Oslo

By Melissa Chan in Asia on December 10th, 2010
Photo by Reuters

Today is the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo for recipient, Liu Xiaobo. 

Today is also International Human Rights Day and two years ago today, Charter 08, the document Liu Xiaobo penned which is cause for his prison sentence, was published.

The last 48 hours in Beijing has seen quite a dramatic display of a government in overdrive because of this one man and this one award.

Most bewildering was the Confucius Peace Prize, which appeared to be a rather ad hoc event in response to the Nobel Committee's decision. 

The committee included a few university professors (including a Spanish professor), a psychologist, and a military attache.  Nominees included Bill Gates, Lien Chan, Nelson Mandela, Mahmoud Abbas, and Jimmy Carter.  Lien Chan was the lucky winner.  A former vice-president of the Republic of China (better known as Taiwan), his office did not know he had won until journalists called.

By Nour Odeh in Middle East on September 14th, 2010
Picture from AFP

The view is as ironic as the reality. Standing on the edge of a house under construction in Bethlehem, I can see the Church of Nativity, Israel’s separation Wall surrounding Bethlehem, the city’s traffic, and the ever-expanding Israeli settlement Har Homa – while covering Palestinian-Israeli direct talks underway in Egypt.

Palestinians know the settlement as Jabal Abu Ghneim; Israel says it’s part of greater Occupied East Jerusalem. Palaestinians also know this illegal settlement of 30,000 residents was built in the height of the Oslo peace process on their private property.

By Ayman Mohyeldin in Americas on September 2nd, 2010
Photo by EPA

Spend as much time in the Middle East following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as I have over the years and you begin to notice a sad pattern.

The two-state solution based on the Israeli-Palestinian equation of 'land for peace' has brought neither land nor peace but violence.

Now that the direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians have begun, so too, many are afraid, has something else: the countdown to the next round of violence in the region.

God forbid it happens.

By Nour Odeh in Middle East on March 26th, 2010

Palestinian workers are hard at work, paving the main Ramallah-Birzeit road ... Hot asphalt pouring on the road, fumes spreading their intoxicating effect, in preparation for a smooth, world-class highway. It's all courtesy of US taxpayer dollars. Through the aid agency USAID, the Obama administration is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on projects in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

This year, USAID plans to spend $153m on infrastructure projects in the West Bank alone. That includes the construction of up 180 kilometres of roads. It's a considerable jump from the $65m the agency spent on similar projects in 2009.

falling-money.jpg

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on March 15th, 2010
Photo by EPA

Over the last several months, Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, and Barack Obama, the US president, have led the campaign praise for Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, despite his extremist views.

Peres, for long Netanyahu's political nemesis and considered the architect of the 1993 Oslo Peace Process along with Mahmoud Abbas, commended the right-wing Likud leader's stance on peace as "brave and real".

The Obama administration spoke in a similar tone, noting and praising Netanyahu's acceptance of the principle of a two-state solution and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, celebrated the unprecedented 'limited temporary freeze on settlement'!

The message from Israel and the US has been clear: Give Netanyahu a chance. He means business. 

Netanyahu, who boasts of knowing US power politics better than most since his tenure in New York as ambassador to the UN, seems to have outsmarted his US counterpart.

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