These 1948 questions are even knottier and more sensitive than the 1967 ones: among them, whether Palestinians can at last come to terms with what was established in that fateful year, namely Israel as a Jewish state, and whether Israelis can at last acknowledge the impact of that event on Palestinians, including the creation of at least 700,000 Palestinian refugees.
Maybe Israel just needs to acknowledge Palestinian pain
Internally Displaced Iraqis Lack Basic Needs
A report by the International Organization for Migration finds most of the 1.6 million Iraqis who were forced to flee their homes in the wake of the 2006 bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra still lack the most basic needs. IOM surveyed nearly 224,000 internally displaced families in Iraq's 18 governorates.
It has been 3.5 years since the bombing of the mosque triggered one of the worst displacement crises in recent times. Although security in Iraq has improved during this time, apparently the lives of most of these homeless people have not.
CIA expanding presence in Afghanistan
The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence "surge" that will make its station there among the largest in the agency's history, U.S. officials say.
When complete, the CIA's presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the agency already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan.
Firm agrees Ivory Coast waste payouts
An oil trading firm has agreed to pay more than $46m (£28m) compensation to people in Ivory Coast who say they were made ill by dumped waste in 2006.
Trafigura, with offices in London, Amsterdam and Geneva, said 30,000 people will each receive $1,546 (£950). The money is in addition to the nearly $200m that the company paid the Ivorian government in 2007.
Disgrace in The Hague
There's a name on every bullet, and there's someone responsible for every crime. The Teflon cloak Israel has wrapped around itself since Operation Cast Lead has been ripped off, once and for all, and now the difficult questions must be faced. It has become superfluous to ask whether war crimes were committed in Gaza, because authoritative and clear-cut answers have already been given. So the follow-up question has to be addressed: Who's to blame?
Taliban leader tells 'invaders' to study history
The Taliban's reclusive leader said in a Muslim holiday message Saturday that the U.S. and NATO should study Afghanistan's long history of war, in a pointed reminder that foreign forces have had limited military success in the country.
The message from Mullah Omar comes less than a month before the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban for hosting al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Diplomatic Immunity Leaves Abused Workers in Shadows
The case highlights what advocates call a longtime pattern of trafficking and exploitation of domestic workers by foreign diplomats in the United States.
"Unfortunately, cases involving diplomatic employers represent a disproportionate amount of the domestic-worker abuse cases we see," said Suzanne Tomatore, director of the Immigrant Women and Children Project at the New York City Bar Justice Center.
A New Path of Palestinian Resistance
Fatah used the space created by recent events and international pressure to organize, in spite of the occupation, and to elect a new leadership committed to ending the occupation. The sessions of the conference were heated and deliberative and, while not perfect, they were democratic. As such, its very occurrence was an act of resistance, defying a generation-long effort by the occupation to deny Palestinians their national identity and their right to organize as an independent people.
There's no denying Obama's race plays a role in protests
"Anyone who's looked at some of the signs at the various 'tea parties' knows perfectly well that race is a significant part of this backlash," he said. " . . . I'm not suggesting that every person angry about health care or immigration is a Klansman in disguise, but at the back of this white-hot rage that we've been seeing are people who are genuinely furious about the way the country is changing and changing racially."No one symbolizes the changing face of America more than Obama does. "I think hundreds of thousands of whites are taking these very real changes and attributing them to the race of the president."
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