Palestine: the world looks away

Nothing seems to have altered in the Arab world for decades: despotic regimes, and their peoples, finding in nationalism and Islamism release from a sense of being left out of the modern world.

Only an attempt to deal with the problem of Palestine can stimulate desperately needed change.

Woeful state of the Arab world

While international attention is on Iraq, Israel is taking the chance to expand army operations in the West Bank and Gaza, demolishing their structure and infrastructure, totally unconcerned about the deaths it causes. THE thoughts of the world were elsewhere on 17 March. The Azores summit ended the day before. The chances of a second United Nations resolution were gone, and television correspondents from the United States were monopolising airwaves, waiting for President Geroge Bush’s "leave the country or face war" ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to expire. That day 11 Palestinians died in the Gaza Strip, most of them non-combatants, and it happened in a climate of indifference. Monde Diplomatique