Habib Siddiqui

  Twitter Photograph Source: Bracodbk –  CC BY-SA 3.0 With all this talk of Ukraine as the first major European war since the Second World War, I can’t stop thinking about the shelling of Dubrovnik on December 6th 1991. Not Sarajevo, admittedly, but raining down nonetheless were what became a total of 727 shells on the Dalmatian city. These were each fired by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), by this stage composed mainly of Serbs, whose president at the weekend of course has just announced that he has secured an “extremely favorable” natural gas deal with Russia. Fires in Dubrovnik burned out of control. Young blood splattered the coveted marble streets. This was followed by 122 days without water. One local 21 year-old woman I met lost fourteen close friends all in their 20s. For a while, the sea was the only toilet, bread the only food. Talk about trouble in paradise. People scanned the horizon for the United States Sixth Fleet and no one came. This was a conflict which — in the fac

  Rached Ghannouchi is a fierce critic of President Kais Saied, who in July 2021 suspended the Ennahda-dominated parliament, sacked the prime minister, and assumed executive powers. A Tunisian court has imposed a travel ban on the speaker of the country's  now-dissolved parliament , a court spokeswoman said. The interdiction against  Rached Ghannouchi  is part of an inquiry into alleged obstruction of justice in connection with the assassination in 2013 of two left-wing figures, the court spokesman said on Friday. The travel ban was imposed on "34 suspects in this case, including Rached Ghannouchi," Fatima Bouqtaya, spokeswoman for the court in the Tunis suburb of Ariana, told  AFP . Ghannouchi heads the Islamist-inspired  Ennahda party  that has dominated Tunisia's post-revolution politics. Ghannouchi, 81, is a fierce critic of  President Kais Saied , who in July 2021 suspended the Ennahda-dominated parliament, sacked the prime minister and assumed executive powers.

  Hundreds of   Israeli   far-right activists and settlers stormed   al-Aqsa Mosque   on Sunday, performed group prayers and raised the Israeli flag ahead of a   mass parade   in occupied Jerusalem later in the day.  Palestinians  in the mosque were assaulted by Israeli forces, who tried to empty the courtyards of Muslim worshippers to make way for the settlers.  Around 20 Palestinians had been arrested while at least 2,600 heavily protected settlers toured the courtyards of the mosque between 7am and 11am local time and later between 1:30pm and 2:30pm ,  according to Palestinian and Israeli reports. "The scenes were painful to see," said Aida Saidawi, a Palestinian activist who lives metres away from al-Aqsa.  "The settlers can't enter on their own, they have to be protected by hundreds of police officers," she told Middle East Eye, adding that Palestinians were prevented from entering the mosque earlier in the day.  Earlier, Israeli forces stopped Muslim worsh

  Israelis wave national flags in front of Damascus Gate outside Jerusalem's Old City to mark Jerusalem Day, an Israeli holiday celebrating the capture of the Old City during the 1967 Mideast war, Sunday, May 29, 2022. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital. But Palestinians, who seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, see the march as a provocation. Last year, the parade helped trigger an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza militants. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — Thousands of Israeli nationalists, some of them chanting “Death to Arabs,” paraded through the heart of the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday, in a show of force that risked setting off a new wave of violence in the tense city. The crowds, who were overwhelmingly young Orthodox Jewish men, were celebrating Jerusalem Day -- an Israeli holiday that marks the capture of the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war

  After a few relatively quiet years, then a year in which the parade was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, and a year in which it was rerouted due to security tensions, the Flag March returned to Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate and Muslim Quarter, in all its ugliness. In the years before 2020, under pressure from the High Court of Justice, the media and police, organizers of the march tried hard to minimize the violently racist chants of participants, and it seemed to work. Marchers who started singing “Death to the Arabs” and “May your village burn” were silenced by organizers and threatened with arrest by police. The marches continued in relative quiet, with some Palestinian stores along the route even remaining open. This year, everything was reversed. From the morning hours, hundreds of  marchers and celebrants started filling the streets of the Old City . At Moghrabi Gate, Temple Mount organizations racked up the highest number of Jews coming to the Mount in one day since 1967