The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Is Hamas willing to negotiate directly with Israel or not is the question put to Hamas representative in Lebanon, Usamah Hamdan, by The Real News Network.
Hamdan responds that negotiations are a political step which depend on political conditions. Until now the political climate has not allowed such a step, he says.
Would Hamas recognize the state of Israel if the majority of the Palestinian people supported a two state solution?
"If our people accepted anything through a free...
Saif Shahin -
America's failure to talk peace is undercutting its influence in the Middle East. It has cleared the way for proactive nations like Turkey and Qatar, who want a quieter neighborhood to push their economic growth, to step in and broker deals such as the recent Iranian nuclear fuel swap and the Lebanese accord of 2008. Continued U.S. intransigence may lead them to try and sort out issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well.
The United States chooses to be unconvinced by the...
An international convoy of ships, dubbed the 'Freedom Flotilla', carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza was intercepted and stormed in international waters by the Israeli Defence Force. It is confirmed that nine of the 600 activists, parliamentarians and media representatives aboard the flotilla were killed by Israeli soldiers.
Israel claims it opened fire on the activists in self-defence. However, this Al Jazeera report, which shows live footage of the attack, contends that those aboard the...
Jewish-American intellectual, Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was denied entry into Israel on Sunday. Chomsky was due to deliver a lecture at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah.
Chomsky's lecture would have covered American foreign and domestic policy.
He spoke with Al Jazeera about the reasons Israel denied him entry. In his words, there were two reasons:
1) "The government of Israel does not like the kind of...
Mats Svensson -
Most surfaces are covered with post-its, yellow, green and pink. Each post-it has its place, not randomly dotted on the wall, but consciously placed with an exact distance to the rest. I look around and see a pattern, but don’t understand all the codes: countries, persons, events, years, money…
The shelves are covered with books and folders; alphabetized and based on a library structure, but with the artist’s own codes. Everything is in its place, always in the right...
Noam Chomsky -
The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders -- with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology...
