Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

Fascinating article, with some analysis I haven't seen elsewhere. Won't make a difference, but that's politics.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs: "Adjusting for the Begin-Sadat Center population count and adding in foreign aid, GDP per capita in the West Bank and Gaza comes to $3,380, much higher than in Egypt and significantly higher than in Syria or Jordan. Why should any Palestinian refugee resettle in a neighboring Arab country?"

PA's chief judge: Jews have no history in Jerusalem | Middle East | Jerusalem Post

These are the moderates....

PA's chief judge: Jews have no history in Jerusalem | Middle East | Jerusalem Post

Blood Libel: interview with Swedish Blood libel journalist where he admits he had no basis in fact for his report

YouTube - Kedar vs. Bostrom - Organ trade scandal Palestinians are compulsive liars RT Top Stories

Alexander Benard: Engage Iran on Human Rights, not Nuclear Weapons - WSJ.com

Alexander Benard: Engage Iran on Human Rights, not Nuclear Weapons - WSJ.com

Op-Ed Contributors - The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Contributors - The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything - NYTimes.com: "That so many attempts to resolve the conflict have failed is reason to be wary. It is almost as if the parties, whenever they inch toward an artful compromise over the realities of the present, are inexorably drawn back to the ghosts of the past. It is hard today to imagine a resolution that does not entail two states. But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967. To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.

For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees’ rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel."

Fouad Ajami: New U.N. Report Says Autocracy Has Led to the Decline of the Arab World - WSJ.com

Fouad Ajami: New U.N. Report Says Autocracy Has Led to the Decline of the Arab World - WSJ.com: "For decades, it was the standard argument of the Arabs that America had cast its power in the region on the side of the autocrats. In Iraq in 2003, and then in Lebanon, an American president bet on the freedom of the Arabs. George W. Bush’s freedom agenda broke with a long history and insisted that the Arabs did not have tyranny in their DNA. A despotism in Baghdad was toppled, a Syrian regime that had all but erased its border with Lebanon was pushed out of its smaller neighbor, bringing an end to three decades of brutal occupation. The “Cedar Revolution” that erupted in the streets of Beirut was but a child of Bush’s diplomacy of freedom.

Arabs know this history even as they say otherwise, even as they tell the pollsters the obligatory things about America the pollsters expect them to say. True, Mr. Bush’s wager on elections in the Palestinian territories rebounded to the benefit of Hamas. But the ballot is not infallible, and the verdict of that election was a statement on the malignancies of Palestinian politics. It was no fault of American diplomacy that the Palestinians, who needed to break with a history of maximalist demands, gave in yet again to radical temptations.

Now the Arabs are face to face with their own"

Op-Ed Columnist - Green Shoots in Palestine - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Green Shoots in Palestine - NYTimes.com
...and Netanyahu's strategy of trying to encourage Palestinian economic development, for the sake of Israeli security, is a significant contributor to this success, according to Tony Blair.

Book Review: “In Praise of Doubt” - WSJ.com

Book Review: “In Praise of Doubt” - WSJ.com: "In “In Praise of Doubt,” Mr. Berger has teamed up with the Dutch philosopher Anton Zijderveld to argue that it is possible to maintain moral certainty about liberal democratic values without succumbing to either of these extremes."