CIA director meets with chief of PA’s intelligence agency
Middle East Monitor / February 3, 2020
Director of the CIA Gina Haspel secretly met with the chief of the Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence agency, Majid Faraj, in Ramallah, Safa news agency reported yesterday.
According to the Israeli Public Broadcaster (Kan), Safa said that Haspel met with Faraj and other PA officials on...
Arab envoys who accepted US ‘peace plan’ reject it after learning full details
Middle East Monitor / February 3, 2020
The ambassadors of three Gulf Arab states who were sent to the White House last week for the unveiling of US President Donald Trump’s “peace plan” – otherwise known as the deal of the century – have been revealed to be against the...
Israel once again bans import of cement to Gaza
Middle East Monitor / February 3, 2020
Israeli Defence Minister Naftali Bennett yesterday stopped cement entering the besieged Gaza Strip and cancelled entry permits issued to hundreds of Gaza traders, Safa news agency reported.
Reporting the Israeli Hebrew newspaper Maariv, Safa said that Bennett ordered the coordinator of the civil affairs in the occupied territories to...
Palestine PM: ‘I will not go down in history as someone who gives up...
Middle East Monitor / February 2, 2020
The Palestinian president rejected on Saturday the US’ so-called peace plan in the Middle East, saying Palestine had cut all relations with the US and Israel.
In an emergency meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Mahmoud Abbas said:
I reject the so-called ‘Deal of Century’...
Criminalizing Palestinian resistance: the EU’s new conditions on aid to Palestine
Tariq Dana
Al-Shabaka / February 2, 2020
The EU recently notified the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations (PNGO) network of new conditions on its aid, namely that Palestinian civil society organizations are obligated not to deal with individuals or groups designated as “terrorist” by the EU. This includes staff, contractors, beneficiaries, and recipients of...
‘We want to return’: Palestinian refugees in Lebanon dismiss Trump’s plan
Abby Sewell
Middle East Eye / January 30, 2020
For Palestinians in refugee camps there can be no substitute for returning to their homeland.
Amina Ali al-Hajj was a child when her family was expelled from Akka, on Palestine’s northern coast, to Lebanon in 1948.
“I came when I was three years old....
Labour’s fabricated anti-Semitism crisis is being replicated in America
Asa Winstanley
Middle East Monitor / February 1, 2020
As far as Zionist lobby groups are concerned, the verdict has finally sunk in: they defeated Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. According to one of them at least; the hard-right, anti-Palestinian group misnamed the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” .
Last month one of the...
Russia is using religion to strengthen its influence among Palestinians
Adnan Abu Amer
Middle East Monitor / February 1, 2020
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the city of Bethlehem this week, and not Ramallah. The choice of venue gave the meeting an unmistakably Christian aspect, something that has been used by Russia recently in its...
