Karzai=Taliban?

It seems that Karzai might care more about getting elected than women’s rights. One of the problems here is:
The final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands’ permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor [...]

Development in Jerusalem

Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat is in Boston trying to drum up money for the city. And the article says he’s very inclusive:
Working with Weinberg, who’s collaborated with Porter for more than a decade, they formed Startup Jerusalem, a nongovernmental organization that lined up secular and Orthodox Jews as well as Arabs to support the cluster-based [...]

A Pox on both their houses

This shows that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are contemptible:
Some 280 families — 1,674 people — had been sheltering inside the school, Al Fakhura, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees and their descendants and which runs the school. Most came from farther north in Gaza, near Beit Lahiya, [...]

Hamas-Israeli Truce?

This would be good news:
“The Palestinian and Israeli sides have accepted the first stage of a reciprocal and simultaneous period of calm, starting in the Gaza Strip, from 0600 on Thursday,” an unidentified senior Egyptian official told the state news agency MENA.
Mahmoud Zahar, a leader of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, confirmed at [...]

Israel and Hamas

In some ways these two quotes about the killing of a family in Gaza show the reason people have a problem with the way Israel is acting:
Maj. Avital Leibovich, the Israeli military’s chief spokeswoman for the foreign press, said that while the army was still investigating, an initial inquiry into the events showed that several [...]

World News

It now seems likely that Mugabe either lost or will not get the 50% of the vote needed to avoid a runoff. There seem to be negotiations to get Mugabe to step down. That would be a very good thing.
The Islamist opposition seems to have taken over a town in Somalia. They have chased government [...]

KBR and Toxic Exposure

A while ago I had a post looking at how KBR uses subsidiaries to get away with not paying FICA or other taxes and noted the, perhaps, poetic justice that this ploy might have made them susceptible to being sued (under law, it’s very difficult to sue defense contractors). Farah Stockman has much more about this [...]

Palestinians

This is disturbing:
According to the poll, conducted last week with 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of Israel’s most prominent centers of religious Zionism and ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank. Mr. Shikaki said that this is the single [...]

The World

Israel is out of Gaza after 2 Israeli troop deaths, 1 Israeli civilian dead, and 116 Palestinians dead. That would be good news (the troops leaving) except nothing was really accomplished, so this will almost certainly be repeated in the near future.
It seems that the scorched earth policies that Sudan used early in the conflict [...]

Israel, Palestine, and Turkey

Turkey has pulled out of Iraq for now, which is good, but the battles will continue.
The situation in Gaza has taken a turn for the worse as Hamas has increased its missile attacks (including longer range ones) and now Israel has made a major strike into Gaza killing at least 54 (and at least two Israeli [...]

Israel and Gaza

The more I think about it, the more the idea in this article makes sense (I looked at it here). The claim made in this article in the NY Times:
When Hamas blew large holes in Gaza’s border with Egypt, allowing thousands of Palestinians a chance to stock up on medicines, food and consumer goods, it [...]

Gaza and Egypt

I was curious about the toppling of the walls on the border of Gaza and Egypt. Israel is trying to blockade Gaza to punish Hamas for the rockets launched into Israel and yet there has not been much of an outcry against this (and no action by the Israeli military). I think this article gives much [...]

The World

Things in many places of the world are having problems:
Kenya seems on the verge of tribal warfare;
Pakistan seems to be having more religious strife–the latest a bombing of a planned anti-government rally by lawyers;
Somalia and it’s chaos is one of the main reasons pirate attacks are up;
Darfur, which had been looking a bit better, is having problems with [...]

Hamas Offers Truce

Hmm, this could be good:
On a news broadcast on Tuesday night, Mr. Shafhe said Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, had called him earlier in the day to convey a message to the Israelis.
According to Mr. Shafhe, Mr. Haniya said he had the ability to stop the rocket fire directed at [...]

A Bit of Good News in the Middle East

Almost none of the main problems have been addressed, but even getting many of these countries together is a step forward. We’ll see how this works and see if Bush really will push to get things done.
Update: Of course there are a few problems that will have to be solved, including:
Palestinians insist on the right [...]

Jacoby and Israel

Today, Jeff Jacoby asks if Israel is a Jewish State. As usual with his columns he leaves out the main arguments. Here he notes this semi-nonsensical argument by a Palestinian negotiator:
“it is not acceptable for a country to link its national character to a specific religion.”
but he doesn’t talk about the big reason that Palestinians [...]

Gaza and Hamas

Hamas has now cracked down on protests by Fatah. It’s not certain who fired first at the rally for Arafat, but it is obvious that Hamas is going against Fatah, arresting 400 after the rally.
As usual, the writing is biased against Hamas (there are plenty of things that they have done that are bad, why make [...]

Now That’s Diplomacy

I think Israel wanted him to see a bit of what typical Palestinians face:
The leader of the Palestinian team working with Israelis to prepare for an international meeting on Middle East peace called off a meeting with his Israeli counterparts last night after he was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint for 20 minutes, an aide [...]

Nuclear Site in Syria

Kevin Drum links to a couple stories that look at Israel’s attack of Syria last month (the links are here and here).  The first link looks at how the Israeli planes might have been able to get into Syria unnoticed:
The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over [...]

Israel

I guess I’m doing a notes thing today.  Here are a few notes involving Israel:

I’m a bit confused on this one: Israel attacked Syria a couple weeks ago and says it was because:

Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after [...]