December 08, 2008

Jimmy and ME

from Forward.com Former president Jimmy Carter is back with new advice for resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The former president is scheduled to publish a new book on the issue —...
Posted by Don Bacon at 01:17 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 08, 2008

Good recent resources on Palestinians and nonviolence

Ten days ago I had the pleasure of attending a book event for Mary E. King, in connection with the recent publication of her book A Quiet Revolution: The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:08 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

January 21, 2008

Gaza crisis: Where is the 'West'?

I have been reading the latest round of upsetting reports (portal here) on the horrendous effects on Gaza's 1.45 million people of the greatly escalated collective punishment that the US-funded...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:21 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

January 16, 2008

Safieh to step down

Afif Safieh, who has been an articulate and effective representative for the PLO/PA in Washington for the past 18 months, announced yesterday that he has asked Abu Mazen to relieve...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:39 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

March 27, 2007

More on Palestine-related diplomacy

My 'Delicious' tagging system is not working. I found this fascinating article today by my very well-informed old friend Jihad Khazen on the recent Arab Foreign Ministers' gathering and Condi's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:36 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

February 16, 2006

The Weissglas "diet"

In a move eerily reminiscent of the Bush administration's redefinition of "torture" to the point that "anything's okay so long as the person doesn't die or suffer permanent organ failure",...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:07 PM | Fulltext link (23 comments)

Hamas's diplomatic and leadership strategies unfold

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal arrived in Turkey today, in a very smart move which is the first visit by any Hamas leader to a non-Arab country-- one that is majority-Muslim...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:45 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

February 14, 2006

Is there an anti-Hamas plot?

Steve Erlanger has an important piece in today's NYT about joint US-Israeli governmental plotting to overthrow the new leadership that was recently freely elected by voters in (still-occupied) Palestine....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:06 PM | Fulltext link (66 comments)

February 12, 2006

A museum of WHAT?

I've been working so hard on my Africa book that I had missed all the reports that the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has started building a Museum of "Tolerance"...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:01 PM | Fulltext link (85 comments)

February 06, 2006

Graham Fuller on Hamas

The very sensible and well-informed long-time CIA analyst Graham Fuller has an excellent new paper out on Hamas, here His bottom line: Washington must abandon the fantasy that it can...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:19 PM | Fulltext link (33 comments)

February 01, 2006

Just a question

If Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, is-- with the full backing of President Bush and apparently the US Congress-- engaging in negotiations with leaders of the Sunni Arab...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:30 PM | Fulltext link (31 comments)

January 31, 2006

Prospects with Hamas

Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:53 AM | Fulltext link (57 comments)

January 29, 2006

Hamas victory seen from Palestine, Israel

I wrote a column for Tuesday's CSM about the Hamas victory. (It'll be up on their website tomorrow evening, and I'll link to it then.) In researching it I came...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:02 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

January 28, 2006

Palestine: challenges of transition

Since Hamas's victory in last Wednesday's elections most of the MSM in the west-- Israelocentric as ever-- has focused overwhelmingly on "What on earth would this mean for the peace...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:39 AM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

January 26, 2006

From Tshwane (Pretoria) with love

People fearful of the effects of the Hamas victory in Palestine might like to go back and do some serious study of the whole transition in South Africa... From a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:49 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

Hamas update

According to nearly complete election returns from Palestine, Hamas reportedly won 76 of the 132 seats in the upcoming parliament. I am fairly optimistic about the impact this could have...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:40 PM | Fulltext link (47 comments)

Hamas wins the vote

So, building on the solid reputation it has won by its provision of basic services in the Palestinian localities, Hamas has now won an outright victory in the Palestinian parliamentary...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:47 AM | Fulltext link (33 comments)

January 08, 2006

Hamas ready to take responsibility?

This, from AP is interesting: Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar was asked if the atmosphere were ripe for Hamas to form a government that would not deal with Israel, Hamas reported...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:11 AM | Fulltext link (43 comments)

December 30, 2005

Unfolding tragedy in Palestine

I haven't written much here recently about the ever unfolding tragedy in Palestine. Partly because I find it so painful. I have so many, very good friends who have made...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:44 PM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

November 16, 2005

Modestly good news on Gaza

Late Monday night, Condi Rice managed to wrest the Sharon government's agreement to an arrangement whereby the Palestinians get to control one tiny portion of Gaza's physical interface with the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:35 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

September 21, 2005

Palestinian Israelis, Jewish Israelis, etc

Someone sent me a link to this book review recently. It's of a book called The Other Side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide, by a British-Israeli woman...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:04 PM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

'Raising Yousuf' in Gaza

Here is a great find, thanks to surfing around in Mark Glaser's space in OJR. It's Raising Yousuf: a diary of a mother under occupation, the blog kept for some...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:37 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 12, 2005

Gaza relieved (if not yet free)

I can just imagine the elation for the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza that the vast majority of their terrain has now been evacuated by the Israeli military. Fabulous! Now...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:56 AM | Fulltext link (46 comments)

September 08, 2005

Gaza: land-border issues

The status of negotiations over the border crossing at Rafah between Gaza and Egypt still seems very unclear. This is a good piece of reporting from AP's Ravi Nessman about...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:01 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

September 07, 2005

Fateh infighting in Gaza

Uh-oh. Tragic and very unsettling news from Gaza about extreme discord and violence being used among the general circles of Fateh there. Specifically, About 100 masked militants stormed the heavily...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:09 AM | Fulltext link (26 comments)

August 22, 2005

Hass and Barenboim

A lovely piece of commentary by the very well-informed Israeli journalist Amira Hass in HaAretz today, pointing out that over the years the settlement of Netzarim in Gaza, which was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:30 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

August 21, 2005

Hamas and politics, part 2

Graham Usher, who's an experienced and intelligent observer of Palestinian politics, has a fascinating new piece about Hamas up on the MERIP website. It's called The New Hamas: Between Resistance...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:49 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

August 19, 2005

It's all about a-c-c-e-s-s

There is an informative interview on Al-Jazeera's website with Muhammad Samhouri, the general coordinator of the PA's "Technical Committee For Following Disengagement". Samhouri, who's a US-trained economist, supervises a team...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:42 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

Hamas and politics

Now that thankfully most of the "drama" of Israel's evacuation from Gaza of settlers (and of hundreds of extremist outside agitators) is winding down, it's time to pay some serious...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:14 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 12, 2005

Gaza: the Palestinian story

One good place to start for a range of coverage of the experience Gaza's 1.38 million Palestinians are living through in this time of Israeli "disengagement" from their long-occupied Strip...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:23 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

Palestinians in Gaza (and Israelis)

Okay, yesterday I was complaining here that the US MSM hasn't paid much attention to the 1.38 Palestinians of Gaza-- or to their 6-million-plus compatriots in other places-- amidst all...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:24 AM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

August 11, 2005

CSM column on Gaza

I have a column in the Christian Science Monitor today on the imminent pullback of Israel's troops and settlers from Gaza. It was a hard column to write, for a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:49 PM | Fulltext link (42 comments)

May 03, 2005

Israeli hawks worried by nonviolence now?

For many months now, the Palestinian villagers of Bil'in, west of Ramallah, have been organizing a variety of totally nonviolent mass actions to protest the devastating Separation Barrier that the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:44 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

March 29, 2005

Settlements and settlers bulldozing two-state project

Two phenomena-- both intimately linked to the settlement-implantation project that was Ariel Sharon's most serious commitment throughout most of the years since 1967-- are now combining to undermine any chance...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:02 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

February 24, 2005

Abu Mazen saves the day?

Pity the poor members of the Fateh bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council, who were elected to their positions at the height of post-Oslo optimism in January 1996 and will...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:45 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

February 14, 2005

Abu Mazen in the NYT

Today's NYTimes has an intriguing interview with Abu Mazen that's well worth reading. (I think you have to register to do so. Go thru Bugmenot.) In digesting Abu Mazen's comments...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:20 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

February 12, 2005

Eyad Sarraj: hopeful in Gaza

Go straight here. Read why Eyad Sarraj, a dedicated children's psychiatrist, human rights activist, and the director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, titled this op-ed piece, This time,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:07 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

Zubeidi, Sharon, Hamas, etc

This, from Imshin, made me laugh out loud today. Particularly the part where Al-Aqsa Brigades commander Zakariya Zubeidi is quoted calling "Arik" Sharon "a real man". Zubeidi continued: When there...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:13 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 07, 2005

Peacemakers??? Maybe...

I just wrote a CSM column today, coming out Thursday. As I worked through it, I came to this amazing conclusion. How about if a stable peace between Israelis and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:59 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 04, 2005

Meanwhile in Palestine and Israel

I went to hear Dennis Ross giving a presentation today. Dennis was the person who was in charge of the Palestinian-Israeli "file" for the first Prez Bush, and then for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:32 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

January 29, 2005

Hamas victories, Gaza municipals

Another round of important Middle Eastern elections was held Thursday-- the municipal elections in Gaza's 25 cities, towns, and villages. The Palestinian population of Gaza is about 1.3 million, with...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:03 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

January 25, 2005

Mashaal's interview

Here is my translation of the interview that Hayat's Ghassan Charbel recently conducted with Hamas secretary-general Khaled Mashaal. (And here is the link to the Arabic original.) Mashaal's word is...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:14 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Hamas agrees to truce

Khaled Mashaal, the top leader of Hamas, has now told al-Hayat that Hamas "is prepared to suspend attacks if Israel stops targeting militants and agrees to release thousands of Palestinian...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:16 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 21, 2005

Haaretz looking at Palestine

Ha'Aretz has two interesting articles today on the Palestinian situation. One is an assessment of Abu Mazen's situation, written by Rob Malley and Hussein Agha. Rob worked on Palestinian-Israeli issues...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:50 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

January 19, 2005

Internal politics in Palestine

Hamas did not give Abu Mazen anything of a honeymoon after his electoral win last week, but instead mounted (along with Jihad and the Aqsa Brigades) the operations at the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:50 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

January 10, 2005

Palestine/Israel: the work begins

So Abu Mazen won the Palestinian election No surprise whatsoever there. The turnout was down significantly from the last election, in 1996. (Actually, on the AP story I was reading,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:23 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 07, 2005

Palestinian election memorabilia

Bill the spouse is just back from Jerusalem. Yesterday he was in Hebron and Ramallah. He brought back some interesting Palestinian election materials. Like this, which is from a T-shirt:...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:41 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

December 15, 2004

Palestinian politics update

I've been reading the interview with Abu Mazen that was in yesterday's Al-Sharq al-Awsat. It's great that he came out so strongly for the demilitarization of the intifada, as noted...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:37 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

December 08, 2004

CSM column on Shatila

With all my travels I failed to post anything here before now about the column I had in the CSM November 29, under the title Revisiting the gritty symbol of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:10 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

"Calm" in Palestine?

Today, both the NYT and the WaPo had short reports of yesterday's incident in Gaza in which a Hamas unit apparently lured an Israeli unit into an ambush and one...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:24 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

November 28, 2004

Palestinian elections-2

Marwan Barghouthi as the Palestinians' Mandela? It has always been a possibility. And it is one that, despite the Fateh Revolutionary Council's recent decision to back Abu Mazen as the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:32 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

November 23, 2004

Election news- Palestine

Election plans for both Palestine and Iraq are in the news. In Iraq, they are being planned with a view to the possible withdrawal of the occupation forces-- certainly, a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:41 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

November 12, 2004

Thoughts after Arafat

Some thoughts from Beirut about the post-Arafat period (RIP): (1) We've been having amazing, wall-to-wall coverage of the Arafat events on the BBC's Middle East feed. Riveting stuff, and very...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:09 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

CSM column on Arafat

Here's how my Arafat obit-column in today's CSM came out....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:24 AM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

November 11, 2004

Yasser Arafat, R.I.P.

We awoke today to the BBC presenting breaking news of Arafat's death. I now have to crash-edit an obit-style column on him that I drafted ten days ago. It's more...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:51 AM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

November 08, 2004

Back to Shatila, part 2

I "knew" in some abstract sense that conditions in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon have become really terrible since 1982, and are now easily the worst of those in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:06 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

November 07, 2004

Back to Shatila, part 1

In the summer of 1974, shortly after I arrived in Beirut to make my way as a journalist, I started volunteering to teach English in Shatila, one of a number...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:02 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Palestinian prospects

I am really delighted with the news from Gaza (as reported by the BBC) that, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are pressing for a more broad-based national leadership in which they...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:48 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

November 05, 2004

Arafat: transition notes

I was just watching the BBC... they're awaiting some important news from the French hospital re the Old Man... What I did see, however, was a tiny video clip, unremarked...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:27 AM | Fulltext link (36 comments)

October 31, 2004

On unilateral withdrawal

Things have gotten fairly busy for me here in Beirut. One project I've been pursuing a little is on the whole concept of "unilateral" withdrawals, such as Sharon currently espouses...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:00 PM | Fulltext link (34 comments)

October 28, 2004

Arafat: a Palestinian tragedy

Yasser Arafat reportedly collapsed yesterday evening while eating soup with present "prime minister" Ahmed Qurei (Abu Alaa) and former PM Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). The new reports coming out of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:15 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 12, 2004

CSM column on Arafat, US policy

I have a column in the CSM today about Arafat. It also has a recommendation for what the US could reasonably do, right now and also after the November election,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:44 AM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

August 03, 2004

Hamas on a roll?

Well, guess who's in Cairo, talking about security issues in Gaza? According to Reuters, Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas, is. Mashaal is the guy whom the Israelis tried to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:56 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

July 27, 2004

Bantustans: South Africa and Palestine

How quickly the world forgets. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the apartheid government in South Africa pushed forward its plan to create "Bantu homelands" within South Africa which would:...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:52 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

July 21, 2004

Mashaal presses Arafat for 'calm' and 'wisdom'

Ouch. This must have been very painful for the embattled Arafat: to have Hamas's Damascus-based head Khaled Mashaal urging him to restore calm and act wisely. Th AP's Muhammed Daraghmeh...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:58 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 18, 2004

Arafat: Planless in Gaza

One of the scary things about the current Palestinian nationalist movement is the degree to which the sheer personal vanity of one stubborn old man has succeeded in paralyzing nearly...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:46 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

July 02, 2004

Gaza: Israel's security 'concept'

On June 30, AP had a story quoting unnamed Israeli security officials saying that, "Israel plans to establish a three-mile-deep 'security zone' in the northern Gaza Strip, with hundreds of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:23 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

May 17, 2004

Homeless in Gaza

Meanwhile, are you wondering why Ariel Sharon, his tanks, his D-9 armored Caterpillar bulldozers, and his helicopter gunships seem to be going quite insanely beserk with their violence in Gaza?...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:52 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

March 26, 2004

Palestinian call for nonviolent intifada

The following is a translation from Arabic of the appeal by 70 Palestinian intellectuals and officials that appeared in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam earlier this week. The translation came from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:47 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 25, 2004

Suicide bombings, contd.

In a post here yesterday (Tuesday), I posed five questions about the phenomenon of Palestinian suicide bombings and assigned myself the pretty onerous task of addressing them "over the coming...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:10 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

February 23, 2004

Hard thinking about suicide bombings

Yesterday, in West Jerusalem, a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated his bomb on a crowded early-morning bus. Eight people--actually nine, including the bomber himself-- were killed, and scores injured. What a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:34 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

February 20, 2004

Sharon's wall system in pictures

One week ago today, I spent the morning driving round parts of the western portion of Ramallah governorate with Anita Abdallah and a couple of other people. You can read...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:46 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

Those elusive permits for Gaza

Since early January, the Israeli authorities have been handing a new piece of paper to foreigners entering their country (and also, to foreigners entering the occupied West Bank across the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:32 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 18, 2004

Arafat, and other encounters in Palestine/Israel

I got back home to Charlottesville, Virginia, Monday evening, and have been working my rear end off since then writing a long article to a tight deadline. Got up at...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:44 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

February 14, 2004

'Concentration' in Palestine

I've spent most of the past week in occupied Palestine, though with the occasional trip over the Green Line into Israel. While here, I've had ample opportunity, yet again, to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:30 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 09, 2004

Jerusalem's Apartheid Wall

I'm now in Jerusalem. This morning, I had some time to spare so I thought I should go and look at some local sections of the vast network of walls...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:34 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

January 04, 2004

Iraq-Palestine revisited

Yesterday, reader Adel el-Sayed put up a comment onto a post I wrote on JWN Feb. 22 in which I argued against the point of view that, "Anyone who wants...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:00 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

December 01, 2003

Geneva Accord-- strengths and weaknesses

The 'Geneva Accord' signed today between non-governmental negotiators from Israel and Palestine was a great achievement, despite its many evident limitations. Chief among the latter is the fact that neither...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:33 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 26, 2003

Edward Said, RIP

So, poor old Edward finally passed away yesterday. The poor guy. He was so brilliant, so insightful, and so frequently wearing his sense of deep psychological wounding right there on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:43 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

September 21, 2003

Palestine/Israel: one state or two?

I was reading Imshin's blog from Israel, and came across a post in which she translated a long extract from a recent article by Shlomo Avnieri bitterly criticizing the few...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:21 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

September 12, 2003

Palestinian people power

Saw some great photos on the BBC website today, of the big gatherings outside the Muqataa in Ramallah last night after Sharon's cabinet voted to try to expel Arafat. YA...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:01 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

September 05, 2003

Abu Mazen/David Kelly

I just quickly want to say this about Abu Mazen, whom I know a little, and whose career I have followed for some 30 years now. He is a very...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:45 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

July 05, 2003

Thin mattress stories--from Palestine and Iraq

Two stories about thin mattresses today. First, from Iraq. Thanks to Juan Cole for linking to Trudy Rubin's recent piece from Najaf in the Philadelphia Inquirer, in which she recounts...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:52 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)