Gaza

I was born in the Jordanian-occupied Old City in Jerusalem and lived in a UN refugee camp from 1966 until 1999. During the First Intifada, I worked for B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and in 1996 I founded the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring group. With my background in Palestinian campaigning and as a resident of East Jerusalem today, you might assume that I am against Israel’s current military actions. But this could not be further from the truth. The blame for this month’s bloodshed lies solely at the feet of Hamas. Those who wish to divert attention from Hamas’s war crimes would

Israel’s military action in Gaza is widely reported daily across the world. Images of hundreds of rockets lighting up the skies over Israeli cities and of the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip are once again part of the daily cycle of print and broadcast news. But most reports are thin on details of Israel’s military activities. What exactly are their aims? How are they pursuing them? And how much success are they having? Often Israel’s military activities seem baffling to the wider world. The country’s reluctance to give a detailed, running-commentary on every strike frustrates journalists and citizens, who then assume the worst of motives for these

No, not this time, Boris. The Prime Minister’s ‘both sides’ response to the terrorist attacks on Israel underscores how Western political elites — left, right and centre — lose all critical reasoning when it comes to one tiny strip of land in the Middle East. Israel is under assault from Hamas, the Islamist mafia that runs Gaza like 19th-century Sicily. This follows tensions over the policing of holy sites during Ramadan; a spate of violent street incidents between Israelis and Palestinians; marching and incitement by the Israeli far-right; Palestinian rioting in Jerusalem; and Arab-Israeli rioting outside the capital. There has also been unrest ahead of a court ruling on property

I didn’t hear the boom on Monday night. I didn’t hear the siren either, due to some loud renovations. Sitting at my desk in the bomb shelter in my flat that doubles as a home office, I found out we were under rocket attack by reading about it on Twitter. With the blast door and inch-thick steel window plate closed, I waited for the all-clear. A few minutes later, minor damage was reported to a house just outside Jerusalem, hit by shrapnel from a rocket that flew 40 miles from Gaza. Others were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket system. A dramatic end to Jerusalem Day, when Israel celebrates the