Egyptian novelist, physician, sociologist and global activist Nawal El Saadawi died on 21 March 2021 at the age of 89.

The Palestinian people need elections that will bring them closer to self-determination. Haidar Eid writes that the current election plan only promotes further fragmentation, and the interests of Israel.

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the Middle East.

Travel restrictions are among the most incapacitating consequences of Israel’s military occupation — so extreme that the very idea of travelling has become a phobia for many. And if you’ve spent days in lockdown trying to get in and out of Gaza, as Emad Moussa has, you know how these fears prey on all Gazans.

The Israel-UAE deal stems from the colossal failure of Trump-Netanyahu’s “Peace plan.” They could not get annexation off the ground. Annexation actually brought on the possibility of sanctions from Europe, and global isolation, and Israel found an exit ramp from the failed plan by dragging a quiet Arab partner into the light, Sam Bahour says.

The UAE had a clear goal in signing a deal with Israel: gaining support and arms from the U.S. This reflects a long pattern of foreign leaders from Egypt to India to Russia being friendly with Israel so as to gain access to Washington. But our press ignores the trend.

National Security Advisor John Bolton recently dubbed Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny,” but Danny Sjursen says the Middle East is where the genuine all-American troika of tyranny resides. “The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the military junta in Egypt, and the colonizing state of Israel — all countries that eschew real democracy and are working together to rain chaos on an already unstable region,” Sjursen writes.

Human waves flooded the Israel-Gaza fence beginning Saturday morning marking the first anniversary of the Great March of Return protests, facing off against Israeli forces behind the fortified barbed-wire fence. The demonstrators gathered despite rain, and even as Egypt is seeking to mediate a deal to end the blockade of Gaza.

Anyone deluded enough to believe that Israel truly wants democracy to spread in the Middle East must read David D. Kirkpatrick’s outstanding first-hand account of the 2011 uprising in Egypt and its ugly aftermath, “Hands of Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East.”

Ahmad Kabariti reports from Gaza on how the unfolding crisis in the Gulf around Qatar could move Hamas closer to Iran, or cripple the group in its power struggle with the Palestinian Authority.