With Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Beirut, at the helm, the “only democracy in the Middle East” has gone berserk. It is using US-supplied Apache helicopters against Palestinian activists, in complete disregard of human life. Amer Hudeiri, a Hamas activist, was martyred on August 5 when Israel fired two missiles at his car in the West Bank town of Tulkerm...
The hottest confrontation between Hizbullah and Israel since Israel’s retreat from most of South Lebanon in May last year began shortly after noon on July 1 when two Israeli warplanes fired two air-to-surface missiles at a Syrian radar-station near the village of Sar’in al-Tahta in Lebanon’s eastern Beqa’a Valley.
A Hamas mujahid was martyred in an operation against an Israeli target in the Ghazzah area of occupied Palestine on July 9. He was Nafez Ayesh al-Nadher, aged 26. He was driving near the Kissufim crossing-point between Ghazzah and 1948 Palestine and detonated his vehicle as a military vehicle passed. Israeli sources denied that any of its soldiers had been involved.
Is the past finally catching up with Ariel Sharon, better known as the “Butcher of Beirut”? A case was lodged in a Brussels court on June 18 by survivors of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila refugee-camps (1982), accusing the Israeli prime minister of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The success of the Hizbullah in expelling the zionists from Lebanon last year provided a boost to Islamic movements all over the world. After the beginning of the Al-Aqsa intifada, the Hizbullah launched military operations to support the intifada. Here we present the speech of Hizbullah secretary-general SHAIKH SAYYID HASSAN NASRULLAH at the International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada in Iran in April.
Khalid Misha’al is Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas, the main Palestinian Islamic movement. He represented Hamas at the International Conference on the Palestinian Intifada in Tehran last month as Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin was unable to travel to Iran from Occupied Ghazzah. Here we present an excerpt of his address to the conference.
Just weeks after the Arab governments humiliated themselves with their utter failure to support the Palestinian intifada at their Arab League meeting in Amman on March 28, Islamic Iran showed the way forward with the unqualified support offered to the Palestinians at the opening of its International Conference on the intifada and the zionist problem in Tehran on April 24.
Living up to his reputation as the “Butcher of Beirut,” Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has unleashed still more assaults on the besieged Palestinian civilians with helicopter-gunships, mortars and artillery shells in the West Bank and Ghazzah over the last two weeks.
America loves Israel. This love is unconditional, perhaps even eternal, and is expressed in countless ways. Presidents come and go, politicians live and die, and people spend their lives, but the love outlasts them all.
Ariel Sharon’s ascension to the zionist premiership late in February has had marked effects on the zionist strategy for countering the on-going Palestinian intifada against Israeli occupation. Other things, however, have remained very much the same.
The last colonial outpost in the heartland of Islam is crumbling under the power of the intifada. The overwhelming vote for war-criminal Ariel Sharon in the Israeli elections (February 6) is a sign of zionist desperation in the face of the Palestinians’ achievements.
Two more Palestinians were killed by Israel on January 25. One was a 22-year-old youth shot dead by troops; the other was a 16-year-old boy who died in hospital, one day after being shot by Jewish settlers.
ZAFAR BANGASH, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT), discusses the US’s latest proposals in the Middle East ‘peace process’, and the best way forward for the Palestinians.
Dr Mazen al-Najjar, a former adjunct professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, was released from prison on December 15, 2000, after more than 3 and a half years in jail as a victim of the US’s notorious “secret evidence” system.
Hizbullah secretary-general Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah gave renewed hope to the families of prisoners in Israeli jails last month, when he declared that a German mediation over an exchange of prisoners with Israel should cover all Arab detainees in Israel, not just Lebanese prisoners.
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators opened separate talks with US officials in Washington on November 19, the first stage of a new effort to restart the ‘peace process’ that was stalled by the launching of the Al-Aqsa intifada at the end of September.
Indonesian president Abdur Rahman Wahid raised eyebrows on December 4 when he told his new economic affairs commission that Israel had agreed to invest $200 million in Indonesia.
Egypt, Jordan and Yassir Arafat’s ‘Palestinian National Authority’ (PNA) recently concluded a formal treaty with the US and Israel on combatting Islamic movements, according to Israeli and British media reports quoting senior security and other officials.
The new agreement between Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian ‘president’ Yassir Arafat, signed at Sharm al-Shaikh, near Alexandria, on September 5, was widely greeted as a new start to the ‘peace process’ that had appeared on the verge of stalling during the premiership of Benyamin Netanyahu.
If the authenticity of a Palestinian is judged by the suffering he endured for the last 51 years of displacement ï as some have suggested ï the nearly 500,000 Palestinian refugees residing in Lebanon must be viewed as the most authentic Palestinians of all.