Articles

Hamas announced on December 21 that it was suspending martyrdom operations inside “the land occupied in 1948.” The announcement, in a notice issued in Ghazzah, came after weeks of intensified Israeli military pressure on Palestinians aimed at making life unbearable for civilians, and at forcing the Palestinian Authority to crack down on Islamic groups on Israel’s behalf.

Before his meeting with US president George W. Bush at the White House on November 27, all that president Abdullah Ali Saleh was prepared to do to accommodate Washington’s concerns about “anti-US terrorists” in Yemen was to expel a group of ‘Arab Afghans’ allegedly allied to Usama bin Ladin, and to take steps to prevent fleeing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters or supporters from entering his country.

The deaths last month of 65 Afghan tribal leaders when their convoy was attacked by US aircraft has drawn attention to the US’s bombing of virtually random targets in Afghanistan.

When the trial of Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, opened on December 10, another demonstration of the apartheid-like nature of Israel began. According to the indictment prepared by Elyakim Rubenstein...

Hardly an eyebrow rose on December 12 when the chairman of the Jewish Defence League (JDL) and another senior member were arrested in a plot to bomb a large mosque, the office of a congressman, and other targets.

Afghanistan’s American-installed puppet, Hamid Karzai is feeling puffed up because he was promised US$2.6 billion at an international conference in Tokyo on January 21-22. It was attended by representatives from Western countries, the World Bank/IMF and the UN.

On December 22, almost exactly 22 years after the Soviets installed a puppet government (on December 27, 1979, headed by Babrak Karmal) in Kabul, the Americans repeated the feat. Hamid Karzai was “sworn in” as prime minister with British troops guarding the interior ministry building where the ceremony took place...

Thirteen Pakistani troops were reported killed on December 26, as a result of Indian shelling across the Line of Control dividing Kashmir.

The persistent speculation of the last month about whether Somalia will be the next battleground in the US’s “war on terrorism” is practically over. Senior US government officials assert that Washington is indeed interested in Somalia, and US special forces and diplomats have already arrived there.

In a move to cripple Muslim charitable work, the US government moved against three leading charities during Ramadhan, accusing them of “supporting terrorism”.