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The Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas and other Palestinians on October 7, 2023 could have been released a long time ago had the Biden administration exerted pressure on Qatar to use its good relations with the Islamist group to force it to do so.All Qatar had to do was to summon the Hamas leaders in Doha and give them an ultimatum to release all the hostages immediately or face deportation from the Gulf state. It is hard to see how the Hamas leaders would have been able to say no to their major political and financial patrons and backers.... The...

Welcome to Israel's 'Partner for Peace'. Mahmoud Abbas must be kicking himself. Why did he ever think it would be a good idea to call for parliamentary and presidential elections? He had, after all, gotten along quite well without them. The Palestinian President-for-Life is now entering the 16th year of his four-year term. But he wanted to show the Biden people that he was, in truth, deeply democratic, and what better way – indeed, the only way – to show that was to insist upon elections. Besides, he figured everything would go according to plan. His handpicked list of Fatah...

Mahmoud Abbas originally thought it was a good idea. There was a new administration in Washington, one most favorably inclined to the Palestinians. The Biden people were ready to undo what the “unfriendly” Trump Administration had done. Trump had closed the PLO office in Washington, Biden promised to open it. Trump had folded the consulate to the Palestinians in east Jerusalem into the Embassy in Jerusalem; Biden promised to reopen it. Trump had ended both direct aid to the Palestinians and American contributions to UNRWA. Biden announced that he was again turning on the spigot of aid, starting with a...

The Hamas March to Destroy Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh July 15, 2019 at 5:00 am https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14548/hamas-march-destroy-israel By choosing to hold the protests under the banner of the "Three No's," the organizers of the "Great March of Return" have again proven that the weekly demonstrations are not about improving the living conditions of Palestinians or easing restrictions imposed on the Gaza Strip. Instead, the message the organizers are sending to the Palestinians and the rest of the world is: "We don't recognize Israel's right to exist and therefore we will never make negotiate or make peace with it." Hamas's two...

US Secretary of State John Kerry looks like a bit of an idiot these days. On Monday he announced that he will be returning to Israel and the Palestinian Authority and Jordan for the fifth time since he was sworn into office on February 1. That is an average of more than one visit a month. And aside from frequent flier miles, the only thing he has to show for it is a big black eye from PLO chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. When Kerry was here last month he unveiled a stunning plan to bring $4 billion...

“Fatah couldn’t stop me, Hamas couldn’t stop me, not even Facebook will stop me from continuing my work,” is what Arab Israeli journalist Khaled abu Toameh told The Jewish Press Tuesday morning, January 15, in a lengthy interview about Facebook’s bizarre treatment of his Facebook page. In the space of less than 24 hours, abu Toameh’s page was shut down, parts of it were scrubbed, and then it was back, without a word of explanation. For everyone who breathed a sigh of relief that this journalist hasn’t been censored, who hoped it had just been a glitch – the truth...

The clouds that normally obscure events in the Middle East start to recede when Khaled Abu Toameh begins talking about the future of Palestinians and Israelis. This relationship, the key to his future life as an Israeli Arab, has been the subject of his journalism for more than two decades. What he’s learned contradicts beliefs held by much of the world, and differs sharply from what we expect from someone with his background. He was in Toronto this week, talking to a few journalists. He’s a Muslim Arab, son of an Israeli Arab father and a Palestinian Arab mother. When...

Khaled Abu Toameh is not your typical Palestinian journalist. He began his career at one of Yasser Arafat’s newspapers and today he writes for the Jerusalem Post. He has produced video for European TV stations, and even blogged for a while at Commentary Magazine in New York. It’s impossible to cram Toameh into a convenient ideological box, though that doesn't stop some people from trying. I met him briefly a few weeks ago on my trip to Israel sponsored by the American Jewish Committee when he gave a talk to me and my colleagues and answered some questions at...

For the past three months, a Palestinian refugee camp in the Middle East has been under attack, resulting in the death of hundreds of people and the displacement of nearly half of the camp’s 40,000 residents. Yet the United Nations Security Council has not held an emergency session to condemn the attack. Nor have the governments of France and Britain issued statements condemning the “atrocities” against the Palestinian refugees in the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon. For those who may wonder why there is no public outcry, the answer is simple. The army that is attacking the camp with...

“If Tony Blair thinks we’re going to roll out a red carpet for him, he’s in for a surprise.” This is what a senior Palestinian official in the office of Mahmoud Abbas told me when I asked him over the weekend about the visit to the region by the former British prime minister, now a special envoy of the Middle East Quartet. “The president is not going to welcome him at the entrance to his office and we will send only one police car to accompany his motorcade when it enters Ramallah.” The Palestinians have never liked Blair, largely because...

Some 6,000 Palestinians have been stranded for the past month on the Egyptian side of the border with the Gaza Strip because of the closure of the Rafah border crossing. The terminal was closed after the European monitors who had operated there for the past two years left their jobs following Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in mid-June. At least 20 of these Palestinian travelers have died either of illness or other causes while waiting on the Egyptian side. Most of them are complaining that the Egyptian authorities are not doing anything to alleviate their suffering. Attempts by Israel...