabbani) on the Gaza crisis

Our friend Christiane writes from Lausanne, Switzerland, that she has found-- and translated for us-- an important interview about Gaza conducted with Jakob Kellenberger, the head of the International Committee...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:09 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

January 28, 2009

ElBaradei shows the way: Boycott the BBC!

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has cancelled two interviews he was scheduled to give to the BBC, over the Beeb's refusal to air the charity appeal for Gaza. Excellent decision, Mr....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:24 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

BBC: Land of pure lunacy!

You totally have to hand it to the BBC that they have an advanced case of the Monty Pythons... Today, they have a lengthy piece of analysis on their website...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:08 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 25, 2009

Note to a young Israeli friend

One notable thing that happened at our panel discussion on Gaza, at Georgetown University Thursday night, was that a young Israeli student directed a question at me asking why I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:01 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

American weapons, Palestinian suffering, and the needs of peace

The United States is very far from a "neutral party" in the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. As I've noted before, the US government not only gives Israel...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:25 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

Swiss parliamentarians visit Gaza

Kudos to the delegation of Swiss parliamentarians who are visiting Gaza at the invitation of the duly elected Palestinian legislative Council. That Maan news report also notes that Switzerland was,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:35 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

Ill-disciplined IOF left its mark in Gaza

Amnesty International has a new blog carrying extracts from field reports made by its researchers. In this post, Friday, Donatella Rivera writes about the physical detritus the IOF soldiers left...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:22 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

January 24, 2009

BBC bows shamefully to Israeli pressure...

... on airing a philanthropic appeal for aid for Gaza... while even the British government urges it not to. Go figure. We can note that the British government-- like the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:10 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

January 23, 2009

IPS articles from Syria and Washington, DC

I've been really busy these past couple of weeks-- plus, figuring out too much new technology. So, to catch up a little, here are the last two pieces of News...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:36 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

January 22, 2009

Obama moves fast on M.E. diplomacy

I just read the transcript of Pres. Obama's address at the State Department today. That's the one where he appointed former Sen. George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:05 PM | Fulltext link (45 comments)

January 19, 2009

Marc Lynch resurrects discredited 'ripeness' theory

Marc Lynch, a generally sensible young "rising star" in the world of US Arabists, today blogged about his "four suggestions for the Obama administration." Three of his suggestions are helpful,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:19 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Kudos and hugs to Laila and her family

Palestinian journalist Laila el-Haddad has done a stupendously good job of blogging the Gaza war, despite the handicaps of (a) being the primary caregiver for her and her husband's two...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:39 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Why Likud is laughing...

Because the war on Gaza has turned out to be very "good" for Labour leader Ehud Barak's popularity, boosting his chances in the Feb. 10th election... But Barak has seemingly...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:08 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Palestinian politics and the rest of the war's political endgame

This morning the time-expired PA president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fateh, called for the establishment of a Palestinian national unity government. The political endgame of Israel's 22-Day War against Gaza has...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:37 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

January 18, 2009

Ceasefire, thank God. Now to the final peace.

So now we have, finally, a ceasefire in Gaza that is reciprocal but not negotiated and not durable at all. People and governments around the world should pay some attention...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:21 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

January 17, 2009

Link Gaza ceasefire details to final peace push

The need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza becomes more urgent every day. However, even after the guns and rockets-- and Israel's warplanes, naval guns, and precision-guided missiles-- all fall...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:12 AM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

January 16, 2009

Tewks: "Let the Children Dance"

I recently highlighted Gina Bennett's National Security Mom, with it's marvelous drawing from the "lessons we teach our children" to understand national security. I've been wondering then what lessons Israel...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:08 AM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

January 13, 2009

Gaza Update

What are the US 'papers of record' up to? The Washington Post has offered balanced coverage: Israelis Push to Edge of Gaza City Move Could Signal A Long Urban Battle...
Posted by Don Bacon at 10:16 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

January 11, 2009

Gaza open thread, mid-Jan

Here's Cordesman's excellent strategic analysis to start you off. And here's some excellent legal analysis from Shamai Leibowitz, on "Israeli Soldiers' Duty to Prevent the Commission of War Crimes". Here,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:53 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

Trash Talk

Reader D. Mathews has alerted us to a despicable congressman, Mark Kirk (R-IL), who said at a pro-Israel rally: "To misquote Shakespeare, something is rotten in Gaza and now it's...
Posted by Don Bacon at 04:22 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

Blogging on Gaza

Some news and opinions from Middle East bloggers. From Gaza, with Love: 8th of January -13th day of the Israeli Attack against Gaza 720 are killed including :- 215 children...
Posted by Don Bacon at 01:10 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

January 09, 2009

At IPS: " Gaza, and Israel's Wars of Forced Regime Change"

Here is the 35-year-long purview piece on this topic I wrote for IPS this morning. I noted that the current war on Gaza is the sixth war aiming at imposing...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:02 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Obama's grandfather, the British in Kenya, and Gaza today

Barack Obama's Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, became involved with the Kenyan independence movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after World War 2. Reporters for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:11 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

Israel & Hamas reject ceasefire; details urgently need negotiating

Just because the Security Council calls for an immediate ceasefire, doesn't mean it happens. What it does mean is that the various portions of the international community are gearing up...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:53 AM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

Security Council orders ceasefire; No US veto

And so, after 13 days of extremely lethal and quite inhumane Israeli attacks on Gaza, the UN Security Council has finally passed a ceasefire resolution, resolution 1860. The vote was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:07 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 08, 2009

U.S. Senate expresses strong support for Israel's war

The U.S. Senate is not made up of people who are monsters or idiots. But it is made up of people whose first inclination is to look out for their...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:36 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

January 07, 2009

Israel's story about the war continues to unravel

When the Olmert government announced the start of the current war against Gaza on December 27, government officials said Israel "was forced" to act because Hamas had broken (or at...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:00 PM | Fulltext link (36 comments)

US rearming Israel from Greece?

On Dec. 31, the US Military Sealift Command published a solicitation for bids from shipping companies to ship two boats, each containing 168 TEU's (twenty-foot equivalent container units) of ammunition,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:25 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 06, 2009

Gaza: Diplomacy gains momentum

President Bush has been trying to delay calls for a Gaza ceasefire as long as possible, but today there were more signs that other international actors were trying to push...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:12 PM | Fulltext link (35 comments)

January 05, 2009

Crisis Group on Gaza-Israel: Okay, not great

I've just read the executive summary of the Crisis Groups latest paper on the Israel-Gaza war. There are some good things in it but I'm quite disappointed at how tame...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:02 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

Israel's pathetic psy-ops

It is a revealing measure of the paucity or non-existence of Israel's actual, on-the-ground intelligence network inside Gaza today (as in Lebanon in 2006) that the IDF's psy-ops department feels...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:16 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

Not a war but a bloodbath

Read Dion Nissenbaum on the "lawn-chair war" being waged (or, more precisely, ogled) by residents of the Israeli town of Sderot: They gather every morning on the southern Israeli hilltop...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:12 PM | Fulltext link (23 comments)

January 04, 2009

A negotiated ceasefire: The best Israel can expect

Israel’s leaders have given contradictory signals about how they want the current war to end. Some say they want to force Hamas to bend to their will. Some have said...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:11 AM | Fulltext link (49 comments)

January 03, 2009

Good resources on Israel's continuing Gaza assault

I've spent quite a bit of time following the Gaza tragedy on Twitter today. If you're a member, my name there is helenacobban (strange, but true.) Twitter has this good...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:53 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

Israel sends ground forces into Gaza

The ground war has begun. Pray for the peoples of Gaza and Israel, especially the hardest hit and most vulnerable among them. Work for a ceasefire now!...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:48 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 02, 2009

The roots of Hamas resilience

Yesterday, the Israeli air force dropped a large (and most likely US-supplied) bomb on the apartment-building home of Nizar Rayyan, one of the top five leaders of Hamas in Gaza,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:16 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

January 01, 2009

Debate in Israeli cabinet over Gaza

In my earlier post, I was looking at the public debate among non-official Israelis over the course of the Gaza war. The more important debate, of course, is that inside...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:56 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

Israelis debate how (more than whether) to continue war

Brushing aside the many calls from the "international community" for an immediate and permanent ceasefire with Gaza, the Israeli government has vowed to continue its assault against the Strip, and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:33 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

December 31, 2008

Security Council discussing Gaza tonight

This news from the BBC is good. The SC will meet at the request of the Arab League Foreign Ministers who, want a binding UN resolution to ensure an immediate...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:06 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

Gaza: the importance of the Bob Gates straddle

Yesterday, as I noted here, Condi Rice gave a degree to acquiescence to a much-needed statement calling for "an immediate and permanent ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas/Gaza, that had been...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:44 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

December 30, 2008

Gaza: US blocking power eroded; Quartet calls for ceasefire

Back in the 33-Day War of 2006, the Bush administration was able to block the Security Council and the rest of the UN from issuing a formal call for a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:08 PM | Fulltext link (25 comments)

How Israel can end the Gaza war

Once again, as in 2006, the Israeli government has launched a war against neighbors from which it finds difficulty in extricating itself. Of course, not launching the present war was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:50 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

UN official says Israel violated a truce Saturday

Karen Abu Zayd, commissioner of the UN Relief and Works Agency, told reporters yesterday that on Friday, the Palestinians in Gaza believed they had an agreement with Israel for a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:26 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)