Photo source: Haaretz By Naveed Qazi Editor, Globe Upfront When the most right-wing government in Israel’s history took power through Netanyahu again, the coalition put forward legislation that severely restricted the judiciary. Due to this, thousands of protestors gathered in Tel Aviv and beyond in January 2023 to rally against what they believe is a grave risk to their institutions. This happened at a time when Israelis, as new settlers, were attacking Palestinians. That’s why the pretence of peace is slowly getting evaporated as protests have gained momentum. As far as Netanyahu’s cabinet goes, it’s filled with far-right extremists such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister who has been given a role to supervise settlement policy. The Israeli protests of 2023 are a culmination of long-term forces that have created flaws and weaknesses in Israeli democracy, with many calling them structural flaws. The political struc...

  Photo source: The New Arab By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront T he indiscriminate aerial bombings in Gaza in May 2021 marked the near terminal collapse of nearly three decades of flawed peacemaking in Palestine. The new attacks echoed what Gaza went through in 2008 and 2014 conflicts. It had begun with the Oslo Accords, which did not bring any viable framework for peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians. After that, a two state solution was rallied for, which granted powers of governance to the Palestinian Authority, whose formal role became policing Palestine in the context of an unending occupation. Repeated failures to revive negotiations for a two state solution have culminated in the so called ‘deal of the century’. Former President Donald Trump, in his hegemonic project, surrendered any pretension, for a moral standing under international law. It granted Israel an open license for land grabs, and colonial settlements. This deal of the century also ratifi...

Photo Source: The Times of Israel By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront There is an insincere praise bestowed upon Netanyahu after 2021 post election in Israel that the Jewish state under him was not racist, fascistic, or an apartheid, and a colonial enterprise. He was lionised, in some quarters, for uplifting the lives of Israeli Arabs, by helping them with post secondary degrees, but the fact remains that under his leadership, Israel was not only at war with Palestine, but also within. He initiated political infightings, in perpetuation of his power, and exploited every divide between Jews, Arabs, religious, secular, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi by stoking historical resentments. For this reason, it will probably take years for Israel's political and social fabric to heal. He first took office in 1996, a year after a Jewish extremist assassinated the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, for spearheading the Oslo Accords. A month before the assassination, Netanyahu took part in a demonstrati...

Photo Source: Associated Press By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront To flare up more tensions in the Middle East, United States has said that West Bank settlements are consistent with international law. In November 2019, Mike Pompeo told reporters that the Trump administration believes any legal questions about settlements should be settled by Israeli courts, and that declaring them as an infringement of international law, hinders a negotiation for any peace deal. President Trump has retracted many of the decisions on Israel-Palestinian conflict, since he took over office, which has resulted in more torment for the Palestinian leadership. Infact, talks between Israel and Palestine have been broken down since 2014. The reason why United States calls West Bank settlements legal now is because the political and diplomatic actors believe that the mantle exhibited before hasn’t helped the cause of peace. But, in reality, it embraces the hardline Israeli view, at the cost of fut...

Photo Source: Al Jazeera By Naveed Qazi | Editor, GlobeUpFront Donald Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights on 25 March 2019 marked one of the most controversial foreign policy decisions of his presidency. As reported by Al Jazeera, the proclamation was signed at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it effectively endorsed Israel’s 1981 annexation of the territory captured from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War. The move was unprecedented: no other major power had recognised Israel’s claim, and the UN Security Council had repeatedly affirmed that the Golan Heights remained occupied Syrian territory. The timing of Trump’s decision was politically significant. According to Victor Kattan in JSTOR, the proclamation came just two weeks before Israel’s general election, providing Netanyahu with a symbolic victory to present to his electorate. In the United States, the announcement coincided with the annual conference of...

Photo source: USA Today By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Up Front It was a day to symbolise the sufferings of Palestinian Muslims, who were expelled from their homeland.  But something tragic happened.  The day of sympathy, for 700,000 Palestinians expelled during the 1948 war, turned into a mass killing of people. The 70 th anniversary turned into a macabre, a bloodbath. A 31-year-old Nasser was shot in the chest, about 800 meters away from the fence. At the hospital, his heart stopped beating. One of the teenagers, an 18-year-old, Bilal al-Ashram, son of Nisma Abdelqader, was shot straight in the head. His brother, at the local morgue, had been shocked about his death. On Facebook, Bilal had written a post the previous day, where he insisted to go to Bir Se’ba, a city in the south, from where his family had been expelled during the Nakba . Factually, the journey was their birthright, but they were killed for their intentions.  Killing ...

Source: Al Jazeera By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Up Front T he slapping of an Israeli soldier by a sixteen-year-old activist, Ahed Tamimi in December 2017 has become a new symbol of Palestinian resistance.  While her cousin, Nour Tamimi had been released on bail for 5000 shekels (1400 USD), Ahed has been charged with twelve counts and if found guilty, could be convicted for a longer jail presence. Her mother, who filmed the video has also been charged. In 2015, Ahed bit a hand of an Israeli soldier to try to stop the arrest of her brother. This young activist comes from a prominent Tamimi family, residing in the village of Nabi Saleh, who are renowned for their political activism. Ahed’s father wants her to become the poster child of the most significant Palestinian peaceful resistance movement namely Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).  To many, Ahed is seen as the West Bank’s Joan of Arc. Interestingly, the media has not given her a...