Middle East

Makram Rabah As Lebanon celebrated Christmas, a Syrian refugee camp in Miniyeh in the north of Lebanon was attacked by a group of local youths who set fire to tents amid clashes with residents. The number of violent incidents against…

By Bernhard Schell The upcoming Review Conference (postponed to August 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is expected to be characterised by deep divisions among the nuclear-weapon states (NWS), and between them and the non-nuclear-weapon states…

Five months on from the devastating port explosion that killed over 200 people, and injured thousands more, the UN has invited Beirut residents to share their hopes and fears for the future of the city, and for Lebanon, which remains…

By Yvonne Ridley I’ve often wondered why the Muslim Brotherhood strikes fear into the hearts of Arab regimes. Prisons across Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are filled with thousands of political prisoners drawn from the leadership and…

For two weeks now, citizens in the Sulaymaniyah governorate in Iraqi Kurdistan have been protesting the barren living conditions that they are facing. For months on end they have not (or only partly) been receiving their salaries from the Kurdish…

How does the corona crisis exacerbate the already difficult situation for Palestinians? To find out, PAX’s general director Anna Timmerman talked with Lucy Nusseibeh, the founder and chairperson of Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy (MEND), one of PAX’s partner organizations…

This post was written by Khalid Ibrahim, executive director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR), an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in the MENA region. Human rights defenders have nothing but words to defend the civil and…

When will there be a reconciliation between one and the other? When will there be a Yom Kippur יום כיפור of Palestinians and Israelis? That would truly make Israel strong. Yom Kippur is, for Jews, the holiest day on the…

The UN said some three years ago that it expects Gaza to become ‘unliveable’ by 2020,” recalls Majed Abusalama, award-winning Palestinian journalist, scholar, campaigner and human rights defender. “Since then, Israel not only refused to take action to reverse Gaza’s…

Commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to explore every opening to “restore hope” for a two-State solution. In a message, the UN chief cautioned that prospects for a…