Middle East Follow

The history of British and French rule in the Middle East makes uncomfortable reading for Iraq's new conquerors.

Simon Assaf reports on the anti-war movement in the Middle East.

Tony Blair tried to get backing for the war on Iraq by claiming that it would bring peace to the Middle East. But Bush and Blair's "road map to peace" for Israel and Palestine is a con. It is overwhelmingly weighted in favour of Israel, the US's watchdog state in the Middle East.

Hamdeen Sabahy

An attack on Iraq will lead to more instability in the Middle East.

The kids in Jenin camp look like kids in any deprived area in the world. They have that knowing look in their eyes, a look that says, "I know something you don't know"-a look of pride, anger and defiance. The eyes of battle hardened veterans that belie their age.

The deaths of over 160 Palestinians and more than 30 Israelis in 12 days at the beginning of this month shocked people across the world. Socialist Worker looks at the roots of the conflict.

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has unleashed slaughter on the Palestinian people. Look at the pictures on this page. They show Israeli soldiers executing 23 year old Palestinian Mahmoud Salah on a Jerusalem Street on Friday of last week.

Children ripped apart by tank shells as they play. Women shot dead by army snipers in their own homes. Houses smashed to rubble by F-16 fighter jets. A doctor deliberately shot dead in his own ambulance as he rushes to help the injured. This is the reality of Ariel Sharon's massacre of Palestinian civilians. It is the reality that the British media try to ignore. They concentrate on reporting only the Israeli casualties.

'Everywhere we went we bumped into a funeral. We went to the town of Salfeet in the West Bank. Many houses had been bulldozed just two days before we'd got there. They'd built a little hospital. It has four beds and two doctors for 60,000 people. People from Ramallah have to use the hospital as well. There are lots of stillbirths.

I guess readers of this paper were delighted to read that 50 reservist Israeli army officers had refused to serve in the West Bank. They have signed a petition saying, "We will not fight beyond the Green Line Israel's 1967 border with the West Bank in order to rule, expel, destroy, blockade, assassinate, starve and humiliate an entire people."