IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
On September 16, 1982, Christian Lebanese militiamen allied to Israel entered the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra in Beirut under the watch of the Israeli army and began a slaughter that caused outrage around the world. Over the next day and a half, up to 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, mostly women, children, and the elderly, were murdered in one of the worst atrocities in modern Middle Eastern history.
on September 10, 2024
A central tenet of Israeli military strategy is deterrence. This is embodied in the so-called "Dahiya Doctrine," which dictates the use of massive and disproportionate force and the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure during military operations.
on July 31, 2024
For more than two decades, Benjamin Netanyahu has played a central role in the failure of the US-sponsored Oslo negotiations process and the two-state solution that it’s predicated on. As he boasted to a group of Israeli settlers in a candid moment caught on video in 2001 following his first term as prime minister (1996-1999): "I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords.”
on July 22, 2024
In 2002, under the pretext of security, the Israeli government began unilaterally constructing a wall to separate Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, and from Israeli settlements built inside the West Bank. The IMEU offers the following explainer on Israel's West Bank wall.
on July 3, 2024
The Temple Mount movement is an extremist messianic Jewish movement whose goal is to build a temple inside the venerated Noble Sanctuary Mosque complex in occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem.
on June 21, 2024
Since Israel’s establishment in 1948, the United Nations and international community have not recognized the sovereignty of any country to any part of Jerusalem in the absence of a permanent peace agreement in the region.
on June 16, 2024
Kahane was a far-right Jewish supremacist who espoused violence and wanted to establish a theocratic Jewish state and expel or enslave indigenous Palestinians.
on May 17, 2024