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Despite appearing all but doomed, the precarious 15 January ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held over the weekend. Yet Benjamin Netanyahu could still decide that the deal no longer serves Israel’s interests.
For one thing, Netanyahu rejects his generals’ assessment …
War is a terrible thing — but historically it did have the merit of conclusively ending conflict and bringing peace by exhausting the will or capacity to fight of one side or the other. That is how wars have always …
Any evaluation of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas should, in fairness, start on a charitable note. It’s devilishly difficult to cajole parties that have been butchering one another, and loathe each other deeply, to stop fighting. Besides, there’s …
After the horrors of October 7 and 15 gruelling months of war, we finally have a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. But the pause in fighting may cause more problems than it solves. It breaks new ground in conflict resolution: …
Just as they do in England, Gaza’s Christians normally celebrate Christmas with a special meal. It might be stuffed lamb or chicken, with a rich array of salads, vegetable stews, flatbreads and fragrant rice. Their traditional dessert is burbara, a …
It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that Hamas will survive no matter how hard it is pummelled by Israel. Leaders will fall; new leaders will rise. Hamas’s ties to the Palestinian people will sustain it regardless of the horrors …
International law has spoken once again. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, are now wanted men. The International Criminal Court has, for the first time in its 22-year history, issued arrest warrants for …
When I was a boy, growing up in Gaza, we used to play a game called “Arabs and Jews”. Two children would be designated captains and pick their teams, then we would find some sticks, pretend they were guns, and …
At dawn on 22 March, 2004, a half-blind paraplegic cleric was returning home after his prayers in the Mosque in Gaza City when he was assassinated by two low flying Israeli helicopters. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was the founder of Hamas, …
Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas mastermind who had the bad luck of crossing paths with a team of 19-year-old Israeli grunts in Rafah on Wednesday morning, was an intractable religious ideologue who saw his life’s purpose in extravagant historical terms. He …
On 27 September, Hassan Nasrallah was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Barely had the bombs dropped than commentators were already describing Nasrallah’s demise as a transformational moment in Middle Eastern politics. And why not? Benjamin Netanhayhu declared that …
Largely unremarked amid the drama, risk and controversy of its reaction to the October 7 attack is that, over the past year, Israel has experimented with a new type of warfare: targeting its enemies’ entire command structures. The occasional tactical …
Of the images I have not been able to clear from my mind over these past 12 terrible months the most tenacious is that of two young women: one in an elegant hijab, one not, laughing for the camera as …
New York. London. Paris. Madrid. Over the past three decades, at various times, these cities have been yoked together under a pall of terror that has spread right across the West. It has set populations against each other, leaving everyone …
I have lived in Gaza all my life, and for 30 years have been a journalist, which means I have witnessed a lot of violent conflict. But when I woke up to the booms of rockets being fired towards Israel …
