Tag: Comment Is Free

  • The blue velvet hills of my youth have been destroyed

    Raja Shehadeh | The Guardian 5 July 2009 I can remember the appearance of the hills around Ramallah in 1979, before any Jewish settlement came to be established there. In the spring of that year I walked north from Ramallah, where I live, to the nearby village of A’yn Qenya and up the pine-forested hill.…

  • Israel pushes out its own people

    Dimi Reider | The Guardian 10 June 2009 Whenever Barack Obama speaks of the Middle East these days, there’s one thing that worries “senior Israeli officials” most. “He didn’t say ‘Jewish state’,” they mutter to reporters. “He had all the time to say these two words, and didn’t. Why didn’t he?” Binyamin Netanyahu himself utters…

  • A recipe for resentment

    Ahmad Samih Khalidi | The Guardian 26 May 2009 The Obama administration is gearing up for its impending and ­possibly decisive moves ­towards relaunching the Middle East peace process, with a series of consultations with Arab leaders, including the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, later this week. After ­meeting with Barack Obama in ­Washington last week,…