It is amazing that right-wing Israelis and their American enablers have managed to convince even a single person that West Bank settlements are not at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Think about it. The conflict is about who will ultimately control the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. It is no longer about Israel’s …

Kosovo’s recent unilateral declaration of independence brought back memories. I publicly opposed NATO’s attack on Serbia – carried out in the name of protecting the Kosovars from Serb atrocities – in March 1999. At that time, I was a member of the Opposition Front Bench – or Shadow Government – in Britain’s House of Lords. …

It seems not a day goes by in Pakistan without the Israeli-Palestinian conflict making headlines. Entire generations have grown up seeing the region on our television screens as synonymous with perpetual conflict. From Yeshiva students gunned down in Jerusalem to the beleaguered residents of Gaza punished through economic blockades, the immense human suffering never ceases …

Does the Israeli economy really need peace? The Prime Minister s Office routinely boasts that growth has outpaced that of other developed countries for the past five years, even during 2006, when the country went to war. Business journals report on the more than 80 Israeli and global venture capital funds financing hundreds of start-ups. …

I recently read commentaries by some of Egypt’s leading economists calling for the cancellation of the one piaster, remember it? We used to be able to buy things with it at some point; a few years ago you could even buy a loaf of bread for one piaster at a time when the purchasing power …

Two unlikely peacemakers are proposing that if Israelis and Palestinians can agree on how to preserve and protect a common archaeological past, perhaps they can agree on a common future. Three teams of scientists, from the two antagonistic neighbors and the United States, have invested three years to show that it might just work. For …

Last month, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visited Ankara for a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul to discuss, among other things, the PKK issue. The PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) currently controls a terror enclave in northeastern Iraq. The Iraqi Kurdish parties – Talabani s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party – …

Today’s world is dominated not by one or two or even several powers, but rather is influenced by dozens of state and non-state actors exercising various kinds of power. A twentieth century dominated first by a few states, then, during the Cold War, by two states, and finally by American preeminence at the Cold War’s …

It s been nine years since Nigeria, Africa s biggest oil producer and most populous nation, ended its military rule and became a democracy. The transformation, though slow and problematic, has been characterized by three consecutive elections, the latest one in 2007. Despite this process of democratization, Nigeria still remains at risk of ethno-religious, community, …

The recent resignation of members of the Kuwaiti government and subsequent dissolution of the parliament reflects severe structural imbalances and an ongoing conflict between a government lacking in strategy and a parliament lacking in vision. The challenge for Kuwait today is to take advantage of the May 2008 elections to shift strategy and prepare for …

The twenty-fifth Turkish military incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan to root out the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) and the way it ended proved that that there can be no military solution to this issue. It has been tried 25 times, with and without the help of the Iraqi Kurds and the United States, and it has …

In Tunisia, synagogues and churches stand side by side with mosques. Jewish and Christian minorities freely practice their religious rituals. This tolerant climate is ensured by the constitution which provides for habeas corpus, guarantees freedom of conscience and protects freedom of religious practice. But this open atmosphere for religious practice has been challenged in recent …

We should not wait for Turkey to lead us in understanding the diversity of Islamic thought on different matters. It is essential for Muslims to be aware of the many opinions that are out there and not assume that what they have been told by imams, scholars or their elders is the only option. Since …

For the first time in decades, a United States senator will become the next American president as all three of the remaining candidates – Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain – are members of the Senate. While legislators have many leadership skills, their management ability is usually unproven. Senators manage a roughly 100-member staff, …

A rash of reports coming out of Israel indicates that a spurt of new construction is under way in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The development should be alarming to anyone who cares about Israel s welfare. It s a violation of Israel s public commitments, most of all to the Bush administration. It …

After a century that saw two world wars, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s Gulag, the killing fields of Cambodia, and more recent atrocities in Rwanda and now Darfur, the belief that we are progressing morally has become difficult to defend. Yet there is more to the question than extreme cases of moral breakdown. This year marks …

As the world reacts to China’s crackdown in Tibet, one country is conspicuous by both its centrality to the drama and its reticence over it. India, the land of asylum for the Dalai Lama and the angry young hotheads of the Tibetan Youth Congress, finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. On one hand, …

It is unacceptable for strikes to become pretexts for sabotage and the destruction of public and private facilities, or for protests to turn into chaos ungoverned by any political rules. What happened on April 6 was clear evidence of a shallow political culture in Egypt and an inability to strike a balance between ends and …

Indeed it is time for a political divorce; this time it should be a divorce between semi-secular opposition groups and the Muslim Brotherhood. On the April 6 nationwide strike, the Muslim Brotherhood stepped back from participation, claiming that it didn t know the movement’s goal and who was behind it. The Muslim brothers would not …

The NATO summit meeting in Bucharest this week comes at a critical time for the 26-member alliance and its mission in Afghanistan. It also comes at a critical time for the one country that can make or break that mission: Pakistan. NATO is collectively holding its breath as the Musharraf era comes to a close, …

Haphazardness continues to define the increasing protest action in Egypt nowadays; in the same way government policies continue to fail to solve pressing problems which trigger the anger that leads to protests in the first place. This haphazardness reached its climax on April 6 on the day of general protest against the regime’s policies. In …

The sub-prime mortgage crisis has demonstrated once again how hard it is to tame finance, an industry that is both the lifeline of modern economies and their gravest threat. While this is not news to emerging markets, which have experienced many financial crises in the last quarter-century, a half-century of financial stability lulled advanced economies …

For 13 years each April, the international community has commemorated the anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda with a mixture of shame, contrition and solemn pledges not to let this most heinous of crimes happen again. Such pledges are bound to be reiterated as we approach the 60th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention …

Everyone stops killing each other at some point, right? This must be what the Iraq hawks are telling each other after the failure of their latest turning point and the explosion of violence over the past month. Not that anyone seems to care anymore, but killings are up in Iraq for the third straight month. …

Americans and Iraqis tell two different stories about the war in Iraq. Most Iraqis say that the US-led invasion and occupation have fuelled violence. The dominant American story is that US forces are curbing sectarian violence and making things better in Iraq. This gap in perception severely undermines public diplomacy efforts throughout the Muslim world, …

When it comes to all things “green, common sense seems to have been abandoned. Our failure to think clearly about such matters would be amusing if the potential consequences were not so serious. Consider the recent “lights out campaign that supposedly should energize the world about the problems of climate change by urging citizens in …

America’s riveting presidential election campaign may be garnering all the headlines, but a leadership struggle is also underway in Europe. Right now, all eyes are on the undeclared frontrunners to become the first appointed president of the European Council. Nobody – not even people closely involved in the process – really knows how the European …

I don’t know why some fellow journalists were surprised when a veiled woman presenter from the Islamic Al-Manar satellite channel refused to shake hands with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa during his last visit to Lebanon. Some even went as far as reprimanding the poor creature and reminding her that touching the Secretary-General hand was …

The heartbreaking and seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to embody W. B. Yeats feeling that Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart . And indeed, the situation in Gaza may have reinforced the perception that hatred, irreconcilable differences and hopelessness make up the prevailing mood between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet another …

“Even police officers might go on strike was a headline in a major independent newspaper in Egypt some time ago when a ruling NDP MP filed a request to raise police officers’ salaries. According to the report, a General’s monthly salary does not exceed $340, a sum that cannot provide a decent living for a …