Originally posted at In These Times

This year’s World Social Forum, a transnational gathering of social activists, took place in Tunis, a city bubbling with unrest as it struggles to shake off a legacy of authoritarian rule while navigating tensions over women’s rights, labor and nationalism. At the gates of the gathering last week, these faultlines became starkly apparent when a caravan of trade unionists and rights advocates found themselves unexpectedly blockaded. Border police, under official orders, refused entry to a delegation of 96 Algerian activists that included members of the embattled union SNAPAP, known for its militancy and inclusion of women as leaders and front-line protesters.

This diary is a preliminary attempt to specify a general conviction of mine that the way forward in the Middle and North Africa region (MENA) is through cooperation between the “democratic” secular movements and the Moderate Islamist movements (Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisia’s Ennahda Party, and Hamas in occupied Palestine), and that this understanding is something U.S. progressives should support.

The title refers to one possible element of the specification. Given that the idea of a two-state solution, meaning Israel and a secular Palestine has become a mere fantasy that no longer has a realistic possibility of implementation, perhaps Fatah and Hamas can finally realize that it is vital for them to settle their differences, and come to an understanding on international issues to struggle for, of which one element might be a new two-state proposal.

With Lebanon in political upheaval, largely due to the Syrian crisis, what is Hezbollah’s role in Syria, and elsewhere…

Love them, hate them, fear them, mock them…however you feel about Anonymous, the notorious hacktivists, you can’t deny that they have changed things. From rickrolling, chocolate rain, and looooong cat to directed denials of service, defacing government websites around the world and exposing the names of millions of corporate customers online, Anonymous is a chaotic force for — well for lots of things. For teh lulz and for the win.

An interesting wrinkle on Israel’s recent illegal incursion(s)

The stakes are high, and can be encapsulated in this predicament: Will Egypt complete the transition from Mubarak’s authoritarian regime to a consolidated democracy or will it eventually — soon — produce another authoritarian regime, this one dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, its allies and the military?

The wake of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is getting turbulent.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr announced ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. There was no signed agreement. The ceasefire is essentially “quiet in exchange for quiet,” as one Israeli diplomatic source put it.

In the announcement, Clinton reiterated the US’s position that “all rocket attacks must end” and said the US would be working with Egypt in the coming days on the next steps in the process. She said improvement of conditions for the people of Gaza and providing security for the people of Israel would be sought in any long-term agreement and there was “no substitute for a just and lasting peace.”

A bus explosion occurred in Tel Aviv, Israel, wounding at least twenty-seven people. None were reported killed, although one was seriously injured. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian nationalist militia in the West Bank that is considered a terrorist organization to Israel and the United States, claimed responsibility.

Kirkpatrick could have added a paragraph here about the siege or blockade of Gaza. He could have described the occupation, but he did not and proceeded to note that the anonymous Egyptian official had compared “leaders of Hamas to George Washington in America or Charles de Gaulle in France” because they had “resisted foreign occupation by armed force.”