Blog
Israel’s Lessons From the Gaza Wars
Finally, everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. An open-ended truce has been reached between Hamas and the other groups fighting alongside it against Israel.The recent war, which lasted over 50 days, has ended for now. It was a brutal one, killing over 2,000 Palestinians and maiming 12,000 others while destroying over 11,000 dwellings.It hasn’t been easy on the Israeli side either. Seventy-one Israelis were killed, and everyday life was brought to a standstill in most of the areas hit by rockets launched from Gaza. Israel’s economy and its tourism sector were harmed, air traffic at its main...
Israel’s Colonialism Must End
Centuries of European colonialism have provided the world with certain basic lessons about subjugating colonized peoples: The longer any colonial occupation endures, the greater the settlers’ racism and extremism tends to grow. This is especially true if the occupiers encounter resistance; at that point, the occupied population becomes an obstacle that must either be forced to submit or removed through expulsion or murder.In the eyes of an occupying power, the humanity of those under its thumb depends on the degree of their submission to, or collaboration with, the occupation. If the...
ANALYSIS: The third war on Gaza--maintaining the status quo?
nbsp;As the first week of the third Israeli war on Gaza draws to a close, expectations seem to mimic the scenarios that unfolded in the previous two wars in 2008 and 2012. Both began with exchanges of rockets from Gaza with air raids and artillery from Israel, and the overhanging threat of an Israeli ground invasion. Yet to incur dead among its citizens, Israel is not in any hurry to reach a ceasefire, and the outside world is not feeling any urgency to end the confrontation.nbsp; Similarly, Hamas also is not in a hurry. The reach of its makeshift rockets deep into Israel is improving its...
Who's calling whose bluff?
In a noteworthy turn of events, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appeared last week to have successfully outmaneuvered his two main opponents, a much more powerful Israel and the stubborn Palestinian faction Hamas. For the first time ever, Palestinians were not blamed for the failure of nine months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that were shepherded by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Indeed, there were even hints and leaks and sometimes even outright statements from US and European officials blaming Israel for the collapse of the talks.In addition, Abbas was able to improve his...
Nanotechnology, Society, and Education
Starting with the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, the world has witnessed successive technology transformations, such as steam engines, railways, automobiles, airplanes, computers internet, which changed our habits, notions, works, relations, and norms. From the stand point of its impact, technology has been the beauty and the beast in the same time. It has been contributing to developing new resources of food and energy, better medical care, less transportation restrictions, diversity of communication tools, and others. Nevertheless, technology was also the chief...
Air Pollution in Palestine
Air pollution is a concentration of foreign matter in the air that adversely affects the health and welfare of people. Air pollutants are the liquid, solid, gaseous, radioactive, or microbial chemicals suspended in the air that are caused by different human activities related to industry, construction, transportation or natural resources. Such pollutants cause harmful effects to humans, animals and plants. Air pollution is considered one of the main pollution problems around the world. Most countries consider this problem a threat to national health and enforce strict regulations, among...
Analysis: Fayyad’s resignation is a crisis for Abbas
The seemingly inevitable resignation of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has left Palestinians in the occupied territories, and their president, knee deep in trouble. The bowing out of such a prominent figure -- the man responsible for the two positive events of the last decade -- has created anxiety and worry among Palestinians. Fayyad reformed the financial system, an administration that was compromised by corruption and irregularities. Both the elected parliament and the international community put pressure on the late President Yasser Arafat to clean things up. He appointed Fayyad as finance...
The Arab Spring and Palestine
Impact of the revolutions in the Arab World on the Palestinian Israeli conflict and the future prospects Dr. SAMIR AWADDepartment of Political Science,nbsp;BIRZEIT UNIVERSITY To what extent does the Arab Spring influence the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Many turbulent events are currently affecting the Palestinian and Arab sphere, starting with the American position against Palestinenbsp; bid for statehood at the security council, or their causing a defeat to a proposalnbsp; against Israeli settlement expansion. As a matter of fact, this was an expression of the well-known stand ofnbsp;...
President Abbas, get yourself off the hook
The overwhelming international support for the bid to upgrade the status of Palestine at the General Assembly of the United Nations late last month was a sweet reward for President Mahmoud Abbas and his faction Fateh. They had just experienced a bruising in public opinion due to Israel’s assault on Gaza, after which rival Hamas came out looking strong and defiant.Moreover, the move to request the upgrade was one of the rare occasions in which the Palestinian people were not divided. While some were more cynical than others about its outcome, few denied that this was a great opportunity for...
