By RAMZY BAROUD

A six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza was killed by Israeli fire on 12 June. "Medics say the girl was decapitated by a [tank] shell," Associated Press (AP) reported the next day. The Israeli military said the soldiers opened fire

By RAMZY BAROUD

For the last 60 years, all those who have sought a genuinely peaceful and fair solution for Israel and Palestine have faced the same obstacle — Israel's sense of invincibility and military arrogance, abetted by the US and other Western gov

By RAMZY BAROUD

Don't ask for what you never had,' is the underlying message made by supporters of Israel when they claim Palestine was never a state to begin with.

The contention is, of course, easily refutable. Following the disintegrati

By RAMZY BAROUD

Just days after the Hamas-Fatah clash last June in Gaza, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas looked firm and composed as he shook hands with members of his new emergency government. He made sure his move appeared as legitimate as po

By RAMZY BAROUD

Why did Israel attack Gaza with such brutality? Did Israeli officials think, even for a fleeting moment, that their army's attacks could halt, as opposed to intensify, Palestinian rockets or retaliatory violence? Indeed, was Palestinian violence

By RAMZY BAROUD

Time is running out for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Although both men are still committed to their risky venture of marginalising Hamas at any cost, the latter’s obdurac

By RAMZY BAROUD

In a radio interview prior to the US invasion of Iraq, David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. Chomsky answered, “In some parts of the world people never

By RAMZY BAROUD

Israelis and their supporters tend to depict Israel as a country of miracles. What else could explain the country's astonishing "birth" and subsequent survival against all sorts of "e

By RAMZY BAROUD

Intense debate over Gaza is subsiding as the status quo is delineated -- predictably -- by those with the bigger guns. But to what extent can human suffering be politicised, turned into an intellectual po

By RAMZY BAROUD

A once profound and widely read commentator recently claimed he no longer writes about the Palestine/Israel conflict because "Palestinians are killing each other". Feeling his words

By RAMZY BAROUD

The recent death of Haider Abdul-Shafi could not have come at a worse time. Bearing in mind the grim shortcomings of the Palestinian leadership and the lack of any serious attempt to rectify the situation, the

By RAMZY BAROUD

The rash and self-defeatist behaviour emanating from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his close circle in the West Bank cannot possibly be intended for the benefit of the Palestinian people or for their internationally sanctioned struggle for human rights, freedom and equality. Abbas, and his self-serving Pales

By RAMZY BAROUD

For 62 years since the foundation of the United Nations' Security Council, the Palestinians did not manage to have any kind of sway that would allow them to block or amend a proposed resolution in any meaningful way.

By RAMZY BAROUD

When Hamas members were elected as the majority bloc of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and as it became apparent that a US-led international embargo would be an adjoining price to that victory,

By RAMZY BAROUD

The Hamas-Fatah clash that has culminated into a mini-civil war in recent weeks is both old and new, and while some of its elements are uniquely Palestinian, much of it was manufactured at the behest of US