Latest in Opinion Highlight
Latest in Opinion
Pivoting from the military ‘option’ back to diplomacy
By Barbara Slavin WASHINGTON: After months of sabre-rattling rhetoric by Iran, Israel and the United States, there seems to be a collective, and welcome, time out. Since President Barack Obama’s March 4 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), all sides have been stressing non-military means to try to resolve the crisis over Iran’s …
Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood: Facing the bittersweet reality
By Alon Ben-Meir NEW YORK: Since the fall of the Mubarak regime, the conventional wisdom in Israel has suggested that the emergence of an Islamist government in Egypt would necessarily be hostile to the Jewish state. Egypt’s parliamentary elections, in which the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) won close to 50 percent of the vote, only reinforced this …
The bailout bias
By Leszek Balcerowicz WARSAW: The seemingly never-ending debate over the eurozone’s fiscal problems has focused excessively on official bailouts, in particular the proposed purchase of government bonds on a massive scale by the European Central Bank. Indeed, we are warned almost daily — by the International Monetary Fund and others — that if bailout efforts are …
The jury is still out
By Mamdouh G. Salameh In 2006, American oil company Noble Energy of Houston and Israeli company Ratio Oil Exploration received a license to explore “Leviathan”, a deep-water gas field in the Mediterranean about 130 kilometers from Israel’s coastline. At the end of 2010, the two companies announced that Leviathan contains 450 billion cubic meters of natural …
Crime and punishment
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: A juicy tidbit in The Iron Lady biopic playing at Citystars. All het up, Margaret Thatcher harps on to a hapless hanger-on: While England looks back on history America looks forward with a philosophy. Ignominiously Egypt neither respects its history nor has faith in ethics to get out of the mess. Money-grubbing …
The Eastern Mediterranean gas discoveries: Potential conflict
By Nizar Abdel-Kader In January 2009, Israeli oil company Delek and US Noble Energy Company discovered (some 55 miles off the coast of Haifa) a large natural reservoir known as “Tamar”, which holds an estimated eight trillion cubic feet of gas. Early in 2010, another offshore gas field called “Leviathan” with a potential of 16 trillion …
South Korea’s Iran
By Lee Byong-chul SEOUL: The United States is now wrestling with the nuclear fears of two of its close allies, Israel and South Korea. Israel’s alarm at the prospect of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is existential in nature. The same is true of South Korea, whose capital sits only 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the …
Multiculturalism in Canada a model for other countries
By Natalia Simanovsky TEL AVIV: Last month, United Kingdom Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles described multiculturalism as the “politics of division”. He criticized previous administrations in the UK for allowing communities to lead separate lives and not promoting integration with mainstream British society. As the UK and European countries grapple with …
Politicians warn of Islamists monopolizing Constituent Assembly
By Heba Hesham CAIRO: Political powers denounced the criteria set by both houses of parliament for selecting members of the Constituent Assembly, tasked with drafting a new constitution. The People’s Assembly and the Shoura Council decided that 50 percent of the 100-member assembly will be comprised of Members of Parliament. “It is clear that the …
India’s democratic tempest
By Shashi Tharoor NEW DELHI: April might be the cruelest month, but, for India’s major political parties this year, March was fairly brutal. On March 6, following an American-style “Super Tuesday” of its own, India announced the results of five state assembly elections, which confounded pollsters, surprised pundits, and shook a complacent political establishment. Nothing went …
The Pope I knew
By Joseph Fahim This article is not an obituary to Pope Shenouda III, who passed away on Saturday, March 17 at the age of 88; nor is it an appraisal of his accomplishments or his position in modern Egyptian history. It’s also not a response to the incredibly tactless, offensive and disrespectful statements of some …
Libya’s transition to transition
By Barak Barfi SIRTE, LIBYA: Although Libyans are now celebrating the first anniversary of the revolution that toppled Moammar Qaddafi, they are increasingly frustrated with their new leaders. Libyans complain that the interim government, known as the National Transitional Council (NTC), has not moved quickly enough to purge and prosecute senior Qaddafi officials, or to rein …
The future of China’s growth
By Justin Yifu Lin BEIJING: The slowdown of China’s economy has captured the headlines in recent weeks. Whether it is a permanent or temporary adjustment, the Chinese authorities have much work to do in laying the groundwork for strong economic performance in the medium and long term. Despite extraordinary growth since the start of its transition …
Using dialogue to boost Yemen’s economy
By Abubakr Al-Shamahi LONDON: On Feb. 21, Yemenis went to the polls to vote for their new transitional president. This election, however, was different. There was only one candidate, former Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Hirak in the south — a large-scale movement that includes separatist groups — and Houthi rebels in the north boycotted …
How do changes in the Middle East threaten Russia?
By Elena Suponina A March 7 visit to Saudi Arabia was going to be Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s first foreign trip after the Russian presidential election. The purpose was to meet colleagues from the Arab Persian Gulf countries. Despite the date having been publicized, the trip ended up being postponed. What Lavrov was hoping to …
Syrians have a long memory
By Murhaf Jouejati Assuming that the Assad regime is about to collapse — many indications support this assumption — Russian-Syrian relations are set to go south in the post-Assad era. This conclusion is based on what one Syrian opposition leader who prefers to remain anonymous described as “outrageous” Russian behavior throughout the Syrian uprising that began …
Democratic inequality
By Raghuram Rajan CHICAGO: Why did the household savings rate in the United States plummet before the Great Recession? Two of my colleagues at the University of Chicago, Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse, offer an intriguing answer: growing income inequality. Bertrand and Morse find that in the years before the crisis, in areas (usually states) where …
The Arab Spring: good or bad for the Palestinian cause?
By Dawoud Abu Lebdeh JERUSALEM: It’s been over a year since the start of a wave of revolutions that brought down the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, one after another. In Syria dozens die by the day, hoping to achieve the same goals of freedom and dignity under a democratic regime. Many Palestinians are …
Climate-Smart Smallholders
By Paul Kagame and Kanayo F. Nwanze KIGALI: Until the world’s small farmers adopt a series of necessary changes, climate talks such as the United Nations Rio+20 Summit, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro this June, will never translate into action. The emergence of a global green economy requires governments, other policymakers, and businesses …
Bonfire of the banalities
By Philip Whitfield CAIRO: Grace and pace they have not. Filibuster and bluster they’re full of. Can you believe the new crop of rags-to-riches whistle-stoppers are turning down a billion US dollars and some because their pride is hurt? More likely they’ve been tipped off the US aid package to Egypt will end up as small …
The Syrian crisis and its implications for Turkish-Russian relations
By Ziya Meral Last week, during his weekly speech to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) group in the Turkish parliament, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated his strong statements on Syria. While his call for humanitarian corridors to bring aid to Syrian people captured international attention, his talk also included an indirect yet equally strong …
Saudi Arabia and Russia: Settling old scores in Syria
By Madawi Al-Rasheed LONDON: Defeating Russia in the Arab world was a priority for Saudi Arabia even before it became a fully-fledged commitment in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The current Syrian crisis is perhaps one last opportunity to undermine Russia’s eroded sphere of influence in the region. The Saudis may think that defeating Russia this time …
NATO’s Libyan lessons
By John Podesta and Ken Gude WASHINGTON, DC: NATO’s intervention in Libya one year ago helped to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and created the conditions for Libya’s citizens to end Colonel Moammar el-Qaddafi’s dictatorship. The military operation highlighted important improvements in European leadership since the Bosnian debacle in the 1990’s, but the conditions underlying the Libya …
Weigh more, pay more
By Peter Singer MELBOURNE: We are getting fatter. In Australia, the United States, and many other countries, it has become commonplace to see people so fat that they waddle rather than walk. The rise in obesity is steepest in the developed world, but it is occurring in middle-income and poor countries as well. Is a person’s …
Europe’s trust deficit
By Barry Eichengreen BERKELEY: There is no shortage of talk nowadays about Europe’s deficits and the need to correct them. Critics point to governments’ gaping budget deficits. They cite the southern European countries’ chronic external deficits. They highlight the eurozone’s institutional deficits — a single currency and a central bank but none of the other elements …
Free-trade blinders
By Dani Rodrik CAMBRIDGE: I was recently invited by two Harvard colleagues to make a guest appearance in their course on globalization. “I have to tell you,” one of them warned me beforehand, “this is a pretty pro-globalization crowd.” In the very first meeting, he had asked the students how many of them preferred free trade …
A PALESTINIAN VIEW: Another round of violence? Volatile, but unpredictable
By Ghassan Khatib The combination of a complete absence of political prospects for solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and ending the Israeli occupation, as well as the growing daily difficulties experienced by Palestinians in the occupied territories, has been encouraging many analysts and politicians to warn of a possible resumption of violence or another intifada of some …
AN ISRAELI VIEW: Growing signs of frustration
By Yossi Alpher In recent weeks and months, we have confronted a growing number of worrisome possible precursors of a new intifada or some similar round of violence on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. While the previous two intifadas were seemingly triggered by unintended actions or events (a traffic accident in 1987, a Temple …
NYPD and the Muslim community: how to make good
By Marwa Helal New York: A few weeks ago, the New York Police Department (NYPD) made headlines when it was discovered that a controversial film, “The Third Jihad”, which claims to explore radical Islam in America, was shown to nearly 1,500 officers during a counterterrorism training in 2010. Due to the sensationalist tone of “The Third …
Creating new spaces for Muslim youth in the UK
By Marium Sattar LONDON: While sitting across from me in a café near the British Museum in London, a British Iraqi friend recently told me, “I’ve lived here all my life but I don’t feel British.” Her words surprised me, but echoed the sentiments of other second generation British youth I have met. Many young people …