The long-stalled Middle East peace process was finally resumed last month, when proximity talks mediated by US envoy George Mitchell between Israel and the Palestinian Authority finally began on May 9...
Muslims worldwide have just commemorated the tragic events of Karbala when more than 1,300 years ago Imam Husain, his family and a small group of committed Muslims were massacred by the army of Yazid...
Almost until the expensive limousines carrying senior Fatah members began converging on Bethlehem on August 3 and 4, it had been unclear whether the convention would go ahead...
Iqbal Jassat reviews Jaqueline Rose’s The Last Resistance (UK: Verso, 2007), 256 pages, Hbk: £16.99. A regular contributor to the London Review of Books, Jacqueline Rose has written a compelling new book which Sarah Roy of Harvard University correctly predicts is destined to become a standard in the field of literature on Zionism.
Question: What does a great power do when it suffers an unexpected defeat and a major setback in its plans for achieving an acceptable solution to a problem? Answer: It sits back, regroups, deflects public attention to other issues, and works quietly behind the scenes to prepare the ground for a new attempt to achieve its objectives by some other strategy in future.
Hundreds of delegates from around the world participated in the Fourth International Conference in Tehran (March 4–6, 2009) in Support of Palestine: the Model of Resistance, and Ghazzah: the Victim of War Crimes. The following is the address by the Rahbar, IMAM SEYYED ALI KHAMENEI on 6th of Rabi‘ al-Awwal, 1430 AH.
As the Israeli military machine battered Gaza earlier this year, during weeks of the most ferocious assaults on Palestinians seen in decades, it seemed that a major and significant turning point had been reached in the struggle between Zionist expansionism and Palestinian resistance.
Calls to try Israeli leaders for war crimes for their conduct in the war against the civilian population in Ghazzah are getting louder. The first serious criticisms came from two officials at the United Nations: Migual D’Escoto, President of the General Assembly, and Professor Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Israel’s three-week long offensive on the tiny desert patch called Ghazzah has once again revealed the barbaric nature of the zionist state. Showing complete disregard for civilian lives, many of them children, whom they deliberately and repeatedly targeted, the zionists stand exposed as war criminals.
History has a habit of returning with a vengeance to reveal the behavior of unsavory characters. The Israeli onslaught on Ghazzah launched on December 27 that resulted in the cold-blooded murder of thousands of Palestinians is not the first dastardly crime perpetrated by the zionists.
For 18 months my people in Ghazzah have been under siege, incarcerated inside the world’s biggest prison, sealed off from land, air and sea, caged and starved, denied even medication for our sick. After the slow death policy came the bombardment. In this most densely populated of places, nothing has been spared Israel’s warplanes, from government buildings to homes, mosques, hospitals, schools and markets.
The 20-day perseverance that you, the courageous resistance fighters and the people of Ghazzah demonstrated against one of the most atrocious war crimes in the history of the world has hoisted the flag of glory over the head of the Islamic Ummah. You have proven that Muslim hearts filled with confidence in Allah, glorified be His name, and the Day of Judgment, which will not bow to oppression, can create such heroism that will bring the arrogant powers of the world and their well-equipped armies to their knees.
Has the internal rumpus within the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had an impact on South Africa’s foreign policy? Or is it that an Israel gone mad has led Pretoria to re-assess its ties with the former apartheid sanction-busting state?
The arrogant powers’ apparatus, which does not believe in any human principles, wishes to dominate the sensitive Middle East region that has enormous wealth and is situated in a strategic geographical area and enjoys great economic advantages. The way they want to achieve that objective is through the usurper zionist Israel that occupies Palestine.
In June 2005, the Islamic Human Rights Commission and NEDA convened a conference of academics, theologians and practitioners entitled ‘Towards a New Liberation Theology: Reflections on Palestine’ the papers submitted for which form the content of this book. The conference was intended to be the first in a series of events and books exploring the relationship between the practical experiences of those living through events in various world flashpoints, their faith affiliations and aspirations and the possibilities of effecting justice through their goals rather than the imposition of ‘peace’ at any price and without any relevance to those it would most affect. Put more simply, this is an exercise in realizing the potential that religion has in resolving conflicts that have been irresolvable through secular initiatives.
1November saw both an intensification of Israel’s low-level war on Ghazzah, and a further murderous tightening of its economic blockade. But hopes for healing the breach between Fatah and Hamas failed yet again, largely as a result of internal political pressures on Fatah and the Israelis. IQBAL SIDDIQUI reports.
To mark the cccasion of Yaum al-Quds this year, Crescent International in South Africa published a booklet analysing the rise of Hamas and the current state of the Palestinian struggle. Here we publish an abridged version of this booklet. The full version is available on the website of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought.
The last Friday of Ramadan each year is marked around the world as Yaum al-Quds: the Day of al-Quds. This tradition was begun by Imam Khomeini r.a. shortly after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, as an annual affirmation of the Ummah’s solidarity with the Muslims of Palestine in their struggle for the liberation of al-Quds .
In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of the true nature of zionism and the Israeli state in the West. FAHAD ANSARI discusses the reasons for this change, and finds them in the determination of Palestinians to resist their oppression and dispossession.
When Palestinians in Ghazzah broke down the fence dividing the city of Rafah into Egyptian and Ghazzan sections, and crossed into Egypt to obtain vital supplies that they have been starved of by Israel’s blockade of Ghazzah, it was a clear demonstration of both their plight and their determination to survive, despite the hardships and suffering. Perhaps most significant of all was a point noted by many journalists and other observers: that despite their situation in Ghazzah, few Palestinians were trying to remain in Egypt.
