Palestine

BY MATT MCDOLE The clatter of rocks on limestone brings our conversation to an abrupt halt as we dart for cover along the sides of the narrow street. Under the questionable protection of torn awnings, our group of Harvard graduate students resumes the journey into the heart of the medieval Palestinian City of Hebron. Overhead, nets and metal grates hang down, sagging under the weight of kitchen […]

Trump prides himself on his deal-making abilities, but securing “the ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians presents major challenges.

The Middle East is an arid region to begin with, but climate change is set to exacerbate the region’s water scarcity.

Embed from Getty Images  Israeli riot police clashed with settlers living in the Amona “outpost” settlement in 2006   A controversial bill in Israel aims to legalize settlements in the occupied West Bank built on privately owned Palestinian land. The bill was proposed after an Israeli court ordered the demolition of the Amona “outpost,” a West Bank […]

Wars may be started by adults, but the effects of war do not discriminate by age. The lives, and futures, of children are just as vulnerable to the physical and mental traumas of modern warfare. Today, Aleppo is one of the most violent battlefields of the war in Syria, and an estimated 75,000 children survive amidst barrel bombs, […]

In Spring 2016, JMEPP Associate Editor Satgin Hamrah interviewed Ambassador Dennis Ross, the special Middle East Coordinator under former US President Bill Clinton during his visit to the Middle East Initiative at Harvard’s Belfer Center. Below is an excerpt from the interview on diplomacy in the MENA region as well as his role in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.  

In Spring 2016, JMEPP Guest Interviewer Federica du Pasquier of the Center for Middle East Studies at Harvard interviewed Pierre Krahenbuhl,Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) during his visit to the Middle East Initiative at Harvard’s Belfer Center. Below is an excerpt from the interview on […]

  After meeting five Syrian and Palestinian refugees trying to make their way from Milan to Sweden in the quest for asylum, an Italian journalist and a Palestinian poet decide to help them by faking a wedding. After all, “what border policeman would ever stop a bride to check her documents?[1]” As part of this […]

It can be argued that the rising escalation in tensions and confrontations between the Israelis and Palestinians over the past two months demonstrates that the Israeli policy of conflict management in order to maintain the status quo in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has become unsustainable. The results of these policies and practices have marginalized the […]

Under the auspices of the Harvard Institute of Politics, former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke in the Harvard Kennedy School Forum on September 16th, 2015. Interviewed by famed political scientist and Harvard Professor Graham Allison, Minister Barak shared his perspectives on the future of the region given current events in Syria and Iraq, as […]

BY KHALED K. Last week, an 18-month-old baby was burned to death in an attack by Israeli settlers in Douma, a village in the West Bank that is under Israeli occupation. The settlers left graffiti that read ‘Revenge’ and ‘Long Live Messiah’. The incident made international headlines; however, it is far from unusual. Every week, […]

In Ayn al-Hilwe, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, you frequently hear a new term: “Death Convoys” (Qawafel al-Mawt). It refers to the extremely dangerous voyages across the Mediterranean that Palestinian refugees are resorting to after fleeing Syria and failing to find refuge in neighboring countries. In the Lampedusa tragedy in October 2013, dozens if not […]