Worldcrunch
TEL AVIV — Frida Issa knew from the age of 11 that she’d one day work in the world of computers. But it was with her first job at a Tel Aviv startup that she first nurtured ambitions to do something on her own — and something built for the future. “We’re not into building […]
The deadline of John Kerry’s diplomacy efforts are coming. What is going to happen if he returns to Washington humiliated? Calcalist founder Yoel Esteron’s pessimistic outlook for Mideast peace.
Friday, November 7, 2014 OBAMA PENS LETTER TO IRAN’S KHAMENEI U.S. President Barack Obama secretly wrote a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last month, which The Wall Street Journal reports “appeared aimed both at buttressing” the anti-ISIS campaign and “nudging Iran’s religious leader closer to a nuclear deal.” Obama reportedly stressed that the […]
Taybeh was also the toast of a unique Oktoberfest celebration in Ramallah.
Peace is a process, never a single event. Negotiations for peace are always far more complicated than the public understands, and the results are not always miraculous. Even so, the majority of modern conflicts — 80%, according to the School for the Culture of Peace in Barcelona — eventually end after negotiations. The school’s reports […]
RAMALLAH — In this Palestinian city in the central West Bank, some 300 technology companies employ at least 4,500 people. Despite enormous potential, the industry is still nascent and suffers from a lack of development centers and productive ties with the outside world. Most of the companies in this Palestinian Silicon Valley are still small […]
TEL AVIV — While we talk about a certain economic stability in Ramallah, the economy in Gaza is in free fall, which is due in no small measure to the massive closing of the tunnels used to smuggle in products across the border from Egypt. The Palestinian economy, at least in the West Bank, is […]
REUTERS, BBC, RUSSIA TODAY, AFP Worldcrunch BEIRUT — Israel’s Air Force bombed a militant target south of Beirut Friday in retaliation for rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon the day before, Reuters reports. “Israel will not tolerate terrorist aggression originating from Lebanese territory,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement. According to […]
BBC, GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH (UK), AL JAZEERA Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Israel has released 26 Palestinian prisoners hours before the opening of renewed peace talks Wednesday. Eleven of the prisoners released in the West Bank were welcomed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, while the other 15 were met by cheering crowds in Gaza. A total 104 long-term […]
John Kerry has convinced Israeli and Palestinian leaders that the region’s upheaval requires them to at least search for a solution. Whether they find it is another question.
Young Israelis and Palestinians alike are getting caught by the wave of Korean pop music, television and attitudes. For some, it’s just good fun — for others, a much-needed escape.
BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch WASHINGTON – Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will resume peace talks in Washington on Monday, the U.S. State Department has announced. The talks, stalled since 2010, follow months of shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The statement came hours after Israel approved the release of more than 100 Palestinian […]
GIVAT ASSAF – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry passed right by this town’s entrance — just a few dozen meters away — while on his way to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last Thursday. We can only hope that his driver slowed down, and that one of his accompanying local diplomats showed him […]
GAZA – At first sight, it is just a wasteland. Sand – blown in from a nearby beach – covers the scattered bushes. Here and there, ruins, where sometimes children play, barefoot. Welcome to what used to be the spectacular Anthedon Harbor, one of the crossroads of antique civilizations, which for 2000 years was used […]
After a successful visit to Israel, President Obama has apparently turned the Israeli-Palestinian portfolio over to Secretary of State John Kerry, says Martin Indyk, a leading Middle East expert. Past secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, James Baker, and Warren Christopher, distinguished for their work on Middle East issues, always had their president’s complete […]
HAARETZ (Israel), WAFA (Palestine), REUTERS, AP Worldcrunch RAMALLAH – Barack Obama arrived Thursday in Ramallah in the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leaders, on the second day of his visit to the Middle East. The U.S. President met with President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah’s presidential headquarters to emphasize the […]
President Obama’s arrival in Israel with no new peace proposal to offer is reassuring to many Israelis. They should be worried instead.
YNET, TIMES OF ISRAEL, CHANNEL 2 TV (Israel) Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Barack Obama landed in Israel on Wednesday for his first trip as U.S. president. He was greeted at Ben Gurion Airport by President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the Times of Israel, President Peres welcomed Obama “with open arms,” saying: […]
Last March’s killings at a Jewish elementary school in Toulouse shocked many, but French Jews have been feeling less secure for years. Some leave, though security isn’t the only reason.
Palestinians are victims not only of Israeli power politics, but of linguistic deception.
YNET, HAARETZ (Israel) Worldcrunch QALQILYAH – The first official Palestinian-only bus lines began service Monday morning. According to Israeli daily Haaretz, the Israel’s Ministry of Transportation said it has launched the special bus lines in order to avoid conflicts. The lines are for the Palestinian workers who travel each from the West Bank into and […]
Perhaps the most acclaimed Israeli writer of his generation, and a fixture of the peace movement, Oz continues to surprise at the age of 73.
SABAH (Turkey), THE GUARDIAN (UK), YNET (Israel) Worldcrunch Nine years after her husband’s death, Suha Arafat regrets her marriage to the former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. They married in a secret wedding in Tunisia in 1990 when Suha was 27. Arafat, then 61, was 34 years older. In an interview given last week to […]
PARIS – Everyone was expecting Mahmoud Abbas. Serious rumors claimed that, given his success at the UN, the president of the Palestinian Authority would head for Gaza, where he hasn’t set foot since 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a coup. In the end, the surprise came from Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’s exiled […]
Let’s be real, says this commentator, Israeli settlers on the West Bank aren’t going away, UN statehood for Palestine notwithstanding. Here’s another way to imagine a two-state solution.
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), BBC NEWS (UK), CNN (USA) Worldcrunch GAZA CITY – Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal set foot in Gaza on Friday, ending 45 years of exile from the Palestinian Territories, reports Al Jazeera. After passing across the Egyptian border at Rafah, Meshaal knelt on the ground to offer a prayer of thanks and was […]
-OP-ED- PARIS – Israel and Palestine, two states living side by side in fair and sustainable peace. This is, for any genuinely pro-democracy advocate – be they Jewish or Arab – the deeper meaning and the real political impact of the vote that took place Thursday at the United Nations General Assembly. Yet this upgrade […]
AL QUDS (Palestine), AL SABAH (Palestine), MASRAWY (Egypt), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), HAARETZ (Israel) Worldcrunch NEW YORK – Newspaper headlines around the Arab world Friday hailed the results of a historic UN vote that grants Palestine entry to the international body as a non-member observer State. After a request submitted by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), THE GUARDIAN, BBC NEWS (UK), REUTERS Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Two Palestinians were reportedly killed during the visit of Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil in Gaza, dashing hopes of a possible ceasefire between Israel and Palestine According to Al Jazeera, a new air strike hit the Jibaliya refugee camp located at the northern […]
BBC NEWS (UK), JERUSALEM POST, HAARETZ (Israel), REUTERS Worldcrunch JERUSALEM – Three people were killed on Thursday when rockets fired from Gaza struck the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi, a day after Israel’s targetted killing of the military chief of Hamas. Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reports that rockets fired into Israel by militants in […]
JERUSALEM POST, HAARETZ, IDF (Israel), AL-AYYAM (Palestinian Territory), CNN (USA) Worldcrunch Israeli politicians were divided on Monday over the possibility of military ground operations in the Gaza Strip, as rockets rained down on Israel for the third day in a row, reported the Jerusalem Post. Opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich told Army Radio she was against […]
TEL AVIV – Following the example of President Shimon Peres, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak did not bide their time in congratulating Barack Obama on his electoral victory November 6. They declared that the two countries “will continue to work together” and that their strategic alliance is “stronger than […]
HAARETZ, THE JERUSALEM POST (Israel), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch GAZA CITY – An Israel Air Force strike hit a Palestinian rocket launching pad and two militant activity sites in the Gaza Strip on Monday, reports Haaretz. The strike ended an Egyptian-brokered truce, which had calmed cross-border fighting since Thursday. The informal cease-fire went into effect […]
RAMALLAH – The smiling receptionist indicates that I should take a seat, so I settle into one of the lobby’s leather chairs. On a glass table, there’s the latest issue of an American business magazine and a day-old local paper. Flowery wall art contrasts with the space’s cool modernism. But this high tech company is […]
HAARETZ (Israel), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch GAZA CITY – Airstrikes carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces killed four militants Tuesday night in Gaza, reports BBC News. Israel military forces said three of the militants were hit overnight as they prepared to fire rockets. A fourth militant, reported to be a gunman from the Ezzedine […]
TEL AVIV – A small synagogue nestles in a dead-end street near the ocean promenade in Tel Aviv. The synagogue, used by Jews from Aleppo, Syria, was crowded last week for prayer services on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. As in the other 10,500 places of worship in Israel, the congregation recited a special […]
-Analysis- FRANKFURT – Are Hamas and Hezbollah part of “the global left?” A few years ago, during the discussion following a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, American philosopher Judith Butler claimed they were. And now the remark is coming back to haunt her. The Central Council of Jews in Germany has strongly criticized […]
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), HAARETZ (Israel), CNN (USA) Worldcrunch CAIRO – Egypt launched air strikes in North Sinai early Wednesday killing twenty suspected terrorists in response to a series of attacks by masked gunmen on military checkpoints, reports CNN. Egyptian army Apache helicopters fired rockets at armed militants near the port town of El Arish. Witnesses […]