December 03, 2008

Welcome new thinking on the Palestine Question

In Washington today former deputy speaker of Israel's Knesset Naomi Chazan had some great advice for President-elect Obama. Noting that Israel's election comes just 20 days after Obama's inauguration,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:21 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

November 19, 2008

Israel attacks Gaza, demonstrates it is still the 'occupying power'

The Israeli military has sent ground forces deep into Gaza over the past two weeks, and has killed 17 Palestinians, and wounded uncounted others. In what even longtime Israeli flack...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:10 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 15, 2008

Gaza at crisis point

On Thursday, November 13, the UN agency UNRWA announced that because of Israel's continued tight closure of the border with Gaza, it would have to stop the distribution of basic...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:20 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 04, 2008

European parliamentarians invite Hamas and Fatah lawmakers to Strasbourg

A delegation of Members of the European Parliament headed by Cypriot MEP Kyriacos Triantaphyllides that's currently visiting Gaza has invited all elected Palestinian parliamentarians to visit the European Parliament, seated...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:47 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 30, 2008

Olmert's late-term epiphany on Iran and Palestine

It was not quite Saul the tax-collector on the road to Damascus but it was almost like that. Ehud Olmert, still nominally in office as Israel's PM but leaving very...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:00 AM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

September 26, 2008

Curtains for Middle East 'Quartet'?

It has been evident for several years now to people who watch the Palestinian situation closely that this strange bird the Middle East 'Quartet' that was tasked in 2002 with...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:54 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

September 01, 2008

Egyptian delegation to break Gaza siege

The plan, as described on Hamas's website here, could be huge. It will almost certainly have a much bigger impact than the two-small-ship siege-busting effort undertaken from Europe last month....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:02 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

June 19, 2008

Selling the tahdi'eh

The Hamas-Israel ceasefire (tahdi'eh) went into operation today, thank God. But not without-- as I forecast yesterday-- some last-minute salvoes from each side. The tahdi'eh is scheduled to last in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:04 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

June 18, 2008

Bad timing

On the day that Israel announces it's agreed to participate in a reciprocal ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza, Ziad Asali, the head of the "American Task for Palestine" (more rightwing...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:01 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

Tahdi'eh: Israel confirms

There will be no handshakes and back-patting on the White House lawn, and no turn-on-a-dime lionizing of this Palestinian leadership by the pillars of the world Jewish community. But the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:34 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

June 15, 2008

More confirmation on Israel-Hamas deal

Haaretz publishes this today: Israel has agreed in principle to an Egyptian-mediated proposal for a cease-fire and the opening of intensive talks for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:27 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

June 14, 2008

Hamas-Israel deal about to be reached?

Time.com's Tim McGirk reports from Jerusalem today that: both Israeli and Palestinian sources expect that by the middle of next week, a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas brokered by...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:29 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

June 04, 2008

Abbas-Hamas reconciliation: Bushist Quarantine Wall crumbles further

So now PA President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to join the long stream of US Middle East allies-- including Israel, Egypt, and Qatar, and the UAE, etc etc-- who are...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:36 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

Bernard Chazelle on Palestine-Israel

Long-time JWN commenter Bernard Chazelle has written and web-published a thoughtful description of, and reflection upon, a recent substantial trip he made to Israel and Palestine. (Or to Palestine/Israel? Or...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:33 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

May 28, 2008

Tutu in Gaza, meeting Hamas

South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is in Gaza on a fact-finding mission that he, along with LSE professor Christine Chinkin, is conducting on behalf of the UN Human Rights...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:20 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

May 15, 2008

'Hamas and the end of the two-state solution' in Boston Review

My latest long article on Hamas is now up on the Boston Review's website. The full title is Breakout: Hamas and the end of the two-state solution. Of course, you...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:49 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

May 14, 2008

Bush, Israel at 60, interesting days ahead?

McClatchy's perceptive Jerusalem correspondent Dion Nissenbaum has a great post on his blog today titled "Bush/Olmert: A meeting of lame ducks." (Though he does note the term was actually coined...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:44 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

April 24, 2008

Tahdi'eh-- Hamas says Yes

So Hamas has now signed on to a ceasefire/truce plan with Israel that covers in the first instance only the Israel-Gaza front, but with a proposal that this be extended...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:33 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

April 22, 2008

Hamas-Israel ceasefire near? (Also, Carter)

This morning, Egypt's prestigious semi-official daily Al-Ahram reported that the much-needed, Egypt-mediated Israel-Hamas ceasefire (tahdi'eh) agreement may be on the point of getting nailed down. Given the extreme reluctance with...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:27 AM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

April 19, 2008

Hamas, Carter, the Egyptian mediation, etc

I have a big family weekend this weekend. So not much time to blog about Jimmy Carter's meeting with Khaled Meshaal, or this report, by the WaPo's Glenn Kessler, on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:56 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 18, 2008

Palestinian choice on dealing with a hostile status quo

My good friends Hussein Agha and Rob Malley have a thoughtful and generally intelligent article on the current (sad) state of the formal Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" in the latest New...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:38 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

April 17, 2008

WaPo pulls a Lee Bollinger on Mahmoud Zahhar

Today's WaPo contains a hard-hitting op-ed from Hamas's Mahmoud Zahhar, the foreign minister in the Gaza-based PA caretaker government. Zahhar is leading a six-man Hamas delegation that yesterday crossed from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

April 15, 2008

Who is Khaled Meshaal?

Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:36 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

April 08, 2008

Carter to meet with Meshaal?

Guess who is reportedly going to Damascus to meet Khaled Meshaal. An excellent decision by Pres. Jimmy Carter. I don't know where so many Americans got the idea that simply...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:18 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

April 05, 2008

More Jerusalem

I wrote here Thursday about why Jerusalem plays a special role within the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as a whole. I didn't write much about the ever threatened physical-planning situation faced daily...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:10 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

April 03, 2008

Why Jerusalem is special

Jerusalem is one of my favorite cities in the whole world. Not just because of the spectacular integrity of the Old City, as a concept and a reality. Not even...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:50 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

March 24, 2008

Messaging chaos from Washington, Fateh, on Hamas issue

Sorry I've been very busy and haven't had a moment to catch you all up with the fascinating saga of the Fateh-Hamas negotiations in Sana'a, Yemen... Al-Jazeera English tells us...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:46 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

March 21, 2008

NYT is only 13 days behind JWN on the Hamas-Israel story

The NYT's handsomely compensated diplomatic reporter Helene Cooper is "only" 13 days behind Just World News in reporting that Egypt has gotten some support from the US State Department in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:36 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 15, 2008

Palestinian 'Contras'-training plan in chaos

The plan hatched by Condi Rice and Elliott Abrams to train up a Palestinian 'Contras'-style force under the auspices of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has fallen into a significant degree...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:40 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 12, 2008

Israel-Hamas deal closer; New role for Abu Mazen

Hamas looks as though it is moving ever closer to concluding the ceasefire (Tahdi'a) deal with Israel. (For previous sit reps on this see 1 and 2.) A couple of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:27 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 10, 2008

Will this Israel-Hamas de-escalation continue?

Barak Ravid and Amos Harel of Haaretz tell us that PA President Mahmoud Abbas told al-Arabiyya t.v. that Hamas has asked Israel to refrain from killing its leaders, and the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:37 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 08, 2008

More from Rabbani on Fateh

My esteemed colleague Mouin Rabbani was kind enough to send me a speedy and thoughtful response to the comments I wrote here, a couple of days ago, about the short...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:23 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

Progress in the Gaza ceasefire talks?

The western MSM has been fixated on Thursday's tragic, unjustifiable killings of eight students at a West Jerusalem yeshiva (Jewish religious school), and to a lesser extent on the effect...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:25 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

March 05, 2008

What is Fateh FOR?

The excellent Palestinian political analyst Mouin Rabbani recently left the International Crisis Group. Their huge loss. But already he has published a very informative piece of analysis on Fateh's very...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:18 PM | Fulltext link (28 comments)

March 04, 2008

1948, 2008

By all accounts of Middle Eastern history, the events of 1948-- okay, primarily, the establishing of the State of Israel and the violence and dispossession associated with that act-- were...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:27 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

March 03, 2008

Condi's anti-Hamas plot: The Vanity Fair version

The brilliant, hard-working investigative journalist David Rose has a lengthy article in the April 2008 edition of Vanity Fair that gives many new details-- including some from internal State Department...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:17 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

March 02, 2008

Israel escalating assaults on Gaza

The Israeli government has been escalating its air and land assaults against Gaza, having killed some 70-100 Palestinians there, including numerous civilians, over the past two days. This escalation has...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:52 AM | Fulltext link (116 comments)

February 29, 2008

Israeli deputy minister threatens Gaza with 'Shoah'

Israel's deputy defense Minister, Matan Vilnai, yesterday threatened a new 'Shoah' (Holocaust) in Gaza, if Hamas and the other militant Palestinian forces there continue to send rockets against southern Israel....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:50 AM | Fulltext link (44 comments)

February 25, 2008

Israel terrified of Gazans' nonviolent mass actions

Hamas-linked Palestinian legislator Jamal al-Khudari has been working with colleagues in the Popular Committee Against the Siege to organize various mass nonviolent actions in the Strip. The latest, today, was...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:28 PM | Fulltext link (86 comments)

February 16, 2008

Transcript of Jan. 16th interview with Khaled Meshaal

I have now uploaded the full transcript of the one-hour interview I conducted with the head of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, in Damascus last month. I shan't add...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:02 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

February 15, 2008

Video of Froman and Amayreh discussing Accord

Haaretz today carries a short video showing Rabbi Menachem Froman and close-to-Hamas Palestinian journalist Khaled Amayreh meeting in the garden of the Cave of the Patriarchs /Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:47 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

February 13, 2008

Discussing Hamas on Capitol Hill

At yesterday's Capitol Hill panel discussion on "Re-calculating Annapolis" I tried to present the best arguments I could for the US to end its profoundly anti-democratic current practice of working...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:15 PM | Fulltext link (32 comments)

February 09, 2008

Mubarak on the Gaza question

This is the English-language version of an interview conducted on January 30th with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak by two correspondents from Italy's La Repubblica. A very well-informed person tells me...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:52 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

February 07, 2008

Daniel Pipes, making sense?

Every so often people can surprise you. Thus it was today with Daniel Pipes, writing in the Jerusalem Post that Israel should just "offload" Gaza onto Egypt. What I don't...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:38 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

February 04, 2008

Amayreh-Froman accord: A way forward for Israel and Palestine?

Today's Haaretz carries exciting news about a proposal for an Israel-Gaza ceasefire that has been jointly drafted by Khaled Amayreh, a Hebron-area journalist who is close to Hamas (and whose...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:54 AM | Fulltext link (40 comments)

February 03, 2008

Egypt's diplomacy on Hamas-Fateh and the Rafah crossing

Egypt's great daily paper Al-Masry Al-Yawm has an important article today describing the intensive efforts Egyptian officials have been making to secure both a (degree of) Hamas-Fateh reconciliation and an...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:27 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

February 02, 2008

Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan: Bushism in disarray

The past few weeks have not been good ones for the Bush administration's project of establishing firm, pro-western beach-heads in a broad swathe of western Asia from Gaza to Afghanistan....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:57 PM | Fulltext link (18 comments)

January 31, 2008

Al-Ahram Weekly on Egypt and Gaza

I've been unbelievably busy with the galley-proofs (or whatever they call today's functional equivalent of them) of my book. Five chapters down, and two to finish tomorrow... Meanwhile, I see...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:07 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

January 30, 2008

Meshaal interview at 'Foreign Policy' website

A condensed version of my Jan. 16th interview with Hamas head Khaled Meshaal is now published on the website of Foreign Policy magazine. Under my agreement with them, they have...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:21 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

January 29, 2008

Waiting for Winograd...

Y-net News tells us that today, one day before the long-delayed release of the Winograd Commission's second report, Ehud Olmert spoke in the Knesset about "the loneliness of the leader."...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:37 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

January 28, 2008

"No way to avoid Hamas now", in CSM

My column under that title is in Wednesday's CSM. (Also, archived here.*) The bottom line is here: During Mr. Bush's recent trip to the Middle East, he said some welcome...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:07 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Hamas transforms the regional map

More evidence is emerging that, in undertaking January 23's mass civilian bust-out from Gaza, Gaza's elected Hamas leadership was seeking not only to deal with the immediate humanitarian crisis brought...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:40 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

January 26, 2008

(Mis-)framing the Gaza-Israel conflict

In western countries and in much of the west-dominated "international community" news reports, commentaries, and statements by diplomats tend to present the Gaza-Israel conflict as some kind of two-sided issue...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:40 PM | Fulltext link (35 comments)

January 25, 2008

Gaza scenarios...

It is possible, though at this point highly unlikely-- see my note #1 below-- that the Israeli government will forcefully intervene sometime in the near future to break the link...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:59 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

Gaza bust-out: Effects on the regional balance

Our Israeli commenter JES wrote here yesterday that it was notable how little attention was being paid in Israel to the momentous developments in Gaza. Today, Haaretz has a significant...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:30 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 24, 2008

Jonathan Edelstein's thoughts on the Gaza bust-out

Note: Jonathan Edelstein is one of the best-informed and wisest analysts of Israeli-Palestinian matters-- among other matters-- whom I have the honor of knowing. He is not, currently, keeping up...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:37 PM | Fulltext link (26 comments)

More on Gaza-Egypt

Hamas's Palestine Information Center has these items: 1. "Haneyya: The [Palestinian caretaker] government is ready to hold urgent talks with Egypt regarding Rafah." Includes this: Khaled Mishaal, the head of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:28 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

US-led force to leave part of Sinai? This is huge!

Debka-file started reporting at 9:38 a.m. GMT today that early today, American forces and equipment withdrew from the Multi-force Organization base at Al Gura northeast of al Arish. This force...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:24 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

January 23, 2008

As Bush sows, so Hamas reaps?

I just want to add to all my previous posts here on the Gaza Palestinians' bust-out of earlier today that the political ground for this intriguing new move was sown...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:58 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

Debka-file's interesting take on the Gaza bust-out

Here's how Israel's Debka-file reported* on today's Gaza bust-out: Senior [Israeli] military sources told DEBKAfile that the strategic feat achieved by Hamas Tuesday night, in capturing a section of Sinai...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:26 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

And I can now reveal...

...that last week in Damascus I interviewed Hamas head Khaled Mishaal and Palestinian Islamic Jihad head Ramadan Shallah. More-- including as soon as possible a link to the audio from...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:28 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Gaza bust-out: Past plans and future prospects

This report from the London Times's James Hider strongly indicates that the demolition of vast long stretches of the wall between Gaza and Egypt had been long planned by Gaza's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:41 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

Gaza's opening to Egypt

At dawn this morning, Palestine-Israel time, masked gunmen set explosive charges that felled much of the high wall that has separated Israeli-occupied Gaza from Egypt since the conclusion of Israel's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:23 AM | Fulltext link (4 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)