Thursday, August 15, will be one of the important days for the Middle East “if things go according to plan.” The political, diplomatic, and military preparations for it are stronger than anything we have ever seen in a Middle Eastern war. The two major wars- June 1967 and October 1973, and here I…

Ismail Haniyeh was a diligent student of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. If we were to split Palestinian political Islamists into moderate and hardline camps, Ismail Haniyeh would be classified as a moderate. Even his opponents see him as part of the solution, be it for intra-Palestinian…

Fatah, which established the Palestinian revolution, and then led it for decades, would not have maintained its leadership during the most critical phase in the history of the Palestinian people if it had not transformed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Indeed, it was Fatah that…

Every country that was plagued by foreign occupation gained its independence through national struggle that sprung from its own land and nation and made the occupier’s continued presence unsustainable as the losses came to outweigh the gains. This was and remains a law governing the relationship…

The persistence of the Gaza war for many months was a major surprise that the world had not anticipated and accounted for, and there are no indications of when it will end. Even the two parties directly involved, Israel and Hamas, had not prepared for anything more than another cycle of the…

The veto... is a consistent feature of US policy towards Palestine. The US explained its position by asserting that the United Nations is not the right place to address this issue. In fact, the US claims that raising this matter at the UN is the main obstacle to resolving the issue, as there is no…

Optimism regarding the likelihood of a truce and hostage exchange deal, through the ongoing talks in Cairo, is on the rise. This optimism has not been sprung by dramatic Israeli initiatives or flagrant concessions by Hamas. Rather, a deal seems more likely because the Egyptians, Qataris, and…

The process of bringing aid into Gaza took the form of a Hollywood movie, and seemed to be derived from scenes of films produced about World War II. Spectators in the cinema halls used to watch what was described militarily as landing operations, which saw thousands of soldiers dropping from…

Regardless of the polls showing a decline in popular support, and despite ongoing excavation efforts to dig up a body to run things after this war, particularly in Gaza, bets are on the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization once again. Both are organs of a single body that…

Emptiness generates a stronger echo than sounds. This principle applies to politics, especially to political settlements. Although the Palestinian struggle has been ongoing for longer than any other and has generated more conflicts, coups, and turbulence than any other, it is always subject, when…