Damascus is believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. International flights into and out of the capital continued despite throughout 20-months of fighting between troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and the rebels seeking to depose him. But as of Friday, the flights have stopped.
As a staunch advocate of democracy, the American administration’s position was brought into question when Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi awarded himself sweeping powers in a game-changing constitutional declaration announced last week.
Sectarian tensions in Syria have tainted this year’s marking of the Ashura day of mourning among Shiites in Jordan, as conservative tribes in the south of the kingdom threatened to demolish a Shiite Husaynya, a place of worship currently under construction.
With one eye on Skype and the other fixed on the television screen, Salma anxiously searched for news about her father, two brothers and younger sister in the Gaza Strip. “I am suffering so much. I do not know how I will handle not being near my family, even under the bombardment,” Salma, 23, who grew up in Gaza and moved to Jordan in 2010 after she married, told The Media Line. She asked not to use her last name out of concern for her family.
Ahmed Thiabat sits on his balcony in Jordan overlooking the Syrian town of Tal Shehab just over the Syrian border. This once tranquil farmland has become a battleground for troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and rebels fighting to unseat him.
The Golan Heights on the border between Israel and Syria is a favorite holiday destination for Israelis, and thousands have been hiking and picnicking there during this week’s holiday. But the Israeli army asked some visitors to leave after a group of 50 Syrians, some of them armed, approached the border with Israel in the area of Mount Hermon, which in the winter functions as Israel’s only ski resort.
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring almost two years ago, the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been remarkably quiet. There have been no large demonstrations against what Palestinians call the ongoing Israeli occupation; or against President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Water from natural springs burbles in the ancient Roman stone aqueduct as it carries water downward to this village’s ancient terraces. Palestinian families grow olives, cabbage and eggplant today the same way they did more than 2,000 years ago.
As Israelis began the observance of Sukkot, a weeklong religious holiday celebrating the end of the harvest, talk on the streets was of travel plans and family visits. Many Israelis build a sukkah, an outdoor hut open to the stars, as commanded in the Bible, where they eat their meals — and where some even sleep — for the week.
As Mohammed Morsi makes his first visit to the United States since becoming Egypt’s first democratically elected president to attend the annual opening sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, an Egyptian court has sentenced 14 Islamists to death-by-hanging and four to life imprisonment for attacks against soldiers and border police in the Sinai Peninsula last year. The court said the men, members of a terrorist group called Tawheed and Jihad, killed three policemen, an army officer, and a civilian in the 2011 attacks.
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