LEBANON: Cluster Bombs Could Kill for Years

Even in the summer heat, the hills of South Lebanon are an impressive sight - a patchwork of green, brown and red fields interrupted only by sleepy villages, rock formations and dirt tracks.

OP-ED: Double Standards: the Case of Itamar Awarta

Last March, a vicious crime occurred in the occupied Palestinian territories. Five members of an Israeli settler family were slain in their home in Itamar, a settlement in the northern West Bank. A mother, father, two young children and a three-month-old were all stabbed to death.

Deaths Reported in ‘Fresh Syrian Assault’

Syrian forces have killed at least 21 people in a massive tank-backed raid on the central city of Homs, rights activists say, after the government postponed a visit to the country by the Arab League chief.

LIBYA: New Chapter Opens After Gaddafi

Libyan children will go back to school without Muammar Gaddafi’s ubiquitous presence, despite a lack of new books.

ISRAEL: Netanyahu Besieged, From Within and Without

More and more Israelis seem to realise that the only policy that causes bad luck is bad policy. In a fortnight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found himself politically besieged from within and from without.

EGYPT: Mubarak Faces Court Without the Circus

With the trial of Hosni Mubarak set to resume Monday, attorneys representing the families of protesters killed during Egypt’s uprising are trying to cut out the deadwood in their midst.

OP-ED: Manipulating Social Networks

If there's one thing that net-savvy activists from Tunisia to Bahrain are aware of, it’s that the Internet isn’t always safe. From the constant threat of surveillance to the knowledge that posting the wrong picture on Facebook can get you arrested - or worse - activists have for a long time taken measures to mitigate risks, censoring themselves, using special tools like Tor, or staying off certain networks altogether.

MEDIA-IRAQ: ‘Protection’ Law Offers Little Safety

When Ali Sumerian, an editor for Al-Sabah newspaper, and three local media colleagues sat down for a restaurant meal after reporting on a demonstration in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square on Feb. 25 this year, security forces detained them. "We were accused of encouraging an anti-political process," says Sumerian. It was only after their arrest triggered a media outcry, he says, were they released 12 hours later. The four were just some of the journalists attacked and arrested that day.

MIDEAST: Israelis Stage an Investigation Act

Israeli soldiers and security forces have conducted a string of arrests and violent raids over recent weeks, at Jenin’s renowned Freedom Theatre, in their investigation into the murder of actor Juliano Mer-Khamis, the theatre’s former director and co-founder, earlier this year.

OP-ED: Language Becomes a Political Weapon in Israel

Speaking to the U.S. congress in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu boasted that his country is a beacon of freedom in the Middle East and North Africa, that it is the only place where Arabs "enjoy real democratic rights".

ISRAEL: Children Facing Deportation Find Friends

After Israel’s Interior Ministry attempted to deport the first migrant workers’ child educated in the Israeli school system, human rights groups are calling on the Israeli government to develop a clear immigration policy and an official protocol that will minimise the psychological impact of detaining and deporting young children.

EGYPT: Military Trials on the Rise After Mubarak

Amr El-Beheiry’s trial in a military court lasted just five minutes. The 33-year- old Egyptian was arrested on Feb. 26 and sentenced without a lawyer present to five years in prison for breaking curfew and assaulting a public official during a demonstration in Cairo.

Female Trafficking Soars in Iraq

Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein’s 1991 crackdown in Iraq’s Shia south. "My brothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body," she says.

IRAQ: Trafficked to Baghdad’s Green Zone

Ukrainian and Bulgarian workers are currently camped out on a construction site of half-built luxury villas in Baghdad’s elite "Green Zone" – a vast security enclave housing government offices, embassies and international NGOs - demanding their salaries before being shipped back home.

Refugees Tossed Between Iraq and Syria

At the height of Iraq’s sectarian war in 2006, 30-year-old Samer escaped his Baghdad neighbourhood to join a flood of refugees arriving in Syria. A young man of military age, he was at high risk of being targeted by armed forces that roamed the capital’s streets.

EGYPT: People-Funded TV Challenges Big Business

Egypt’s most organised political group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is tapping crowds as a new financing method for its nascent TV station and media outlets to be able to compete with well-oiled challengers in corporate and government- run media.

LIBYA: Dreaming of a Future After Gaddafi

"We grabbed all these weapons from Gaddafi's compound just before NATO shelled the whole place," says rebel fighter Massud Askar in downtown Nalut. The 50-year-old rebel displays an Italian light semi-automatic rifle in his right hand and a hand grenade in the other.

Arab Spring Slips Into Tunisian Fall

Seven months after Tunisia’s historic uprising which saw the ouster of long-time dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and gave birth to the region’s Arab Spring, many Tunisians are losing confidence in the progress of their revolution.

EGYPT: The Mubarak Show Goes Into Hiding

In a shuttered Cairo café, Egyptians crane their necks to watch the courtroom drama unfolding on a small television screen mounted high on the wall. The camera pans across the crowded courtroom and zooms in on a frail old man lying on a stretcher inside the caged defendants' box. Part Godfather, part Hannibal Lecter, he is the feared head of a powerful family at the centre of a web of violence and corruption. Beside him are his two sons, one known for shady business deals, the other groomed to head the cartel.

SYRIA: Driving Into a Divided Land

Scores of buses carrying Syrians out of the country are waiting in uneven lines on the Lebanese-Syrian border for their paperwork to be processed. There are no Arab or Western tourists eager to cross to the other side, usually seen in hordes this time of year.

MIDEAST: Palestinians Strike to Seek Historic Agreement

Nestled between rolling hills just outside of Jerusalem, a dozen Palestinian workers have escaped the scorching summer heat in the shade of a makeshift tent, where they anxiously wait to sign what would be the first collective bargaining agreement between Palestinian workers and an Israeli employer.