Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ibrahim Hewitt
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Britain’s ‘response to violence in Gaza’ is woefully inadequate
As I write this, at least 52 Palestinians, including children, have been shot and killed by Israeli troops today, Monday 14 May 2018; well over a thousand more have been wounded. If the evidence of the past few weeks is anything to go by, many of their wounds will...
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There is more to Trump’s Palestinian aid threat than meets the eye
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) looks to be facing the brunt of Donald Trump’s threat to cut aid to the Palestinians. The most obvious target for an aid cut if the intention is to force the Palestinian leadership back to...
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An illegitimate capital for a state without legitimacy
It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump has declared that the US is recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. For seasoned US-Israel watchers, it merely confirms what we have been saying for decades: Washington is no honest broker in negotiations to end the Palestine-Israel conflict. Quite...
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Gaza under Hamas: From Islamic Democracy to Islamist Governance
One of this year winner of the Palestine Book Awards, Bjorn Brenner talks about his book 'Gaza Under Hamas'...
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The Palestinian response to Israeli violence is remarkably restrained
I read something last week which looked very familiar; Myanmar state violence against the Rohingya people was said to be a “response” to an attack on police officers by a small group of “renegades”. This “response” has been completely disproportionate, involving armed security forces against unarmed men, women and...
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If Netanyahu rejects peace, what does he really want?
Despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim during that shallow press conference with Donald Trump that he wants to focus on “substance” not “labels”, we now know that he actually rejected a peace deal (and what can be more substantial than that?) put forward by ex-Secretary of State John Kerry last year....
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Post-truth and lies have always been Israel’s way, and the West plays its role
With the announcement that Donald Trump’s choice of US ambassador to Israel is a hawkish Zionist, the campaign to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is already in full swing. As is usual these days, British neocons and pro-Israel cheerleaders are jumping on the bandwagon and...
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Israel is a rogue state; here’s why
By any reasonable assessment, any state which treats international laws and conventions with contempt, flouts them with increasing regularity and maintains a brutal military occupation into the bargain has to fit into the rogue category. Israel is one such state. Even before it declared its “independence” in 1948, the...
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America and Russia could end the war in Syria tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath
While the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins decries the West’s “meddling” in Syria – and suggests that “We must step back” – his humane cri de coeur touches fleetingly on the real problem. “Reality in this part of the world,” writes Jenkins, “is that order and power seem invariably to trump...
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Britain’s exit from the EU should ring alarm bells in Palestine
The news that a majority of voters in Britain have opted to leave the European Union has produced a lot of surprise, shock and anger, and that’s just within the UK itself. The result has given a major boost to far-right extremists who see it as a mandate for...
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Partisan comments from pro-Israel MPs shouldn’t trump expert advice in aid review
Earlier this week we read about Israel being nominated to chair a UN committee which is the “primary forum for the consideration of legal questions in the General Assembly”. As my colleague Ramona Wadi pointed out, this move comes a couple of years after the world’s last colonial state...
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Everything Israel does is part of a plan, not a forced ‘response’ to ‘terrorism’
On the 68th anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe), when the Zionist State of Israel was created on Palestinian land, it is worth reflecting on the propaganda that the world has been fed ever since. Arguably the most pervasive is the perennial claim that Israel only ever “responds” to Palestinian...