Juan Cole

Egypt’s president Muhammad Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s civil wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, issued a wide-ranging set of decrees on Thursday that greatly enhanced his power and would have led to a constitutional crisis if there were a constitution. He seems likely, in any case, to have set off substantial social turmoil, […]

1. The Israeli blockade on Gaza exports and non-military imports must be lifted altogether. Ben White points out that the restrictions on goods brought into Gaza via Israel are still very substantial, despite Israeli assertions that the blockade has been eased. And, the blockade on exports is almost complete, with some minor exceptions, and is […]

Courtesy Jamiol’s World

Egypt’s President Muhammad Morsi, a member of the same Muslim Brotherhood that gave birth to Palestine’s Hamas movement, has emerged as a key broker in the Gaza crisis. President Obama is said to have called him for the third time in 24 hours on Tuesday! Morsi sympathizes with the stateless Palestinians, who are being kept […]

The USG Open Source Center summarizes the Israeli press on the inadvisability of a ground assault on Gaza, and right-wing suggestions for alternatives such as cutting off water and electricity to the Gaza Strip. The latter proposal was also made by Gilad Sharon, son of the former prime minister, who said that Gaza should be […]

Jennifer Granholm of Current TV’s “War Room” (10 pm ET) interviewed me on Gaza:

Israeli air strikes for the past 6 days have killed over 100 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them women and children; one strike deliberately targeted a media building that Israeli government knew to house journalists. Medics announced Monday that they are running out of key medicines (Gaza is under Israeli blockade). Military strikes are also […]

From Democracy Now! – a live report from a Gaza hospital The blurb for the show: We get a live report from independent journalist Mohammed Omer from a hospital in Gaza City, where injured journalists, medical workers and civilians — including children — are arriving for treatment. An award-winning journalist based in Gaza, Omer has […]

Abd al-Ra’uf Arna’ut writes in the PLO newspaper al-Ayyam (The Days) that behind the scenes, the Obama administration and its European allies are exerting enormous pressure on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to refrain from launching a land invasion of Gaza. He maintains that the air war against Gaza, which might attrite Hamas’s stock of […]