The Great Debate UK
A Visit to Hebron
-Robin Yassin-Kassab is the author of The Road from Damascus, a novel published by Penguin, and co-editor of PULSE, one of Le Monde Diplomatique’s five favourite websites. The opinions expressed are his own.-
There’s no pretty way to describe what I saw in Hebron, no tidy conceit to wrap it in.
I visited as a participant in the Palestine Festival of Literature, the brain child of the great British-Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif. I was in the company of many wonderful writers and publishers, among them Python and traveller Michael Palin, best-selling crime novelist Henning Mankel, Pride and Prejudice screenplay writer Deborah Moggach, and prize-winning novelists Claire Messud and MG Vassanji.
Our first stop was Hebron University, where I ran a workshop on “the role of writing in changing political realities.” The students were bright and eager; the only discomforting note was struck by a memorial stone to three killed while walking on campus, by rampaging settlers, in 1986.
from The Great Debate:
Iran sanctions and wishful thinking
-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
So what's so difficult in getting Iran to drop its nuclear program? All it needs is a great American leader who uses sanctions to break the Iranian economy so badly that popular discontent sweeps away the leadership. It is replaced without a shot being fired.
from The Great Debate:
Setback for America’s pro-Israel hawks
-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. --
"The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending ... Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians, it strives to pacify them ... American identification with Israel has become total."
from The Great Debate:
First 100 Days: The next steps in the Middle East
President Barack Obama inherits a distinctly gloomy outlook for progress in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Is change really possible?
Reuters asked Oliver McTernan, the director a UK charity called Forward Thinking and two experts from the Brookings Institution in Washington -- former Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk and Kenneth Pollack -- what steps the Obama administration should take next in the Middle East.
from UK News:
BBC – taking a stand on Gaza
The BBC has been roundly condemned at home for its refusal to broadcast an emergency appeal for 
Gaza on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 13 aid agencies.
It says it does not want to be seen to be taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and that broadcasting the appeal could jeopardise its carefully cultivated position of impartiality. Sky News has followed suit.
from For the Record:
Reporting in Gaza: Striving for fairness
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
Let’s say it up front: Almost all of you will find something in this column to take issue with.
from The Great Debate:
In Gaza war, lions led by donkeys?
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
It's not often that a senior member of Washington's usually staid and cautious foreign policy establishment likens Israeli political leaders to donkeys and questions their competence. But the fighting in Gaza prompted Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies to do just that.
"Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel's action seriously damage the U.S. position in the region, and hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.
from The Great Debate:
EU enters lame duck year amid challenges
-- Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
The European Union is entering a lame duck year just as new challenges are mounting from Israel's assault on Gaza, Russia's gas cut-off to Ukraine and the impending inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
The EU's active crisis management in the Georgia war and the global financial meltdown last year under the energetic leadership of French President Nicolas Sarkozy was an exception, not the dawn of a new, more effective Union.
from Global News Journal:
A Braveheart Christmas in the Holy Land
In the big battle scene in the movie Braveheart, terrified whispers ran up and down the ragged ranks of sword-waving Scots that the English were ranged before them with “500 heavy horse” – armoured cavalry of devastating power in those days.
But the wild-haired hero-general William Wallace (actor-director Mel Gibson) rode his pony up and down the front ranks shouting: “We don’t have to beat them. We just have to fight them!”
from The Great Debate:
Can Obama avert an Arab-Israeli disaster?
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Time is running out for Israel and the Palestinians. Barack Obama is probably the last American president to have the option of pursuing an accord leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the so-called two-state solution.
If that fails, another generation will be locked into bloodshed and strife. That is the bleak scenario painted by two senior American Middle East experts in a new book, Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President. It is the product of an 18-month joint study by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, two pillars of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
