Author Archives: Linda S. Heard

Israelis have received a clear message: the cozy world in which their military has operated with impunity is no more. The alacrity with which the Israeli government issued a verbal apology for the deaths of Egyptian security officers that Cairo insists were killed by an Israeli Apache helicopter while chasing down fighters and agreed to a joint Israeli-Egyptian investigation is telling. Continue reading →

The diplomatic flare-up between Cairo and Tel Aviv over Israel’s killing of Egyptian security officers who were chasing down militants in the Sinai Peninsula may have been dampened for now, but it has served to highlight the tenuousness of the Camp David Peace Treaty in the aftermath of Egypt’s popular uprising. The incident, for which Israel initially blamed a suicide bomber, provoked fury among ordinary Egyptians who even at the calmest of times readily admit there is little love lost between them and their supposed Israeli allies. Continue reading →

Sunday, former Egyptian President Mubarak and his sons Ala’a and Gamal were back in court which was just as chaotic as the previous session. Continue reading →

The Iraqi government has agreed to institute talks with the US on allowing between 10,000–15,000 US troops (benignly referred to as ‘trainers’) to remain in the country for two years past the 2011 deadline for the American military withdrawal. Continue reading →

Americans pride themselves that their country is the world’s biggest aid donor but let’s not kid ourselves that the money doesn’t come without strings, which at times threaten the recipient nation’s sovereign choices. Continue reading →

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should remain unshakeable in his resolve to gain United Nations recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state in the face of US pressure not to do so. Continue reading →

Another Friday, another 47 Syrian protesters have been consigned to coffins. The number of unarmed Syrians killed by state security forces since the start of the uprising is estimated to exceed 1,600, while those who are asking for President Bashar Al Assad to step down are growing. Particularly bad news for the former ophthalmologist turned Syrian leader, who came to office pledging liberal reform, is the fact that dissent is fomenting on the streets of the hitherto peaceful capital, Damascus. Continue reading →

It’s time for the US, the UN and the Quartet to take off the gloves and confront Israel with an inescapable reality. The Palestinians aren’t going anywhere and there will be a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital loosely based on 1967 borders sooner or later. Continue reading →

If I were a Palestinian living on the West Bank or Gaza I would wake up every morning wondering why the international community champions the self-determination of Arabs in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria while actively abetting Israel in its oppression of my own people when they have international law on their side. Continue reading →

I’m appalled at the way democratic countries and responsible world bodies that supposedly champion human rights and the rule of law have come together to thwart courageous people trying to break Israel’s inhumane blockade of Gaza. Continue reading →

The regional deckchairs are being rearranged. No one can predict which leaderships will remain and which will have gone by this time next year. Never before has the Arab world experienced such a long state of flux or been faced with such a lengthy laundry list of unknowns. Continue reading →

Sunday I watched “Tony Blair of Jerusalem”—which is apparently how he signs himself in embassy guest books nowadays—being interviewed by the BBC’s Jon Sopel. Jerusalem is a big part of his life now and he feels very much at home there, he explains. Intellectually, I despise the former British prime minister for slavishly following George W. Bush into Afghanistan and Iraq on a pack of lies but each time he speaks, rather than taking off my slipper to throw it at the screen, I’m sucked-in by his incredible charisma and carefully contrived “sensible” arguments, almost against my will. It seems that others are too. Continue reading →

United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates had confirmed that the US is engaged in preliminary talks with Taleban fighters in an attempt to find a political solution to the conflict prior to a planned American troop drawdown. This is good news but as Washington’s objective was to hunt down Bin Laden and eradicate his Taleban hosts, it is also an admission of failure. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan and the Taleban’s hold on the country is stronger than ever. Continue reading →

The Arab Spring has brought the whiff of freedom throughout the Arab world but throughout much of the region women are still being imprisoned by tradition and culture—and, let’s be frank, men’s fears, ego or mistrust. Continue reading →

Nobody can deny that Syria is in crisis. The sad thing is it may have been avoided if President Bashar Al Assad would have had the wisdom and foresight to implement political reform from the get-go like King Mohammad VI of Morocco is doing. Instead, the Syrian leader made empty promises before instituting a barbaric crackdown. He only needed to look at Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen to know that state oppression of peaceful protesters is not only morally unacceptable, it simply doesn’t work. Continue reading →

The over-40s may remember a time when people in authority were generally looked-up to as being honourable and trustworthy with few exceptions. That may have been a naïve illusion or it could be that wrongdoing is hard to cover up in an era of 24-hour news and when whistle blowing has never been easier thanks to blogs and social media websites. There is, of course, a third option. It’s possible that nowadays a growing number of those in high places believe nobility is a mug’s game. Such answers will remain elusive but one thing is certain: greed and graft knows no borders. Continue reading →

Israel’s illegal four-year-long blockade of the Gaza Strip has become unsustainable for a number of reasons. Continue reading →

Egypt’s Coalition of the Revolutionary Youth is in danger of going from hero to zero. Last Friday, the movement encouraged its following to participate in what was billed as a “second revolution” or a “second day of rage.” Continue reading →

Most battered wives eventually learn the hard way that the words “I love you” spoken by their abusive spouse are nothing more than a deliberate con without respect and caring actions to back them up. Continue reading →

As usual, US President Barack Obama is doing a diplomatic dance between the Israeli and Palestinian camps going one step forward and two steps back. He’s putting on a show in an attempt to please everybody and ends up pleasing no one. In his speech delivered at the State Department directed at the Arab world he caused excitement in Palestinian circles by outlining his two-state vision based on 1967 borders with some land swaps. He gave the impression that he wanted to see a pre-1967 Palestinian state with some minor adjustments, which predictably led to a firestorm in Israel and thrust America’s pro-Israel lobbyists and senators into a frenzy of outrage. Continue reading →

It is generally believed that the political shape shifting throughout swathes of the Arab world constitutes bad news for Israel. That argument does hold some water. For instance, Egypt’s caretaker Cabinet has succeeded in bringing Fatah and Hamas together to form a unity government and has announced plans to reopen the Rafah crossing to Gaza. Continue reading →

Wanted dead or alive” was the tag former US president George W. Bush placed on the head of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden as long ago as September 17, 2001. Continue reading →

Tel Aviv and its backer, Washington, are heading for embarrassment. Accused of double-standards over the Palestinian issue for decades, their willful disregard of Palestinian rights can no longer be hidden from the spotlight. When Arabs have awakened from their long slumber to refuse dictatorship and oppression, Palestinians ask when their turn will come. Continue reading →

Flag-Sellers in my adopted hometown Alexandria are still doing a roaring trade. Patriotism has become fashionable; some men wear flag lapel badges and the Egyptian standard flaps in the breeze outside apartments, including my own. Continue reading →

Before the revolution, the idea that Egypt might one day become an Islamic state wasn’t up for debate. Then, the word was that the Muslim Brotherhood movement had been losing its grassroots support for years. The country’s secular intelligentsia was of the general opinion that the Mubarak regime was using such scaremongering threats as ‘it’s either us or the Brotherhood’ to counteract pressure from Washington to democratise. Continue reading →

Benjamin Netanyahu reminds me of a helmsman denying that his ship is full of holes even as his feet get soaked. Someone should tell the Israeli prime minister that his neighbourhood has transformed when he wasn’t looking. Continue reading →

Revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have been illuminating in more ways than one. In each case, a paternalistic autocrat announcing his wish to live and die on his country’s soil has either been forcibly unglued from his chair or, in the case of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, is still clinging on. Continue reading →

Over 95 percent of the country is under the control of the pro-democracy camp, including Zawiya, a key city just 30 miles away from the capital Tripoli. Benghazi, where life goes on almost as normal, has formed an alternative government made up of judges, professionals and elders. Continue reading →