PRAGOTI

In Damascus, a massive statue of the late President Hafez al-Assad sits on a mighty iron chair outside the 22,000sq m Assad Library, a giant book open in his right hand.

Behind him lie the archives of his dictatorship. But not a single state paper is open to the people of Syria. There are no archives from the foreign ministry or the interior ministry or the defence ministry. There is no 30-year rule – for none is necessary. The rule is for ever. There is no Public Record Office in the Arab world, no scholars waiting outside the National Archives.

During the United States election campaign, racists and pro-Israel hardliners tried to make an issue out of President-elect Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein. Such people might take comfort in another middle name, that of Obama's pick for White House Chief of Staff: Rahm Israel Emanuel.

The two-state approach in the Middle East has failed. There is a fairer, more durable solution

This week marks the 26th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the second half of the twentieth century.

In the late summer of 2008, as the American political parties convene to produce a new president, it seems clear that Americans will continue to kill and die -- and suffer and inflict terrible injuries -- in the U.S. war in the Middle East, regardless of who is elected president, well into the next administration and beyond.

The man who founded the "Voice of Peace" pirate radio station and did jail time for visiting Yasser Arafat during his exile in Tunisia had plenty of critics, but even more fans. And as they were asked to speak about the man who some say was before his time in his brazen and often eccentric pursuit of peace, all of them spoke of someone who stood up for what he believed in and acted on what he thought was right.

An Israeli historian suggests the diaspora was the consequence, not of
the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of proselytising across north Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East.

A Palestine which guarded "the rights and interests of Moslems, Jews and Christians alike," to quote the Committee, was never acceptable to Zionists. To the leaders of political Zionism, nationalist politics were immeasurably more important than humanitarian concerns. For, indeed, Zionism has never been refugeeism and refugeeism never Zionism.

Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, whose words were seen as encapsulating the Palestinian cause, will get the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank on Tuesday - an honor only previously accorded to PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

July 06, 2008: Israeli forces have blockaded the Palestinian West Bank village of Ni'lin.