Does Iran’s upcoming Parliamentary election on March 14 deserve to be taken seriously? Or is it simply a sham vote for an emasculated institution? Paradoxically, Iranian elections are abnormal by both democratic and autocratic standards. While they are neither free nor fair, there are real differences among candidates, and the outcomes are often unpredictable. In …
Fidel Castro’s resignation from two of his three leadership posts, together with the appointment of his younger brother, Raúl, as his successor, marks the end of an era . sort of. Raúl replaced Fidel as President of the Councils of Ministers and of State, but not as First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party. And, …
Thousands who fled the conflict in Darfur for safe refuge in Chad are now on the move yet again to escape unstable conditions in the Chadian capital of N’Djamena, shining the spotlight on the African Union’s inability to protect them. A steady flow of over 30,000 refugees and residents are emptying out of the city …
Every few days, Israel s prime minister repeats his commitment to freeze West Bank settlements and remove illegal outposts. Such commitments and statements from successive Israeli governments have been a part of our lives since the 1993 Oslo agreement. However, since then, the number of the settlers in the occupied territories has more than doubled. …
Now that Fidel Castro has taken the carriage clock, international affairs has all too few fixed points of continuity. Her Majesty the Queen is still in place. The King of Thailand has been on the throne since 1946. Otherwise one has to turn to the Middle East for reassurance that some things never change. Fly-by-nights …
President George W. Bush rightly called Pakistan’s recent national and provincial elections “a victory for [its] people. But, even as he uttered those words, his administration was working behind the scenes to subvert the will of Pakistan’ people by trying to dictate the composition of their next coalition government and prop up the election’ biggest …
Nothing compares to the admiration I feel towards Israel and the Israelis. They are absolute realists who call things by their names, unlike us who live in an imaginary world and call things by the names that please us. This realism was confirmed by the statement of Israel’s Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai who recently …
Contrary to common perception, women in the Arab world have achieved significant advancement in recent years. There are female CEOs, female government officials, female professors, female engineers; women run e-businesses and financial institutions. Presently, most Arab countries have at least one female government minister, if not more. In Tunisia, 40 percent of doctors and 70 …
Even before it begins the Arab summit scheduled for the latter part of March in Damascus, is in serious trouble; there are several political discords among Arab states as well as the region s continuing violent conflicts. Whereas a resolution to the crisis in Lebanon over the selection of a new president seems a prerequisite …
Khaled Hamza Salam and I are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition movement, which wants to turn Egypt into an Islamic state. I am a secular, liberal Egyptian woman for whom nothing would be worse than a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt. He …
I m divorcing my wife tomorrow morning. After 15 years of marriage, life has become unbearable. She treats me like an ox tied to a wagon wheel who must work day and night to make more money for her and the children. “Every day she thinks of something new to buy that I have to …
Iwas recently in Gaza, one of the world’s most densely packed places, and today a firmly sealed human pressure cooker. The deepening distress of the people I saw there illustrated only too clearly the growing disconnect between the aims and hopes of the resuscitated Middle East peace process and the harsh realities of the deteriorating …
Two chapters in the chronicles of modern Egyptian leaders narrate the story of two men and the sea of change separating the nature of the country’s political leadership in 50 years. Generations apart, both men are influential politicians with wide aspirations, a penchant for change and the spirit of youth. The first is Gamal Abdel-Nasser …
The Egyptian regime is mistaken if it thinks that it can exclude the Muslim Brotherhood from the political arena, not only because they are the only power with popular and organizational influence, but also because they represent an Egyptian cultural and intellectual state – that is, seeing religion as a means to reform and change. …
Israel does not negotiate with terrorists. This truism is one of the biggest spins in the history of spinning. Israel has always negotiated with terrorists and will continue to negotiate with them as long as we continue to cherish (Jewish) human lives. Israel is negotiating with Hezbollah for information about its two kidnapped soldiers. Israel …
The controversy in the UK over voluntary partial adoption of sharia to help solve domestic disputes within some Muslim migrant communities led to a storm of criticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury , the leader of the Anglican Church, over what he did not say, and very little discussion on the implications of what he …
Grim-faced border guards and tough security measures at international airports provide powerful reassurance that the developed world is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to protect against terrorism. But is it worth it? Although citizens of rich countries regard terrorism as one of the world’s greatest threats, trans-national terrorists take, on average, just 420 lives …
A quick glance at the draft anti-terrorism bill indicates unforseen threats to individual and public freedoms. The first section of the draft law gives such an elastic definition of terrorism that everyone should fear being charged with terrorism by simply giving his opinion about it. As they’ve been accustomed since the 1950s, legislators used elastic …
Malaysia stands, in my view, as a place for great social pioneering. I recently returned there for the second time in two years. My first visit took place in December 2005. As an Israeli, this was an unusual event as there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and this large, influential Muslim country (Malaysian law …
Two centuries ago the American and French Revolutions brought forth the natural law concept of inalienable human rights. However, it took nearly two centuries of wars, political and social disasters, and decolonization before this idea became globally accepted, at least in theory. In the beginning, the idea of human rights was limited to domestic politics. …
In our daily lives we know the difference: a doctor is not a judge, a nurse is not a policeman, a hospital is not a court of law. Yet imagine that you were seized by police, beaten, jailed, hauled to trial, facing a prison sentence, kept chained to a hospital bed – because police suspected …
The question that has dominated Russian politics, and world discussion of Russian politics – “Will he (Vladimir Putin) or won’t he stay in power? – has now been settled. He will and he won’t. The election of Putin’s longtime acolyte and handpicked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, as Russia’s president means that Putin is formally surrendering all …
This month, the US Institute for Peace released Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East, a report that examined US peace-making efforts over the past four decades. The study group, headed by Daniel Kurtzer (former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel), met during 2006-2007 and interviewed over 100 officials and experts from seven …
There is a strange foreboding in the world economy. Newspapers report downward revisions in growth estimates for all the major developed countries: the United States, Germany, France, Japan. No one, it seems, is being left out. Indeed, these estimates are roughly half a percentage point lower than those issued only last autumn. At the same …
For several months now, the media has been reporting that Israel is angry at Egypt s behavior. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is responsible for strengthening Israel s ties with the rest of the world, launched this trend in December. The rightist opposition continued it, from MK Yuval Steinitz to former minister Avigdor Lieberman. After …
Some academic works, for reasons that are at least partly obscure, leave a persistent trace in intellectual history. Such is the case with John Maynard Keynes’s paper “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. The importance of Keynes’s paper consisted not so much in how he answered the questions he posed, but in the nature of the …
Working in a newsroom in Pakistan over the last few months, I have experienced many tense moments. As journalists we have covered everything from jubilant election rallies to bomb blasts and suicide bombings. But past events have not prompted me and my colleagues to feel such impending doom as when we arrived in the newsroom …
Every day we learn something new about democracy from the United States. Since he took office, President Bush has pledged to democratize the backward Arab world, proposing the formation of a New Middle East where the flags of freedom, democracy and human rights fly high. Alas, no one in the Middle East – that is, …
Harvard professor Dani Rodrik – perhaps the finest political economist of my generation – recently reported on his blog that a colleague has been declaring the past three decades “the Age of Milton Friedman. According to this view, the coming to power of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Deng Xiaoping led to an enormous upward …
The election results have filtered in and after a series of disturbing events – emergencies, an assassination, and a wave of suicide bombings – Pakistan is finally sending a message of hope and promise. The two opposition parties won sizable percentages of the vote, creating the possibility for a coalition. The two parties are long-term …
