The determination, focus, patience, and perseverance demonstrated by the Obama Administration are already having a significant impact on the long-standing efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Two and a half years after being taken off the air, Radio Al Balad was able to broadcast live during the afternoon session of Parliament on July 6, 2009.
What we lack as a species is a moral-spiritual force for healing that is the equivalent of any of the great mechanisms of destruction we have developed over the millennia in our obsession with dominance.
It's up to a Jewish state to recognize when a policy of collective punishment is self-defeating as well as immoral, and to call a halt. It's up to this Jewish state to redefine patriotism.
If these Uighurs were Buddhists, Bjork, Sting, Bono and all those other one-named saviors of the world's poor and oppressed would have held "Free Xinxiang" concerts already.
In China, Moslems called the Uighurs are fighting to be free of rule by Han Chinese. It figures that they want liberty.
On the question of political character, the evidence on Obama is mixed and its core oddly elusive. Can he be a world leader without being a leader of his cabinet or his country?
Like in Gaza, the events that have unfolded in Iran remind us of the immense obstacles that stand in the way of democracy, tolerance, and respect for human rights.
We know our decision won't get us too many friends in Israel, even among progressives. But we have to do what seems right to us, and hope the message gets through.
McKinney should be released immediately and the medicine and food and clothing she was trying to bring to the besieged and brutalized civilians of the Gaza Strip should be delivered.
Everyone who lives here is a hostage. We know it, even if we are often surprised anew by the specific people who are currently holding us hostage, staving off progress toward a future peace.
Add Iran to the long list of places Bolton would love to attack.
Massad once called Israel a "Jewish and a racist state," and a student alleged that he demanded of an Israeli student, "How many Palestinians did you kill?"
Under Israel's blockade, only 18 food items are approved for import into Gaza, where 65 percent of people live below the poverty line. Other prohibited goods include soccer balls, ink, and paper.
Does Obama have the courage to challenge our own system that Iranians have demonstrated in fighting to change theirs? And if he doesn't, do the rest of us?
When the mainstream American press chose to broadcast the Neda video, it highlighted the hypocritical attitude towards Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation on a daily basis, and who often meet the same fate as Neda.
The United States is telling Israel that we are open to discuss anything and even to compromise but not in advance of final status negotiations along the lines we favor, i.e. "our resolution."
Today, 42 years since the annexation of East Jerusalem, it seems that the future of Palestinian Jerusalemites is gloomier than ever, and that their pathways of existence are narrowing.
Netanyahu may believe that it would be nice to hold on to the West Bank. But in his brain he knows that maintaining Israel's friendship with the United States is infinitely nicer.
Ever since the Iranian revolution stunned the world in 1979, the Arab regimes and their allies in the West have been obsessing over Iran's "exporting of the revolution."
The crucial conflict is not between Israel and Palestine. It's between peace and violence. Our government should condemn all violence -- including, for the first time, Israeli violence.
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I would prefer to see the arabs return to boycotts versus talking poor uneducated folk into blowing themselves up for a sham cause.
Frankly, I was disappointed by this article. It should have been titled "what Arabs can do to appear to support peace".
Until Hamas both recognizes Israel's right to exist, rejects violence, unilaterally cedes all control of negotiations with Israel to the Palestinian Authority and releases Gilad Shalit, peace will not happen. Fareed Zakaria got it right when he said that when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the problem isn't "no light at the end of the tunnel" it is that there is a light but that there is no "tunnel" to get to it.
The bottom line is that PaIestine belongs to the PaIestinians, and all PaIestinian refugees have the inalienable right to return to their homes and lands. Nobody can sign anything that compromises these rights.
Just what part of "War" is it exactly that you don't get?
Wars are fought in all spheres and in all possible ways. Overt violence is only the "tip of the iceberg".
Stop being so being so hopelessly naive. The sooner all parties face up to this stark reality, the sooner they can constructively deal with it.
" Settlements " is another name for the wish to exclude Israeli Jews from their own country. Without a peace treaty to draw the lines on the map, how are the Palestinians ever going to have their own country? Is a two-State peace treaty possible when most Arabs challenge the right of Israel to exist?
Settlements are just one more way for the Palestinians to perpetuate making peace. There wasn't peace before the settlements existed, there isn't peace with the settlements there now, and there won't be peace even if every single settlement is removed. Because the settlements doesn't speak to the heart of the problem: the refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel's right to exist and make peace.
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