“President Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way.” This is the key phrase of President Barack Obama’s speech regarding Syria. Yawn. I can’t say it came as a big surprise, but this speech was largely a waste of time, and a missed opportunity, especially when looked at […]
Not one single word in Obama’s Middle East speech included or even made a remote reference to Turkey. This, from Turkey’s perspective, was the most important part of yesterday’s policy position statement. In traditional Turkish collective memory, Middle East has been a realm of ‘problem’, which Turkey had to stay away from; some of those […]
President Barack Obama’s message to the Muslim world was crucial in three ways: The President underlined more than once the importance of integrating the economies of this tumultuous region into the global economy and the role of young Arabs in making this grand task possible; President Obama declared to the world that the era of […]
President Barack Obama’s historic speech today on the future of the so-called Arab Spring and Israel-Palestinian negotiations included several harsh words for both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and in some instances backed the same policy employed by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who, instead of embracing the gesture, is now responding defiantly. While Obama’s […]
Below is a link to an insightful response by American Jewish Commitee’s David Harris to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recent New York Times op-ed on the future of Palestinian statehood. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2721459/posts Unlike Harris, I was actually ambivalent about the path to Palestinian statehood via the UN. However, the hostile tone and distorted narrative of the recent NYT op-ed […]
President Obama’s speech on Thursday was designed to introduce a symbolic redefinition of American policy in the Middle East. Assuring his international audience that an ever-changing world demands continued leadership, his words ushered in a new chapter of American diplomacy.
Iraqi security forces announced the arrest of four suspected leaders of the al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) network
The Following piece is written by a Yemeni-based journalist who writes for the Foreign Policy Blogs network and, due to serious security concerns, remains anonymous. HOOD (National Organization for Defending Rights and Freedoms) is the most prominent and most quoted human rights organization in Yemen. HOOD has been known in recent years for blowing the […]
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas officially started his North American publicity campaign for statehood by publishing an editorial in yesterday’s New York Times. It was only a matter of time until something like this ran in a major American newspaper or magazine. While some of his arguments such as the pains of being stateless can be empathized […]
May 15th is a complicated day in the Middle East, and this year was no different. While Israel marks its independence day, Palestinians mourn the Nakba, or catastrophe. In years past there have usually been protests of a relatively low intensity, a few marches and a few protestors, heavy on slogans and low on impact. […]
Conservative media pundit, Fox host and radio personality Glenn Beck will host a pro-Israel rally in Jerusalem this August to oppose an bifurcation of the city. Beck, a Mormon who just returned from a trip to Israel, said that the “center of our faith” is threatened by a division of the city, as proposed in […]
It’s going to be a big few days for Israel here in Washington D.C. On Sunday, President Barack Obama will address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, likely putting himself front-and-center on the peace process, the so-called Arab Spring and the occasionally tense relationship between the United States and Israel. The speech will come days […]
As a new generation of Arabs in the Middle East continues to jolt the region into a new, tumultuous, and yet-to-be-defined era, Iran’s internal politics is undergoing its own transition that has recently become increasingly vocal. The assertion of independence in decision making on the part of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a theocratic system known for […]
Thousands of Turks gathered in some 40 cities and towns around the country on Sunday, May 15th, to join marches organized on Facebook against state Internet censorship. The trigger for the protests was a decision by Turkey’s Internet regulator, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, or BTK, to introduce a selection of filters that Turkish […]
This year’s Palestinian Nakba Day, the holiday in which Palestinians mourn the creation of Israel, has been particularly active. Aside from the violence that has erupted in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, pro-Palestinian protestors from both Lebanon and Syria have confronted the Israeli northern border. A group of Palestinian refugee’s stormed and crossed the […]