Middle East

As of Tuesday evening, Israel's air assault on the Gaza Strip, an area only twice the size of Washington DC, and the world's most densely populated territory, counted at least 380 dead Palestinians, including scores of children and over 800 wounded, four dead Israelis, and one dead Egyptian soldier. Demonstrations against Israel and the United States took place in Turkey, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, the Israeli occupied West Bank, throughout Europe - and even in Israel itself. Demonstrators… more

Again the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live, on television. The western media justifies it. Even some Arab outlets equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. None of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt. The international community is guilty for this latest massacre. Will it

The discussion about Lebanon was focused on a soon to be published essay by Nicholas Noe entitled “Re-Imagining the Lebanon Track: Toward a New US Policy.” Noe, founder and editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based translation news service www.mideastwire.com, argued that a major fault in U.S. policy toward Lebanon has been the lack of nuanced and strategic understanding of Hezbollah and the

Steve Clemons, at the New America Foundation, has a clever idea which, he says, came from Brzezinski: why not name Ross to be US ambassador to Israel? ...

“The closer Israel-India cooperation has given fodder to their belief in a big anti-Islamic conspiracy between Hindus and Jews,” said Rajan Menon, ...

"This next administration may well be the last administration that could realistically pursue a two-state solution," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli ...

Naomi Chazan, President of the New Israel Fund, spoke with emotional sincerity and occasional humor about the future of the peace process. Her main focus and argument was that the current domestic political situation within Israel works against an eventual peace agreement between either the Israelis and the Palestinians or the Israelis and the broader Arab world. Citing the potential election of Benyamin Netanyahu as Israeli Prime Minister and the politically divisive nature of Israeli elections, Ms. Chazan believed that even if peace

“My greatest fear about Emanuel is that he might perpetuate a ‘false choice’ orientation towards Israel in Middle East affairs that he’s going to have to compensate for and get under control,” said Steven Clemons, the founder of the Washington Note website and the director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. “There are no rational alternatives in the Middle East than actually delivering on a Palestinian state and finally putting the Middle East peace business… more

Sadly, the trajectory of Saudi Arabia in the 1980s and the 1990s suggests that Saudi Arabia indeed altered its course to accommodate its most conservative elements. As the leading Saudi experts Afshin Molavi and Jean-Francois Seznec wrote, the terms of the bargain were too favourable to those who opposed genuine modernisation: “While the king and the civil service would still control the hardware – defence, finance, oil, and foreign policy – he essentially handed over the software – the education system and the courts – to conservative forces.”… more

The next U.S. president, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama, should reorient American policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran as fundamentally as President Nixon reoriented American policy toward the People's Republic of China in the early 1970s. Nearly three decades of U.S. policy toward Iran emphasizing diplomatic isolation, escalating economic pressure, and thinly veiled support for regime change have damaged the interests of the United States and its allies in the Middle East. U.S.-Iranian tensions have been… more