Mona Anis recovers the wider Arab context from the pages of Al-Ahram
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Land or an education: this choice was at the beginning of it all. Then the Zionists moved in on Palestine, and the war was on: a war in which the scales were tipped from the start. On one side, a powerful, organised and well-equipped colonial army. On the other, uneducated peasants, a corrupt king, and a divided leadership. Haidar Abdel-Shafi talks to Mona Anis about guerrilla warfare, the rabbi's daughter and the orders that never came
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A few resilient settlers heroically facing the massed forces of all the Arab countries that surrounded and threatened to swallow them. The official Israeli version of the 1948 War, carved, by now, on tablets of stone, could hardly be further from the truth. Fifty years to the day that the first UN sponsored cease-fire, mediated by Count Bernadotte -- a Swedish aristocrat subsequently assassinated by a Jewish gang -- came into effect, Mona Anis assesses the situation on the ground between the combatants after just 26 days of fighting. On paper, though, the Arab forces may well have appeared to have the upper hand. But they were overstretched. Their supplies of arms were exhausted, and they had no access to more. The Jewish forces, on the other hand, were determined and had the support to use the truce to reinforce their positions, to re-arm, recruit and train yet more soldiers for an arena in which they had never ceased to outnumber their Arab opponents by a ratio of two to one
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What can history tell us about parliamentary elections held during periods of revolutionary upheaval?
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As the Islamists celebrate a landslide victory in Egypt’s first democratic elections, the question of which political force is likely to ally itself with which other poses itself now
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While an alliance between the ruling SCAF and the Muslim Brotherhood is not impossible, the Salafists might be better suited for this alliance
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Are there historical parallels to be found for the present twists and turns of the Egyptian Revolution?
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Last week’s looming confrontation between Egypt’s ruling military council and the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have been averted, for now
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The complicated electoral system used in the parliamentary elections has forced many voters to make some impossible choices
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Can this week's elections restore the mood of optimism that reigned in Egypt after the January Revolution?
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Both the Islamists and the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces are positioning themselves in the run-up to this month’s legislative elections
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With Egypt’s parliamentary elections approaching, a lot will depend on the turnout of the voters
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However long it takes, the truth of events outside the television building in Cairo last Sunday in which 26 people were killed will necessarily have to emerge
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PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s dramatic bid for Palestinian statehood at the UN signaled the final death of the so-called ‘peace process’
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In the absence of an alliance of radical forces, Egypt’s Revolution risks running into the sands
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The action of the man who risked his life last week to remove the Israeli flag must be understood against the backdrop of 30 years of indignation
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A new round in the political games is about to begin
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The opening of Mubarak's trial last week, with the deposed president being wheeled on a hospital bed, looked much like a scene out of a play from the theatre of the absurd – Endgame by Samuel Beckett, perhaps
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The implications of last Friday's show of force by the Salafists has to be read within the wider context of the limitations of the rest of the political forces now competing in Egypt
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After having labeled poor protesters as baltagiya (thugs), the ruling military council has now turned the heat on the more affluent, claiming they don't look Egyptian enough
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