Conflict Blotter

Palestinian PM Salam Fayad presented his new governing program yesterday at a cabinet meeting in Ramallah, which notably made no mention of armed resistance for the first time in the history of Palestinian governing programs. Both the Fatah charter and Abbas’ December 2004 platform mentioned armed struggle as a legitimate.
In response, the Popular Resistance Committees […]

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Here is Conflict Blotter’s first attempt at going multimedia. I’m new to shooting and new to editing so it’s going to be a little rough in the beginning. This was shot today in Ramallah at the Beituniya Checkpoint and the Palestinian Authority headquarters.

NOTE TO READERS: Any readers with video experience who have any advice whatsoever, […]

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Arafat died of AIDS, charged PFLP Secretary General Ahmed Jabril. MEMRI has this transcript of an interview with Jabril which it says aired on July 5 on Al Manar TV:
When Abu Mazen came to Damascus with his team, I asked them: “What happened to the investigation into the death of Abu Ammar [Arafat]? The Israelis […]

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Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy has written an important piece in the latest TNR called “Time for Plan B for Gaza.” The takeaway is that every player involved in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is facing a bleak future and there is no way that things can continue on their current course. Ever since Sharon’s unilateral disengagement […]

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I finally found time to read the latest paper by Nathan J. Brown from the Carnegie Endowment called “The peace process has no clothes.” Brown understands the inner workings of Mideast governments better than anybody and he’s always worth reading. His latest paper is an indictment of every party involved in this mess over here […]

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The basic line on Tony Blair as the Quartet’s new Middle East envoy is that the Palestinians and Arab world are angry about the decision because Blair has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with George W. Bush for six years. He invaded Iraq and he backed Israel’s 34-day war against Hezbollah. Palestinians by and large seem to back […]

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Israeli PM Ehud Olmert’s decision to release 250 prisoners is no service to Abbas. The number is paltry compared with the 12,000 Palestinian prisoners currently languishing in Israeli jails. And why were only Fatah prisoners included in the release? It’s one thing to ignore Hamas for the time being, but what about the PFLP or […]

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I spoke with a new minister in Abbas’ emergency government of technocrats yesterday. Transportation Minister Mashhour Abu Daka is a balding and bespectacled mechanical engineer with a PhD from the Imperial College in London. Like most of the newly appointed government in Ramallah he is apolitical and little known to most Palestinians.
The thrust of […]

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