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Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Poets as diverse as William Blake and Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred. Israel, Fatah and Hamas, in the midst of the present chaos and carnage, have the historic opportunity to take a giant step towards making the present-day Jerusalem acquire, at least in some of its aspects, the earthly prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — It was the Americans who helped the long-ago-deposed Shah of Iran start Iran’s nuclear power research. He wanted a bomb. The Americans seemed insouciant about where this might lead.
After the revolution, the research was bequeathed from the wrong pair of hands to another wrong pair of hands—the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah in 1979.
Viewpoint by Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens
GENEVA (IDN) — Three days (April 27-29, 2021) of "informal" talks on the future of Cyprus were held in Geneva under the leadership of UN Secretary-General António Guterres. There have been no formal negotiations on the issue since 2017.
The UN-sponsored meeting with representatives of Greek and Turkish Cypriots as well as representatives of Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—the former colonial power—was to ascertain if there is enough common ground to start negotiations later this year.
By Radwan Jakeem
NEW YORK (IDN) — A senior UN official in charge of the region has urged the Palestinian authorities to set a new date for heading to the polls, originally scheduled for May 22.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had announced the postponement of the planned parliamentary elections, amidst a dispute over voting rights in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, according to news reports.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — Yesterday morning [April 5] I watched on BBC News the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, walking into the courtroom where he is to be tried for corruption. He is impossible to read—his mask makes it even more difficult. In repose his intentions and personality are inscrutable.
On the most important political issue of all—whether to support a two-state solution—sometimes he has said he is for it, but now he says he doesn’t. He prefers, it seems, to keep to the status quo, which means expanding Jewish settlements on Arab Palestinian land and refusing any political life to the occupied Palestinians. But we don’t really know what his inner thoughts are.
By Jessica Corbett*
Common Dreams first published this report on April 2, 2021.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) — Progressives in Congress and human rights organizations on April 2 welcomed the Biden administration's repeal of sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) imposed under former President Donald Trump in a bid to pressure the Hague-based tribunal to not investigate alleged U.S. and Israeli crimes. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in a statement that President Joe Biden revoked Trump's Executive Order 13928, "ending the threat and imposition of economic sanctions and visa restrictions in connection with the court."
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — The Middle East is going to hell in a handbasket. Israel is about to hold its fourth election in two years. After having effectively quashed the notion of a two-state solution, the favourite for the premiership is the long-serving Benjamin Netanyahu, the principal living architect of the repression this represents. There is now effectively only one state in the old Palestine, yet most of the Arabs have no vote.
By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK (IDN) — Over the course of a lifetime spent fighting for women’s rights and equality, Nawal El Saadawi inspired generations of women even while she faced threats against her life and imprisonment.
Aged 89, she died on March 21 in a Cairo hospital after a long illness.
By Caroline Mwanga
NEW YORK (IDN) — UN Women has reiterated the concerns expressed by the United Nations in Turkey and other partners regarding Turkey’s announced termination of being a party to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (the “Istanbul Convention”). It has urged Turkey to reconsider its withdrawal.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — “Diplomacy is back”, President Joe Biden said recently. But then in the middle of a delicate diplomatic dance with Iran he goes and bombs a small, politically inconsequential, Iranian surrogate in Syria, in retaliation for the killing of one American soldier.
This seems to go against everything he said during his presidential campaign on moving towards fashioning a quick agreement with Iran so that the deal made by President Barack Obama that froze Iran’s nuclear activities could be resuscitated after Donald Trump’s decision to blow it up. Biden’s bombing has made the chance of simultaneous choreographed moves by both sides to get back to the deal made by Obama more difficult.
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