Q&A: U.S. Funding Cuts in UNESCO More Audible than Visible

When the 194-member General Conference of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) was on the verge of admitting Palestine as a full-fledged member of the Paris-based U.N. agency last year, the United States warned against it - and threateningly.

When Europe Develops, and Israel Destroys

The European Commission has released a document that lists projects it funded that were destroyed or damaged by the Israel Defence Forces between May 2001 and October 2011.

Israeli Experts Mum on Iran Attack to Support Bibi’s Bluff

A striking feature of the Israeli political landscape in recent months has been the absence of a serious debate on the issue of the threat of war with Iran led by national security figures.

China Puts Middle East Differences on Ice

In a first in years, snow blessed the Holy City last month. For a moment, hail metamorphosed into a paltry three-millimetre layer of white, liquid, light. Children and parents and snowmen relished the wonders of an almost real, though usually ephemeral, winter. But then, the Ice Age befell Jerusalem...

A Little Power to Some Palestinian People, For Now

A handful of makeshift homes built from small boulders and plastic tarps and secured with thick ropes sit in the isolated community of She’b El- Buttum in the South Hebron Hills. A few metres away, several rows of solar panels and two wind turbines are affixed to the rocky hilltop, providing electricity to the village’s 150 residents.

Israel Shields Public from Risks of War with Iran

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling Israelis that Israel can attack Iran with minimal civilian Israeli casualties as a result of retaliation, and that reassuring message appears to have headed off any widespread Israeli fear of war with Iran and other adversaries.

Drone Technology Takes Off

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) held its conference this month in Israel for the first time. Do future wars by land, sea and air belong to robots?

Palestinian Prisoners Fight Back With Hunger

As 29-year-old Palestinian prisoner Hana Shalabi enters day 43 of her open- ended hunger strike Thursday from a hospital bed in northern Israel, over two dozen other Palestinian prisoners have now followed suit, refusing food as a way to protest their arrest, detention and treatment in Israeli prisons.

Pro-Peace Jewish Lobby Stresses Return to Stalled Talks

At the third annual conference of J Street, the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby group that is widely seen as a counterweight to the more right-wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israel-Palestine conflict took the focus back from the ongoing tension with Iran.

Freeing Childhood From Prisons

Hamza has memories no 17-year-old should. "I was desperate. I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't want to go outside the house. I was very nervous. I'd be irritated with the simplest matters."

Donors Damaging Palestinian Economy

The latest Work Bank report on the Palestinian economy fuels the row on institutional viability precisely as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas considers renewing his statehood bid.

Palestinian Children Learn the Brazilian Way

Standing under a canopy just inside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, a group of 20 Palestinian children are banging drums, clapping their hands and singing in Portuguese. This is capoeira, the traditional Afro-Brazilian sport that mixes dance, music and martial arts, and it is sweeping through the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

What the Egyptian Summer Might Bring

More than 800 Egyptians of varied backgrounds and political orientations have officially registered their candidacies for the country's first post- Mubarak presidential election. Although more candidates are expected to emerge before the registration process ends Apr. 8, most local analysts say the contest - slated for late May - will be dominated by a small handful of high-profile contenders.

Palestinian Rights Retreat to Backburner

The latest tit-for-tat confrontation which earlier this week pitted Israel against Islamist factions operating from the Gaza Strip follows a conditioning pattern which highlights the marginalisation in the international arena of the Palestinian aspirations to freedom and independence.

Little U.S. Popular Support for Israeli Attack on Iran

Amidst persistent speculation over a possible Israeli military attack against Iranian nuclear facilities in the wake of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit here, a detailed new public opinion survey released Tuesday suggests that such a move would enjoy little support in the United States.

Alleged Photos of “Clean-up” at Iran’s Parchin Site Lack Credibility

News stories about satellite photographs suggesting efforts by Iran to "sanitise" a military site that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said may have been used to test nuclear weapons have added yet another layer to widely held suspicion that Iran must indeed be hiding a covert nuclear weapons programme.

Israel Faces an Army of the Ultra-Orthodox

The High Court of Justice in Israel has annulled the 2002 Tal Law that had allowed Yeshiva students - scholars of Jewish religious texts - to avoid an otherwise mandatory service in the Israeli army. While politicians on the left and right welcome the court’s decision, the Haredim community considers it an assault on their way of life.

Palestinian Children Inherit Political Separation

For Taiseer Khatib and his wife Lana, the most difficult aspect of Israel’s policy of forced family separation is the impact it is having on their children. "Our children are paying the price psychologically. We are trying to protect them, but they have a good sense of what’s going on and they understand that there’s something wrong," Khatib, who has two children under the age of five, Adnan and Yosra, tells IPS.

U.S.: Bomb-Iran Week Turns Syrious

This week was supposed to be all about Iran – at least, that's how Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), had planned it - and why the U.S. should prepare to bomb it very, very soon if its leadership doesn't cave into Western demands to abandon its nuclear programme.

No Red Lines, But No Red Light Either

Intense consultations at the highest level between the U.S. and Israel on how to coordinate their respective strategies vis-à-vis Iran indicate that a strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, if launched by Israel, the U.S., or in tandem, wouldn’t occur this spring, probably not even before November.

Festival Brings Human Drama from Headlines to the Screen

The often heroic struggles of some of the world's human rights victims and advocates are on full view at the Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which runs through Friday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre.