Last February, after all the unrest, protests and violence in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak had to leave power and the military took over allegedly to restore calm until a new government was formed. While many countries, including the US, seemed to accept this, many people were not reassured. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, things have and are changing rapidly and in ways that could not have been expected not so long ago. So, it is not totally unexpected that after many decades of talks and broken treaties, the Palestinians finally have decided their time had come. Read the rest of this entry »

Sooner or later it was going to happen: the Palestinians were also, mobilized by calls on Facebook, to get to the streets and in their case to protest against Israel. Last Sunday protesters marking their annual mourning ritual, the “nakba,” or “catastrophe”, on the anniversary of Israel’s birth, marched on its borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza setting in motion clashes that left at least 15 people dead. Read the rest of this entry »

According to a report by Europol, the EU’s joint police body, the economic crisis and the Arab revolutions have the potential to increase the risk of terrorist attacks in the European Union by far-left, far-right and Islamists groups. It has been noted that in the Arab revolutions Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have become observers and had not had influence in the events. Read the rest of this entry »

With all the turmoil in the Middle East and Africa, Israel has not been much on the news lately. All of a sudden we have heard about new developments that bring it back to our attention. First one is the proposal for a Palestinian state that will include all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The countries leading this proposal, Germany, Britain and France, would call for an Israeli withdrawal for almost all the territories that were captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday when most of the world was focusing in Japan and the tragic happenings that had occurred and were occurring there, politicians were also very much plotting and planning what to do about the civil war in Libya. Few had a thought about people in Yemen and Bahrain who were still revolting against their governments and that the situation in both countries was becoming critical. Just then and almost under every one’s radar, more than 1,000 Saudi troops crossed the bridge linking Saudi Arabia the Bahrain apparently to help suppress the unrest there. Read the rest of this entry »

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president, was not very much liked in the US and now even less as in all this turmoil in the Middle East, he has refused to condemn Gaddafi for his crackdown on protesters. Read the rest of this entry »