region-namideast

Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal are a team of two extraordinary architects who live permanently at Beit Sahour on the outskirts of Bethelem in Palestine. They have worked since 2007 to revitalize, reconstruct, take apart, and reconceive both the ruins and abandoned spaces that are the remnants of the vast spaces throughout Palestine that have been destroyed, dispossessed, cut into pieces over some sixty years since the Nakba in l947. Their work is extraordinary because it is unique in every way: from those they call on to work with them (artists, film makers, architects, young people from the refugee camps) to the visions they conceive and the materials and histories on which they draw. …

After a long electoral process, on September 27, 2014, Ashraf Ghani was sworn in as the Afghan president. The arrangements to grant him that office, which was earned in a controversial election, were not easy, because it forced a generous conciliation with Abdullah Abdullah, Ghani’s chief rival. Abdullah was granted the role of chief executive of the government, a sort of Afghan Prime Minister.

As Michael Keating points out, this is a blow to the trustworthiness of the electoral process, which serves precisely to avoid this sort of agreement among elites. …

Anyone remotely familiar with the intricacies of Gaza’s survival has heard that the 365 square kilometers that constitute the Gaza Strip are an open-air prison. Some might have heard that access to the sea in front of the strip has been limited time and again for Palestinians to make a living from fishing. From the 20-nautical mile deep fishing area foreseen during the initial Oslo talks in 1994, Palestinian fishermen were pushed back to an always smaller fishing area, ending to a minimal 3 miles in 2009 (that is 15% of the total amount allocated by the Oslo promises). …

In my previous article I wrote about how both soft and hard Islamists render a very dark future for the Middle East. I finished my article by stating that the Kurdish Movement may provide a salient alternative for the whole region. However, this alternative is currently under attack by Islamists and its supporters.

As I write this article, ISIS thugs surround the northern Syrian city Kobanê — also known as Ayn Al Arab. While both the Kurdish guerilla group PKK, Syrian arm PYD and some factions from the Free Syrian Army are desperately fighting to keep ISIS out of town, the situation is getting worse by the day. Turkey is reluctant to open its borders for humanitarian and military assistance, and so help ISIS to take over the town. …

Islamist governments in the Middle East have provided the perfect breeding ground for religious extremism. In the mean time, intoxicated by the prospect of a holy war, European Muslim youth are pouring into Syria in order to participate in the spectacle of terror. This new breed of fanaticism is mobile, highly networked and capable of orchestrating a global media campaign to intimidate large segments of populations.

Now in panic, many of the peaceful Muslim associations are trying to prove that Islam has nothing to do with this form of extreme-extremism. But it is a bit too late, and a bit too soft. …

Women’s Initiative for Peace urges ALL women’s organizations struggling for peace worldwide to launch actions and organize demonstrations on Sunday, September 28th (and if this date is too early, any time before or on October 1st) wherever you are located. 

The images of Kurdish female fighters of YPJ have been widely circulated in various media covering the war against Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS) in Rojava. Celebrated for the bravery, the Kurdish female guerrilla force has been the forefront in the struggle against patriarchy and against the Islamic State’s targeting, slaughtering and enslaving of women. The women in Rojava, who are not only fighters, but also peacekeepers, leaders, or simply women, are much more than figures that terrify the IS gangs, who believe that they won’t be rewarded with heaven if killed by a woman in battle. They stand for a hope for a different form of governance in the region. Yet, Rojava now is facing a massacre. IS gangs has besieged Kobanê on three separate fronts. …

Öcalan calls for mass mobilization as suspicions of Turkey’s support for the Islamic State rise and attacks on Kobane in Syrian Kurdistan continue.

For over a week the Kurdish town of Kobanê in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) has been under severe attack from the Islamic State (IS). The attack commenced on September 15, when thousands of IS fighters supported by dozens of tanks and heavy artillery attacked Kobanê on three fronts. Thus far, the IS advance has caused tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds to leave their homes in the villages surrounding Kobanê and seek refuge in either the city itself or across the border in Turkey.

Thanks to the brave resistance of the local Kurdish YPG/YPJ militias (the People’s and Women’s Defense Forces), IS has been unable to capture the town. …

“One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.”

– J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

The world is falling apart in Gaza. There is nothing more banal than that statement. There is also nothing truer. “Operation Protective Edge” has claimed close to 2,000 lives in its month long bombardment of Gaza. …

In 1990 the scholar David Vital wrote how Jews in the Diaspora and Jews in Israel were heading in different directions. For better or for worse, this observation is proving to be increasingly accurate. For many Diaspora Jews, however, this direction of travel is undesirable. There exists a strong bond between Diaspora Jewry and Israel, and should this bond fray there are serious concerns that it may do irreparable harm to the Jewish people. As such, Diaspora Jews spend considerable effort to retain ties with Israel, including sending their children to Israel as part of youth group programs. The major Diaspora Jewish organizations also devote considerable resources to keeping up ties with Israel through a variety of sponsorships and public discourse. Yet, all this activity may well be for naught if Israel does not start to pay greater attention to Diaspora concerns about Israeli security policy. …

In contrast to the old image of the Jew who was led to his death in Europe without fighting back, the Israeli military has played a vital role in creating a new model, in which the Jewish soldier is a strong man who fights and kills for survival. From a practical point of view, the Army was important for the Zionist project for settling the land of Palestine because it was through the force, protection, and support of the military that the settlers were and are still able to settle Palestinian land.

For the Army to function properly — especially in the case of Israel, where military service is compulsory, meaning the Army is made up of the majority of the Israeli citizenship — there is a need to rally as much support as possible behind them. This is accomplished through state rhetoric that provides reasons for the necessity of partaking in a military offensive. …