July 16, 2007

Bush whitewashes, tries to prop up Abu Mazen

President Bush today made a speech in the White House with the clear intention of assuring an ever-skeptical world that he is concerned about the Palestinian question, and that he's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:56 PM | Fulltext link (39 comments)

December 16, 2006

Rabbani on Palestinian politics

HC: I've just been back in touch with the smart, well-informed Palestinian political analyst Mouin Rabbani. I told him I thought the observation he made to me back in April...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:40 PM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

December 13, 2006

If I were Jimmy Carter...

(which I'm not)... I would not have written a book with an attention-grabbing title like Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid without using even just a little portion of the text to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:35 PM | Fulltext link (143 comments)

December 09, 2006

Why the US (and Israel) should talk to Hamas

A good post on the blog of Conflicts Forum... It's the contribution that CF co-head Mark Perry made to a debate held in NYC recently on the motion of whether...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:59 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

November 30, 2006

Israel's draconian 'movement controls': the reality

Laila el-Haddad has a searing account on her blog of what it has been like-- yet again-- to have to wait for many days at the Rafah crossing point as...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:30 PM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

November 26, 2006

Gaza ceasefire starts (raggedly)

Last night, Israel and the Palestinian Authority both committed themselves to a ceasefire between Gaza and Israel, that would also include the complete withdrawal of the IOF troops from Gaza....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:03 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

November 22, 2006

Rights-less in Gaza (or not even in it yet)

To understand somethng of how it feels to be a Palestinian, go read Laila el-Haddad's account of her (so far unsuccessful) attempt to return with her son and her parents...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:22 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 21, 2006

Gaza: Home demolitions, nonviolent resistance, HRW, etc

The Israeli government's assault on the rights and the physical security of the 3.2 million Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza continues. Today, the NYT made a good...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:27 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

November 13, 2006

"We Want Peace" on YouTube

Hagit Tarnari, one of the dedicated pro-peace Israeli participants in our recent U.N. University conference on nonviolence in Amman, Jordan, made a little video at the end of the conference...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:48 AM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

November 10, 2006

A plea from Jameela al-Shanti

Whem I was in Gaza in March, one of the Hamas people I interviewed was newly elected legislator Jamila al-Shanty. In this piece that I subsequently wrote for Salon, I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:31 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

October 18, 2006

More Fateh leadership woes

Danny Rubinstein of HaAretz has an interesting article in Thursday's paper, in which he writes that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is facing a tough new challenge from other veteran leaders...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:07 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

October 15, 2006

Uri Avnery's "The Great Experiment"

Uri Avnery, the Grand Old Man of the Israeli peace movement, wrote a classic essay recently, which I accessed through the "Occupation Magazine" link. (Y'all can always check out Occupation...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:05 PM | Fulltext link (26 comments)

A Palestinian villa in West Jerusalem

When I was in Israel back in March, I noted here that the Weekend Haaretz had had an interesting little article about some of the fine, originally Palestinian homes in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:50 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

October 03, 2006

Chutzpah and Condi

It must take a certain dogged kind of chutzpah to be Condi Rice. I mean, there she has been for the past eight months doing everything she could to undermine...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:10 PM | Fulltext link (44 comments)

September 11, 2006

National unity government in Palestine-- at last!

So Pres. Mahmoud Abbas and PM Ismail Haniyeh have finally agreed on the terms for an intra-Palestinian political deal and the formation of a national unity government. About time! Back...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:22 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 09, 2006

Planning for June 2007

The early days of June 2007 will see two significant Middle Eastern anniversaries: 25 years since Israel's June 1982 invasion of Lebanon and 40 years since the beginning of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:02 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

August 31, 2006

Palestine: casualties and open thread

Here is the weekly summary that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights produced for the period 17-23 August, 2006, cataloguing major rights abuses inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israeli...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:31 PM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

August 07, 2006

Suffering in Gaza, lest we forget

July was the most lethal month for the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza since the terrible month of April 2002. The MSM in the US seems to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:31 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

July 11, 2006

Haniyeh writes in the WaPo

PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose people continue to bear the brunt of Israel's legnthy assault on their communities, has now spoken clearly and directly to the US public and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:19 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

July 09, 2006

Gideon Levy, other Israelis of conscience

Haaretz's Gideon Levy has an important piece in today's paper that takes on and refutes the "But the Palestinians started it!" argument so frequently made by Israelis-- and, I would...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:53 AM | Fulltext link (23 comments)

July 02, 2006

Haniyeh's office hit

Israeli aircraft sent two missiles into the offices of recently elected Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh in the wee hours of this morning (Sunday). That report, by the AP's Ravi Nessman,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:56 AM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

July 01, 2006

Escalation against Gaza

The situation in Gaza (and much of the West Bank) seems to be horrendous. This UN OCHA report for June 30 provides some figures for the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:28 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

June 13, 2006

Divide and rule, Israeli-style

AP's Steven Weizman reported today that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday he had given the go ahead for a shipment of weapons to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:58 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

June 11, 2006

Traveling; connections hard

I'm in NYC for a couple of days. High-speed connections are hard to come by. Plus I'm extremely busy: family stuff; setting up my Uganda trip for July; checking page-proofs...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:57 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

May 26, 2006

The Palestinian prisoners' plan: whose political weapon?

The western media have given quite a lot of attention to the agreement reportedly concluded recently by leaders of the various political factions among the 7,000-plus Palestinian prisoners held by...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:31 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

May 25, 2006

My piece on Hamas in Boston Review

I got home from Kansas to find the heavy envelope containing my six copies of the edition of Boston Review that contains my big article on Hamas. Then today I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:34 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

May 11, 2006

Wilson Center conference on Israel-Palestine

Yesterday morning I went to a very interesting small conference jointly organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center and the American Task Force on Palestine. Former PA Information Minister Yasser...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:50 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

May 09, 2006

Kadima government helps break the boycott on Hamas?

In my piece on Hamas for Boston Review, the dateline for which was May 1, I had written that the continuation of the harshly damaging boycott on allowing any material...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:14 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

May 03, 2006

Wolfensohn steps down; End of Quartet?

Jim Wolfensohn, the former World Bank President who has worked for the past year as the representative of the "Quartet" in furthering Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking, has stepped down. As is clear...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:03 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

April 22, 2006

Fateh's role after its electoral calamity

Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:28 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

April 19, 2006

Palestinians and Jordan

I had a coffee today with an old friend of our family who is a Palestinian who was born and grew up in one of the great cities of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:24 PM | Fulltext link (35 comments)

Political revocation of Palestinians' residency rights in Jerusalem

The Israeli government has decided it will try to take away from the four elected Hamas lawmakers who are residents of Jerusalem the ID cards that allow them to live...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:12 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

April 12, 2006

Meanwhile, in the West Bank

A great Amira Hass piece on April 12 reminds us of some of the realities of the stifling and anti-humane interaction between Israelis and Palestinians inside the West Bank. Remembering...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:29 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

April 11, 2006

Eyeless in Gaza

I can't finish this string of posts without urging you to go read Laila el-Haddad's extremely moving description of how life feels in Gaza under Israeli bombardment. And then, from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:16 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

April 04, 2006

Zahhar, Annan, China

So Palestinian FM Mahmoud Zahhar has sent an intriguing letter to UN chief Kofi Annan. In the portions of the text seen by the AFP reporter, Zahhar assures Annan that,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:24 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

Israeli escalations against Gaza

Read Laila el-Haddad's account of how Israeli F-16s today bombed President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential compound near the area of downtown Gaza where she and her family live: Israeli fighter jets...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:03 PM | Fulltext link (35 comments)

April 03, 2006

Opinions of Palestinians in Lebanon surveyed

An interesting recent survey of opinion among (camp-residing) Palestinian refugees in Lebanon found that, Hamas leads the Palestinian polls with 48 percent, followed by Fatah with 24 percent and the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:11 PM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

April 01, 2006

Stabilization/destabilization in Gaza

I am not close enough to Gaza to be able to say anything definitive about the clashes that have occurred there the past couple of days. Yesterday, Abu Yousef Abu...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:29 AM | Fulltext link (55 comments)

March 29, 2006

Democracy in Palestine

This from AP: Hamas formally took power Wednesday, with the Palestinian president swearing in a 24-member Cabinet that includes 14 ministers who served time in Israeli prisons. The ceremony, which...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:52 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

March 25, 2006

Who are the Palestinian militants?

I am getting increasingly fed-up with the way so much of the western MSM continues mindlessly to echo the refrain that the Hamas people are "militants". You almost always see...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:36 AM | Fulltext link (43 comments)

Abu Mazen plays hardball (but not with Israel)

I regret that I didn't get to see PA president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) when I was in Palestine recently. It seemed that whenever I was in Gaza, he was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:09 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

March 23, 2006

OPT's: solid humanitarian info

This is Reliefweb's portal to solid, sector-by-sector information about the humanitarian situation i the Occupied Palestinian territories. Through there you can go to this March 19 report from the UN's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:46 AM | Fulltext link (17 comments)

March 22, 2006

Pass the smelling salts!

So it now seems the delusional imaginings of one Israeli civilian woman "caused" the Israelis' entire, world-class armed forces to decide to close the Karni crossing for nearly all of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:24 AM | Fulltext link (46 comments)

March 21, 2006

Palestinian polls, etc.

As part of the research for the big piece I'm writing this week on Palestine, I've found a couple of good portals to Palestinian polling and other info. This is...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:50 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 19, 2006

Zahhar as FM: it's official

Here's Jazeera English's report on the new PA cabinet list. Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar is, as was earlier predicted, the new Foreign Minister-designate. Which makes my recent interview with him all...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:32 PM | Fulltext link (54 comments)

March 18, 2006

Interview with Zahhar

AP is reporting today that Mahmoud Zahhar, one of the co-founders of Hamas, "most likely will be named foreign minister, according to a preliminary list of Cabinet ministers given...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:33 PM | Fulltext link (64 comments)

March 17, 2006

Trouble in Fatehland

Oops, I knew the Israeli raid on the Jericho jail was a major humiliation for Abu Mazen, but now AP is reporting that several officials in his own Fateh Party...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:50 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

Hamas's negotiating stance

Amira Hass has two interesting stories in today's HaAretz that describe important elements of the stance Hamas has adopted with regard to the two major challenges it faces: forming a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:26 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

March 15, 2006

Pictures from Palestine/Israel

I'm still a bit uncertain about posting photos into the blog. Both because I'm uncertain about digital photography in general and because I know they take a lot of space/time...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:46 PM | Fulltext link (27 comments)

March 14, 2006

Salon.com article on Hamas women

Here is my second piece for Salon.com, up on their site today. Once again, if you're not a subscriber you'll have to sit through a small ad before you can...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:56 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

March 10, 2006

Bil'in Friday

I decided to go down to Bil'in today, to the weekly anti-Wall demonstration that the villagers have been running there for more than a year now. I went with a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:39 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

Hamas lawmaker on Islam and society

This is an interesting and significant short public exposition, in English, of the views of a Hamas legislator on how he sees the role of Islam in society. (And actually,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:33 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

March 09, 2006

Jerusalem: writing, visiting, talking

Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:03 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

Today's CSM column on Gaza

Here's my column in today's CSM. (Also here.) I should just tell you one thing about the donkey carts mentioned in the story (and featured, I see, in the subhead...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:37 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

March 08, 2006

Chaos, closure, and the Gaza greenhouses

One commenter wrote that when I wrote here recently about the greenhouses in Gaza that an American Jewish group helped hand over to the Palestinians last year, the source I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:57 AM | Fulltext link (22 comments)

March 05, 2006

Discussions in Gaza

I've had some interesting conversations since coming here. Yesterday I conducted an interview with Ghazi Hamad, the managing editor of the Hamas weekly, Al-Resalah. (Here's their online edition.) Today I...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:20 AM | Fulltext link (30 comments)

March 03, 2006

Coming to Gaza

Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:43 AM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

March 01, 2006

Wolfensohn letter, text

I just want to bookmark the link to the version of James Wolfensohn's letter of February 25 that was acquired by the WaPo and published yesterday....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:23 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 26, 2006

The Hamas perspective

Hamas Chief Whip Mahmoud Ramahi said yesterday that the party would be prepared to have the Palestinians' 'foreign affairs' conducted by the (Fateh-dominated) PLO, rather than insisting that it be...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:11 AM | Fulltext link (22 comments)