The “Free Syrian Army” are hardly paragons of virtue in this dirty war

The narrative has, for months, been rather fixed: Bashar Al Assad’s army of brutal killers have committed massacres all over Syria in order to keep their dictator-master in power.

By Emanuel Stoakes | Notebook | Friday, 31 August 2012 at 2:00 pm

Yasser Arafat and when poison ‘kills the president’

Mouth-searing and palate-pleasing narratives about assassinations that have a cunningly secretive nature about them have become all too common in the last 50 years — and non more so than when the victims turn out to be those of great controversy.

By Mohammad I. Aslam | Notebook | Wednesday, 18 July 2012 at 4:00 am

Note to refugees from South Sudan: Israel is for the white man

These were the astonishing words uttered by Israel’s interior minister Eli Yishai in an interview recently in which he outlined the Israeli government’s view of African migrants.

By Richard Sudan | Notebook, Opinion | Friday, 22 June 2012 at 7:19 pm

Israeli officials may have less to fear coming to UK but uncomfortable questions remain

Despite a change in the universal jurisdiction legislation last year, Israeli officials and military officers are still not visiting Britain for fear of arrest on war crimes charges.

By Ben White | Notebook, iPolitics | Friday, 1 June 2012 at 4:00 am

America’s Death at the O.K. Corral

Last week, for the first time in a long time, reality approached the realm of the great westerns. Our old-time hero tracked down the enemy to a dusty village amongst the mountains of some foreign land. After years of searching, turned bitter by constant evasion, he’d found his man.

By Oliver Duggan | Notebook, The Foreign Desk | Thursday, 12 May 2011 at 10:33 am

The GCC intervention: giving Bahrain relative stability and the space to negotiate its future

A great deal has been written about the waves of protest and revolution in parts of the Middle East; much of it uses the powerful tool of analogy to shed light on the situation and to open up the debate. Is the ‘Arab Spring’ analogous to Prague 1968, Tehran 1979, Berlin 1989 or even Paris 1789? No one can agree but it is certainly fuelling café conversation all over the region. The reference to historical comparisons and more importantly the ensuing debate is helping to make sense of what is happening here in the Middle East, even if it can’t give easy answers.

By Nikki Schreiber | Notebook | Tuesday, 12 April 2011 at 6:55 pm

A new Iran policy in the new Middle East

The tide of change engulfing the Muslim world is getting bigger and more pervasive day by day.  What has happened in less than six weeks in this region has already made it a historical year as a huge geography used to political and social stagnation has been witness to its biggest changes since the [...]

By Lord Tony Clarke | Notebook | Tuesday, 8 March 2011 at 5:27 pm

Why is the Middle East and North Africa in turmoil?

Despotism is one obvious cause; the economy is the other part of the answer. Yet Libya will grow by 6.2 per cent this year, enjoy inflation at 3.5 per cent and have a 20 per cent (of GDP trade surplus), all superior to the UK. The other economies are growing rapidly too; Bahrain by 4.5 [...]

By Sean O'Grady | Econoblog | Monday, 21 February 2011 at 5:40 pm

Hell hath no furry!

There are certain subjects you should never write about unless you can withstand a torrent of abuse. I encountered it once when I touched on Middle East politics, and I got it again when, in a piece for Arena magazine, I refused to accept that circumcision is genital mutilation.
This week it happened again. I wrote a [...]

By Simmy Richman | Notebook | Tuesday, 15 June 2010 at 1:00 pm

Visualizing Peace in the Middle East

With Tony Blair –  the Middle East envoy for the Quartet (UN, EU, USA and Russia) –  visiting Gaza and the Sderot today, it’s a good moment to explore the core issues on which any long-term Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement depends.

The image above shows the top-level issues that Independent readers and the Debategraph community have identified so far, namely:
     [...]

By David Price | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 1 March 2009 at 8:12 pm