It must be the most dangerous trip Pope Francis has ever made, into the very heart of the capital of the largest Arab nation whose Isis tormentors long ago decided that Christians would be their “prey”. But Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who used to be a field marshal, seems to be turning it into a symbolic demonstration of his army’s power.
Endgames: inside Syria Robert Fisk reports from the front line in Aleppo province where, for 40 miles, not a house, stable or even fence remains standing
Endgames: inside Syria and Iraq Soon the Assad regime will be able to claim complete control of the major city of Homs for the first time in years. Robert Fisk witnesses a day of huge significance in the history of Syria
In a land where retired murderers still abound, commemorating the dead of a civil war has countless problems
Faced with an avalanche of tourist cancellations from Canada, congressmen are letting Canadians of 55 and over who own or rent property in the US stay there for an extra two months a year
Balfour initiated a policy of British support for Israel which continues to this very day, to the detriment of the occupied Palestinians of the West Bank and the five million Palestinian refugees living largely in warrens of poverty around the Middle East, including Israeli-besieged Gaza. Surely we should apologise
The National Front leader thought that Lebanon, burdened with a million Syrian refugees, should send them home as soon as the war is over. She clearly did not know that tens of thousands of Lebanese are actually related to Syrians
If the President toured these Arab dictatorships, he’d feel very much at home. Great security, fantastic police, lots of torture, alternative facts, extremely dodgy elections and massive economic projects which damage the environment but prove absolutely useless
They might get the US embassy moved to Jerusalem – but they might also be very worried that Steve Bannon is going to provoke a war with Iran. What did the US government mean, when it said Iran was ‘on notice’ after its recent missile test? Was that a warning of dislike – or war?
Modern Greece and its crises were shaped by the legacy of a violent conflict in the post-war years – an atrocity long forgotten as the fight to stabilise the Middle East distracts our leaders
Trump is no Roosevelt or Kennedy – not even a Bush, for what that’s worth. But May is no Churchill. Not even an Attlee or a Macmillan or even a John Major. It’s not just a failure of compassion – she does not have what Churchill spoke about very often and what he prized most: magnanimity
Anyone who’s visited the West Bank these past few years, looked at the Jewish colonies built on stolen Arab land, witnessed the occupation and the filth of Gaza and observed its brutal Hamas militia leaders – and realised that Netanyahu will soon be the most left-wing member of his increasingly racist government – knows very well that the 'two-state solution' vanished long ago
How, for example, would you tweet the start of World War Two? Amid the abuse of social media, how would you convince readers that, yes, the Nazis really are about to invade Poland?
In Iraq 11 years ago, Justin Huggler broke the story in The Independent of a 19-year-old Iraqi civilian driven to his death in the Tigris River by five American soldiers. The semi-autobiographical book he wrote about a hero reporter in Iraq is an absolute cracker
If a democratically-elected dictator wants to act as a conduit in a neighbour’s civil war, what does he expect but massacres in his own major cities?