Habari Post

Reporter Tagheed El-Khodary, NY Times correspondent in Gaza, responds to questions posted by readers. One question in particular sparked quite a bit of controversy and discussion. The topic pertained to whether Hamas was deliberately firing rockets into Israel from civilian areas of Gaza. Ms.

A slide show of day-to-day life in Gaza since the ceasefire. The title "Gaza Ebbs Toward Normalcy" seems incredibly overstated.

The four living U.S. presidents (Jimmy Carter, George Bush, Sr., Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush) met with Barack Obama this week at the White House and passed the torch of the ever elusive pursuit for peace in the Middle East.

The New York Times put together a great interactive timeline that begins with the truce between Israel and a number of Arab countries who simultaneously declared war on the newly formed state in 1948. The Gaza strip was ceded to Egypt as part of a pact between the countries in 1949.

This week's Economist includes two articles that are well worth reading.

After 16 years with the World Bank, William Easterly writes about the failures and shortcomings of development policy and practices by Western dominated organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, USAID and the United Nations.

Ghost, Inc. is an Israeli-Palestinian company that provides a free, web-based virtual computer that lets users access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. Ghost is an acronym for Global Hosted Operating System.

As the 60 year anniversary of Israel's founding approaches, many Israeli citizens express concerns over the direction of their country and in particular over the government spending on the celebration.

The over 40 leaders from Muslim countries meeting in Dakar, Senegal wrapped a two-day summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) last Friday.

Seven million trees are to be planted in Israel in 2008.

Terry Gross from NPR interviewed two individuals last night who used to fight against each other and who are now trying to end the violence between Israel and Palestine by bringing together people who, like themselves, used to fight each other.

A diverse group of Israelis journeying on a two month walk along the Israel Trail is nearing the halfway marker. The purpose of the trek is threefold:

The Economist is running a story on some of the challenges with finding solutions to Middle East conflicts. The problems are tightly interlinked - the flare-up in Gaza made it more difficult to resolve a constitutional crisis in Lebanon, for example.