2000: The Israeli government releases a 1995 report by the Israeli state comptroller, Miriam Ben-Porat, that documents systematic torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners of the intifada, or uprising, by Shin bet, the Israeli internal security service. The report covers the period of the first intifadah (1988-1992). "The irregularities were not, for the most part, the result of not knowing the line between the permissible and the forbidden, but rather were committed knowingly," the report says. “Veteran and even senior interrogators in the facility in Gaza committed severe and systematic deviations [from the regulations].”
- What was the Intifada?
- B’Tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organization
- How Israel’s Supreme Court Views Torture
2001: Colin Powell announces his first Middle East itinerary as secretary of state for the Bush administration—a trip that would take him in five days to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Israel later in the month, signaling what was to be the administration’s broad regional approach to Mideast policy. The speed and cursory nature of the trip, however, was itself an early signal that the administration’s attention to that part of the Middle East would be more of a formality than a genuine engagement with its challenges.
- How Obama Can Resolve the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
- Bush's Road Map for Peace in the Middle East, Five Years Later
- President George W. Bush and the Middle East - What Went Wrong
- Bush's Hail Mary Pass Through the Mideast
- Colin Powell on Muslims, Terrorism and Barack Obama
- Colin Powell: Profile
2003: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami says Iran has begun mining uranium and that the country has the knowledge to develop ore for use in civilian nuclear plants. But thye moderate president claims Iran’s intentions are not to develop nuclear weapons. “I assure all peace-loving individuals in the world that Iran’s efforts in the field of nuclear technology are focused on civilian application and nothing else,” the Islamic Republic News Agency reports him as saying. “This is the legitimate right of Iranian people.”
- Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Truth or Fiction?
- Bluff and Bluster in Iran
- Ahmadinejad Leading the Blind
- Putting Weapons Sales First: Bush Jeopardizes Iran Sanctions
- Iran: Country Profile