Al-Shabaka in the Media

“It looks like a reaction to a political dispute, not a continuous fight against corruption. Why Mohammed Rashid now?” said Hani al-Masri of the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies. “The act would be more powerful if it were taken against someone inside the political system.”

“There is still a lot of favoritism and patronage and off-the-books payments,” said Mouin Rabbani, a Jordan-based senior fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies, who argued that foreign supporters of the Palestinian Authority have often turned a blind eye to such activity.

Rantawi: "Although this tactic of the Muslim Brotherhood is aimed at exerting pressure on the state by threatening it with the camps, the people in these areas are Jordanians according to the laws that have been applied for decades." Rantawi believes that the camps' residents "are disgruntled by their living conditions and they have the right to make their voices heard by officials." According to Rantawi, who is of Palestinian origin, a solution can be reached if the state organizes a national dialogue that includes different political orientations.

Israel's occupation is proving its Achilles heel, but in ways one could not have imagined 45 years ago. Its brutality is increasingly impossible to ignore. Israel now risks becoming an international pariah, as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert foresaw in 2007, even as he was unwilling or unable to stop the settlement project. And a growing number of Palestinians are giving up on the two-state solution in favor of a future state of Israel/Palestine where all citizens enjoy freedom, justice, and equality regardless of race or religion.

"By performing in Israel, Madonna has consciously and shamefully lent her name to fig-leafing Israel's occupation and apartheid and showed her obliviousness to human rights," said Omar Barghouti of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.