The United Kingdom issued new guidelines on Friday limiting the foreign aid it gives to the Palestinian Authority following reports that the money was being used to pay salaries to terrorists and their families. The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) announced that the Palestinian Authority will continue to receive British aid...
Continue Reading >>
On one of my first assignments abroad as a rookie journalist back in the early 1990s, I found myself in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, just as the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia was getting underway in earnest. One afternoon, sitting with a group of journalists and writers in a café in...
Continue Reading >>
An official TV channel of the Palestinian Authority repeatedly broadcast a song calling for violence against Israel last week, the watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch reported Monday. The broadcast of the song “Long Live Fatah Men” occurred during Fatah’s party conference, from November 29 to December 4. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud...
Continue Reading >>
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday harshly criticized the election of a convicted murderer and terrorist to a key committee of Fatah, the Palestinian Authority’s ruling party. Marwan Barghouti is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role orchestrating murders during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. He...
Continue Reading >>
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has strengthened his grip on the influential Fatah faction following the party’s Congress, as his supporters dominated a vote for the party’s central committee. The results of the election to Fatah’s key body were announced Sunday by Arab media, on the final day of the Fatah...
Continue Reading >>
Mideast Envoys Think Jimmy Carter’s Peace Proposal is Nuts After publishing an op-ed in The New York Times on Tuesday calling on President Barack Obama to recognize Palestinian statehood and support efforts in the United Nations Security Council to set parameters for a peace agreement, former President Jimmy Carter was the...
Continue Reading >>
George Mitchell, the former Democratic Senate Majority Leader who served as President Obama’s Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, said in an interview Thursday that he disagreed with President Jimmy Carter’s New York Times op-ed published earlier this week, which suggested that Obama impose terms of an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord through...
Continue Reading >>
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gave a three-hour long address Wednesday to the Fatah congress, which is meeting this week in Ramallah. Although Abbas praised the Oslo Accords, a series of peace agreements with Israel in the 1990s, as an “important step” for the Palestinian people, he warned that he “will...
Continue Reading >>
The New York Times op-ed that former president Jimmy Carter published on Tuesday, which explains his support for a United Nations Security Council resolution outlining parameters for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, contains recommendations that would “leave the Obama legacy in tatters, while diminishing US credibility in the process,” veteran State Department peace negotiator Aaron David...
Continue Reading >>
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was unanimously chosen to lead the Fatah party for another five years at a convention that excluded his political opponents, further strengthening his hold on the party while cementing the rifts in the Palestinian polity. Excluded from the conference were supporters of Mohammed Dahlan, an Abbas...
Continue Reading >>
