The Temple Mount, revered by Jews as the site of two ancient temples and by Muslims as the site of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa Mosque, has been the focus of simmering unrest recently. The compound sits in contested territory that Israel took from Jordan in the 1967 war. (full article…)

“Took” is a euphemism for “conquered” when it comes to coverage of Israel in the New York Times.

The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible – or less dangerous. Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Iraq were similarly dispossessed after the second Gulf war.

In 2001, Palestinians in Lebanon were stripped of the right to own property, or to pass on the property that they already owned to their children – and banned from working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists or in 20 other professions. Even the Palestinian refugee community in Jordan, historically the most welcoming Arab state, has reason to feel insecure in the face of official threats to revoke their citizenship. The systematic refusal of Arab governments to grant basic human rights to Palestinians who are born and die in their countries – combined with periodic mass expulsions of entire Palestinian communities – recalls the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe. (full article…)

In January 2007, the country’s ruler, King Abdullah II, announced his intention to develop a peaceful nuclear program, a plan that has US backing. (more…)

Jordanian police Sunday arrested 11 people, including trade union leaders, to break up a demonstration against fruit and vegetable imports from Israel, protest organizers said. (more…)

The U.S. Congress recently approved additional funding for the training in Jordan of three more battalions of the Palestinian national security force, and by the end of the year the Palestinian Authority will have a total of seven battalions at its disposal whose training was supervised by the Americans. (more…)

Notice that Isabel Kershner’s report in The New York Times does not mention U.S. training specifically and refers only to mysterious “western funds”.

From the detailed description provided by Dayton, it’s clear that the Palestinian forces he’s enabling could certainly be accused of carrying out the self-policing of the West Bank for the Israelis. Because the West Bank is, after all, occupied by Israel and riddled with illegal settlements besides — plus beset by a surrounding wall, 600-plus intrusive checkpoints, and a network of Jews-only highways — the Palestinian troops are utterly at the mercy of the Israelis. Each recruit is vetted by US security forces (i.e, the CIA), then vetted by Shin Bet, the domestic intelligence arm of Israel, and then by Jordan’s super-efficient intelligence service, before they begin their training in Jordan. Dayton made it quite clear that the Palestinian units thus trained are primarily deployed against two targets in the West Bank: against criminal gangs, and against Hamas. So far, they’ve received $161 million is US funding. (more…)

The King said that he was prepared to believe what Israelis have told him — that a right-wing Government in Israel is better able to deliver peace than the Left. (more…)

This clown would believe the sky was green if Shimon Peres personally informed him of it.

The United States is promoting a peace plan for the Middle East involving a “57-state solution” in which the entire Muslim world would recognize Israel, Monday’s Times of London quoted Jordan’s King Abdullah as saying. “We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms,” the king said. “The future is not the Jordan River or the Golan Heights or the Sinai, the future is Morocco in the Atlantic and Indonesia in the Pacific. That is the prize.” (more…)

So let me get this straight… Before Israel is required to abide by international law and end it’s oppression of the occupied Palestinian population, 57 “Muslim” states (mostly as unrelated to Israeli-Palestinian issues as Indonesia) must make a symbolic acknowledgment of Israel’s existence? This must be a new record for Israel’s record of avoidance and rejectionism.

It’s a delicate process, given the deep-seated taboo in Arab countries against even discussing homosexuality. Everyone from religious leaders to family members condemn homosexuality. (more…)

Yet Israel is a beacon of tolerance and freedom for homosexuals?

He has been–and would be–able to live with an occasional nighttime foray by Israeli forces resulting in the destruction of, say, a police station and a few houses. (more…)

The clown of Jordan is very concerned about torture… in the United States. (more…)

I stood at arrivals with my suitcase and bags, waiting for Gerry to pick me up, and realized my life in Gaza was suddenly over. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, or both. (more…)

The UNHCR says that 4.7 million Iraqis have left their homes since the war began, up from 3.8 million two years ago. Iraqis are the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe. (more…)

The Jordanian royal family’s dog was secretly rushed to Israel for treatment in the midst of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday. Relations between the royal palace in Amman and the Beit Dagan veterinary hospital have been good for many years now. The Israeli medical team’s expertise has served Jordan a number of times, almost always under a heavy veil of secrecy, as per the royal court’s request. During the fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Jordanians once again called on the Israeli veterinarians for help. King Abdullah and Queen Rania’s beloved dog had fallen ill.” (more…)

The disproportionate and heavy-handed Israeli attacks on Gaza have been a bonanza for Hamas. The movement has renewed its standing in the Arab world, secured international favour further afield and succeeded in scuttling indirect Israeli-Syrian talks and direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. It has also greatly embarrassed Israel’s strongest Arab neighbours, Egypt and Jordan. (more…)

The one exception to the view that our values and interests were inextricably linked had really been the Middle East, where I think we had really focused more on stability at the expense of values. We didn’t talk much about democracy in the Middle East. (more…)

Let’s put aside Condi’s view that the Middle East is an exception rather than a rule when it comes to U.S. foreign policy…

In the Middle East, American foreign policy means support for dictators across the region, the invasion and devastation of Iraq, the suppression of the democratically-elected Hamas government in Palestine, blocking a ceasefire during Israel’s murderous bombardment of Lebanon, and subsequently backing the unpopular (but pro-Western) government in Lebanon.

Bravo.

Condi came to this conclusion all by herself.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah has blocked access to a popular news website because of the site’s reporting on widespread corruption among the entourage of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

For several days, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been unable to view the website Donia al-Watan (http://www.alwatanvoice.com) as access has been blocked through the PA-controlled telecom company. Readers outside Palestine and a few inside the country using proxies are still able to access the site.

The Electronic Intifada confirmed that several users attempting to access the website in Ramallah and other parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank could not do so and instead saw a message in English stating “We are sorry, the site was blocked based on attorney General instructions [sic].” (more…)

On a hot afternoon during the month of Ramadan, there are few better places to be than resting beneath the shade of an orchard of guava trees, with the scent of fresh ripening fruit wafting around you. Farmer Sa’id Al-Agha sits quietly, his eyes resting on his fruit trees. ‘My father and my grandfather both grew up here, farming guavas, and I’ve lived here all my life’ he says. ‘This land is in my blood.’

Sa’id Al-Agha farms thirty donumms of guava plantations in Mawasi, in the south western Gaza Strip, where the loamy soil also encourages date palms and citrus trees to thrive (a donumm is equivalent to 1,000 square metres). His Mawasi farm is a tranquil haven in Gaza, which has one of the highest population densities in the world. There are some 120 guava farms dotted around Mawasi, and between them the farmers and their families cultivate more than 2,500 donumms of guavas. August and September are the height of the Gaza guava season, and we can hear workers calling to each other as they harvest the fruit by hand.
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