Author Archives: Issa Khalaf

Naturally, the 9/11 terrorist attack was shocking, and naturally, as a human being and American, I felt empathy for the victims and their families, loved ones, and relatives left behind to deal with their losses.  Naturally, people the world over … Continue reading →

It’s true that the nauseatingly labeled state building endeavor, measured by institutional, economic and security functions and “performance” criteria that the “international community” demands of the Palestinians while coercing them into a fictitious “peace process,” long ago became little more … Continue reading →

We know that Washington’s motivation for intervention in any guise is self-interest framed and justified, away from the public eye, within a larger geo-political and strategic context that drives the imperial paradigm. We also know that when moral and humanitarian … Continue reading →

Here it was and still is, a golden opportunity to have shifted gears and realized those things the US claims constitute and enhance its interests—energy supplies, Palestinian-Israeli peace, reduction of terrorism. Instead, Arab peoples’ desire for democracy, ironically not because … Continue reading →

NPR’s News Blog reported: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went out of her way Thursday to single out the Al Jazeera TV news network for its work in covering recent uprisings throughout the Middle East. “You’ve got a global—a set … Continue reading →

As we bear witness to the daily, ever escalating, ever-unprecedented yet routine Israeli collective punishment and cruelty and torment inflicted on the Palestinians—men and women, young and old, boys and girls, children and infants, farm animals, fruit orchards, and olive … Continue reading →

Virginia Tilley’s post, “Why the U.S. will not ‘do something’ about Palestine,” analyzing the complex relationship between US hegemony and the Israel lobby, was sobering and spot on. A couple of points are worth further clarification and elaboration. I’m not … Continue reading →

Welcome to Palestine, even if it’s a century later. Now let’s reset the relationship. You came from faraway lands claiming an already inhabited one. Oppressed, massacred, and socially separated in Christendom/Europe, you felt as outsiders subject to anti-Semitic threats. Eventually, … Continue reading →

Such a pall of darkness had overtaken the Arab lands for so long that one thought Arabs existed in a permanent malaise, a condition of corruption and authoritarianism, their regimes maintaining a lock down on their subject populations and their … Continue reading →

Most of us who admire and respect Hanan Ashrawi are keen to hear her thoughts on the current Palestinian situation, especially on the recent, so-called Palestine Papers. In an Al Jazeera interview with David Frost, “Frost Over the World” on … Continue reading →

The US and its Quartet partners want Palestinian-Israeli negotiations concluded by August 2011, coinciding with the date of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s plan to declare a state. To convey the complexity of the issue, and the Palestinians’ fundamental dilemma … Continue reading →

In August 2009, the Palestinian National Authority announced a plan, “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State,” by Salam Fayyad, for Palestinian statehood by summer 2011. Intimately aware that Israel is using negotiations to delay while it expands, the idea … Continue reading →