Even the closest friends of the Bush family don’t dare say anything about Iraq that approximates what Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told President George W. Bush in their recent meeting at the White House. For having made even more guarded statements than Olmert’s declaration that the peoples of the Middle East should be grateful …

It is difficult to read a serious news analysis of American options in Iraq without running into the idea that Washington must open a dialogue with Syria and Iran. This means that Iran and Syria have won the first round of their political boxing match with the United States, and, that we are likely to …

Western governments ignoring Cairo’s successful mediation efforts CAIRO: Furious diplomatic shuttling between European capitals and Cairo has paid off for a six-month mediation effort by some of this country’s top civil servants in brokering a deal on the crisis in Darfur. In recent weeks, Egypt’s initiatives in trying to bridge differences between the United Nations …

In August 2004, Robert Gates was asked to make his predictions on Iraq’s future. His answer was: “We have the old line in the intelligence business that everything we want to know is divided into two categories: secrets and mysteries [and] Iraq is very much the latter. Now, following his appointment as the new US …

Great social thinkers are almost always start out as polarizing figures, admired by some and scorned by others, until their radical challenge to how we understand the world finally prevails. Milton Friedman, who died last week, was a giant among modern social thinkers for at least two reasons. First, he profoundly influenced not only his …

The Socialists’ anointment of Segolene Royal as their presidential candidate is an important step on the road to the Fifth Republic’s eighth presidential election, which is set for April 22, 2007, with a second-round runoff two weeks later. All candidates should be known by the end of January – the deadline for printing the ballots. …

Turkey has been given what looks like an ultimatum from the European Union Commission: open your ports for ships from Cyprus within a month, or you may risk a halt to the EU accession talks now underway. At the same time, the Commission’s latest report on Turkey’s progress toward accession notes that political reforms htave …

Serious thinking about reforming Lebanon’s fragile and inefficient system of governance has been among the casualties of the recent war. Political reform has never topped the agenda of Lebanon’s leaders, including the one actor most people believe would benefit most: Hezbollah. A closer look at the reasoning behind Hezbollah’s political strategy can explain why it …

The recent American election has brought an unhappy convergence of left and right, a bizarre meeting of the minds in which liberals who despise the American mission in Iraq and conservatives who value stability over democracy agree: President George W. Bush’s freedom agenda must end. Iraq, unsurprisingly, is at the heart of misgivings about advancing …

When you want to make peace, it is useful to turn to a proven peace-maker. The other day in New York I had a chance to sit down with one of the successful peace-makers of our time and explore the lessons of his own rich experience, especially in view of current attempts to revive a …

The Democrats now have the opportunity the Republicans spurned, which is to build a broad coalition in the center and become once again the nation’s governing party. But to achieve that, the Democrats must stand for values that connect with those of most Americans. The center is meaningless, after all, except as a platform for …

Time is running out for success in Afghanistan. The Nato summit in Riga of Nov. 28-29 may be the last chance to pull that country back from the brink. Nato assumed responsibility for providing security for all of Afghanistan in October. While about 8,000 of the 20,000 United States troops in Afghanistan operate independently, the …

As the United States veers from its modus operandi in Iraq and contemplates alliances with Syria and Iran to remedy Iraq’s catastrophic reality, the question of dialogue remains at the fore. Does the US engage, or not engage, in talks with Syria and Iran? While US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claims that she will …

Too many factors beyond Egyptian control in regional clash CAIRO: Egyptian efforts to bring about a peaceful resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict go beyond merely negotiating the release of a captured Israeli soldier, said Ambassador Soliman Awad, after President Mubarak met with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday. But according to many experts and critics, …

I lay in a hospital bed in Tel Aviv receiving treatment for a blood problem when the news from Beit Hanoun pierced the silence with its images and sounds of extraordinary pain on the faces of the dead and living alike. My own concerns paled into insignificance. Why was the mother who lost her child …

Change is coming soon to American policy in the Middle East. The neoconservatives in Washington who defined American foreign policies in the past six years were down before the elections Tuesday, and they are now well on the way out. The common sense of ordinary Americans has reasserted itself over the reckless militaristic bravado of …

Is there a European approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict? At first sight the answer is yes. The European Union Council of Foreign Ministers meets regularly and draws up declarations and statements. Occasionally, one of its envoys is sent to talk to the respective leaders in the region. The EU helped bankroll the Palestinians in various …

The West and the Muslim world are multi-faceted, multi-cultural, and multi-religious realms despite the narrow way they are often viewed and defined. There are millions of Muslims in the West, and there are millions of individuals of other faiths in the “Muslim world. There are underlying relationships between these supposed separate worlds that exist in …

When the United Nation Development Program’s Arab Human Development reports appeared a few years ago, the authors spoke with sanitized language. When analyzing political tyranny in the Middle East, they dubbed oppressive governance as “freedom deficit. This medical diagnosis of the “deficit in freedom treated tyranny as if it were a nutritional lack, a problem …

Now that the Democrats have won control of both the House and the Senate, President George W. Bush has finally succumbed to pressure and replaced his unpopular defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, with an old-school conservative, Robert Gates. Those advocating engagement with Syrian and Iran over Iraq seem to have taken a major step forward toward …

A special thank you to peacemakers who communicated the truth about the illegal invasion of Iraq. Our individual conversations, presentations, newspaper articles, books, movies, phone calls, teaching events, peace demonstrations, radio interviews, television interviews, and prayers do make a difference. In the Freedom From War organization alone, the above actions enabled us to educate over …

As an American, I am appalled, ashamed, and embarrassed by the United States’ lack of leadership in dealing with global warming. Scientific evidence on the risks mounts by the day, as most recently documented in England’s magisterial Stern Report. Yet, despite the fact that the US accounts for roughly 25 percent of all man-made global …

As an American, I am appalled, ashamed, and embarrassed by the United States’ lack of leadership in dealing with global warming. Scientific evidence on the risks mounts by the day, as most recently documented in England’s magisterial Stern Report. Yet, despite the fact that the US accounts for roughly 25 percent of all man-made global …

There appears to be little disagreement that the fierce partisan debate over Iraq in the run-up to the midterm congressional elections last week may have largely determined its outcome. During the campaign each party tried to create the perception of certainty as to how to proceed in Iraq without providing any credible evidence or sustainable …

Senior military officers referred to it as “the 7,000-mile screwdriver. That was their way of describing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s penchant for micromanaging aspects of the Iraq War that interested him. And it’s one reason why the military will be happy today that Rumsfeld is leaving – even happier, maybe, than Democrats, who have …

The midterm elections in the United States earlier this week were the sharpest popular rebuke that President George W. Bush has yet suffered at home. With Congress lost to the Democrats and exit polls showing six in 10 voters opposed to the Iraq war, Bush finally fired Donald Rumsfeld, his disastrous secretary of defense. But …

Since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert shelved his unilateral withdrawal, or “convergence plan for the West Bank, his government has had no political agenda at all for dealing with the Palestinian issue. Between the weakness displayed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the escalating military activity in Gaza brought on by Hamas’ arms buildup and …

Here in the Gaza Strip, where I live, few dream of peace. For now, most dare only to dream of a lack of war. It is for this reason that the Hamas movement proposes a long-term truce during which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can try to negotiate a lasting peace. A truce is referred …

If there was any remaining doubt about the urgent need to combat climate change, two reports issued last week should make the world sit up and take notice. First, according to the latest data submitted to the United Nations, the greenhouse-gas emissions of the major industrialized countries continue to increase. Second, a study by the …

By the time polls on the East Coast of the United States closed, it was 3 o’clock in the morning in Cairo. Waking up early the next day to watch the results on TV, I could not tell if I was excited by what I saw or if I was having an out of body …