Dead Sea, Jordan – According to the World Bank and the United Nations, 80 million jobs will be needed for new graduates and the unemployed across the Middle East and North Africa over the next twenty years. The Arab Labor Organization predicts more than 32 million people will be looking for jobs in Arab states …
The region between Egypt and Pakistan is a cauldron of five discrete, explosive components: Iraq’s civil strife, Afghanistan’s insurgency, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the longstanding Israel-Arab conflict, and the risk of clashes between extremist groups and corrupt, repressive governments. A comprehensive policy is needed, yet the threats are so diverse and complex that separate approaches have …
Forty years after the June 1967 war, peace between Israelis and Palestinians seems as distant as ever. Israel still refuses to accept the new Palestinian national unity government as a negotiating partner because Hamas is part of that government. What is the cause of this seeming paradox? Is there any hope? The Palestinian government is …
It has now been 40 years since the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip started, and it seems as if it happened only yesterday. In all those years, one thing has never changed and that is the Palestinian insistence on a total rejection of and continued resistance to …
LONDON: Almost two years ago the citizens of London were victims of a great atrocity. Those who perpetrated those crimes would like you to believe that they were inspired by the religion of Islam. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is nothing in Islam that could ever justify these blatant acts of aggression. …
Negotiations to create a new national-unity government have hit a brick wall, and that’s a relief. The opposition’s conditions for agreeing to re-enter the government were too onerous and would have undermined much that was achieved in the past year. However, the Europeans, particularly those countries with troops in South Lebanon, are worried about the …
FLORIDA: In the ongoing tension between the United States and the Arab world, religious fanaticism plays a major role: religious zealots are on the militant frontline in Arab countries and on policy boards in America. Cultural context plays a role in the development of fanaticism. In America, a number of people are attracted to extreme …
WASHINGTON, DC: We were a little anxious when we decided to jointly poll Jewish and Arab Americans on Middle East peace this year. Not that we haven t done it before. Similar surveys that we commissioned three times in the past six years have shown that American Jews and Arabs largely see eye-to-eye on the …
The cooperation protocol with Saudi Arabia signed by the Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel Hadi and the Saudi Arabian Council of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, allowing 120 thousand Egyptian women to work in Saudi Arabia as hairdressers and housemaids for salaries less than 800 Saudi Riyals- half the pay of Philipino and Srilankan women …
The Gulf states often attract attention for their fast pace of physical development, as striking new commercial and government complexes appear in the skylines of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait, Manama and elsewhere. Yet something more intriguing and politically significant than spectacular architecture is taking place in the Gulf these days, and its impact is …
A significant number of readers must remember Lebanon in the 1990s, a time when whisky was the sine qua non for those wanting to put on a show and Dewar’s White Label ensured it was the king of scotch by blitzing the nation’s television stations and billboards with a huge media campaign. With the legend: …
In Egypt, people are considered to be so kind that they would not allow anyone to go hungry. And religion seems to be a subject that stands out as being the sole force behind change amongst our people. However, many other humiliating conditions, unemployment and sexual harassment being classic examples, do not provoke us into …
At last we have it. Five months after the United States promised to unleash “Plan B against the Sudan government unless it agreed to allow United Nations peacekeepers into Darfur, President George W. Bush has finally announced a package of economic sanctions. Plan B is on the road. In announcing the sanctions against 31 companies …
The photographs gathered by The Washington Post each month in a gallery called “Faces of the Fallen are haunting. The soldiers are so young, enlisted men and women mostly, usually dressed in the uniforms they wore in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s striking is that most of them were killed by the roadside bombs known as …
Everyone with children in schools raise your hands. Now, those of you who are shelling out money for “private tuition keep your hands up. Chances are, the room’s still full of a sea of trembling raised hands. However, you can all heave a sigh of relief. You will no longer have to divert household funds …
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has put Africa squarely on the agenda of this week’s Group of Eight summit. We in Liberia and across Africa welcome her leadership, and are grateful for the G-8’s support for Africa, particularly its commitments in recent years to reduce debt burdens, double aid by 2010, expand trade access, and fight …
WASHINGTON, DC: One of the foremost experts on what he refers to as Islamic democracy, Noah Feldman, explains in his book After Jihad: America and the struggle for Islamic Democracy how the Western paradigm has focused on two diametrically opposed models of government, each tracing its origin to one of two ancient cities: Jerusalem, the …
Of all the regional and international players involved in the Middle East, Jordan is particularly keen to push the peace process forward after a standstill of at least seven years. Jordanian diplomacy has played and continues to play an active role in focusing international and regional attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. King Abdullah II continues …
One of the foremost experts on what he refers to as Islamic democracy, Noah Feldman, explains in his book “After Jihad: America and the struggle for Islamic Democracy how the Western paradigm has focused on two diametrically opposed models of government, each tracing its origin to one of two ancient cities: Jerusalem, the birthplace of …
Listening to the parade of presidential candidates repeating safe bromides about how to fix what’s broken in America, I wish I could charter a bus and bring them all to Phoenix to meet a man who is actually fixing things: Michael Crow, the iconoclastic president of Arizona State University. Politicians talk about being change agents, …
It is a coincidence, but a useful one, that on the 40th anniversary of an Arab-Israeli war that prompted the Palestinian national movement to break free from the stifling embrace of the Arab states, that effort is repeating itself in Lebanon, albeit with uncertain success. There is much the Lebanese state can do to sustain …
Largely because of my association with bitterlemons, my incoming email box receives daily messages from a wide variety of people and institutions that are involved, or purport to be involved, in advancing the cause of peace between Israelis and Arabs. Some are noble, lofty and radically ambitious: ‘the recent Petra Conference, which brought together Nobel …
Next week’s Group of Eight summit will probably be the last such meeting for Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin. Seven years ago, at their first meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and somehow spotted the soul of a Christian gentleman, not that of a secret policeman. Next week, they shouldn’t …
A three-minute Palestinian movie says what needs to be said about estrangement and violence in the Middle East. It features a woman driving around Jerusalem asking for directions to the adjacent West Bank town of Ramallah. She is met by dismay, irritation, blank stares and near panic from Israelis. The documentary, called ‘A World Apart …
Europe today presents a contradictory picture. It is a land of peace, democracy, and the rule of law. It is also a land of prosperity: its economy is competitive, its currency strong, inflation is low, and its standards of living are among the highest in the world. Europeans benefit from very high levels of social …
Technology is about taking risks. Government bureaucracy is about avoiding mistakes. The mismatch between the two is creating a funding squeeze that could undermine America’s dominance of the new technologies that will be crucial to the nation’s security in the 21st century. That was the disturbing consensus among a group of the nation’s top scientists …
UN Security Council Resolution 1757, passed on Wednesday to establish a mixed Lebanese-international court to try suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others in February 2005, has sparked intense and justified debate. This is indeed a historic resolution, especially coupled with the international investigation into the murders and …
It is widely assumed that the sine qua non of secularism in Christian-Western contexts is the separation of church and state. Meanwhile, secularism is also assumed to be a pre-requisite for the successful democratization of societies. The invocation of these two litmus tests has created much hand-wringing in the West over the potential for democratic …
Will newly anointed World Bank President Robert Zoellick be able to get the organization back on its feet after the catastrophic failed presidency of Paul Wolfowitz? Although hardly a megawatt star of the category of Robert Rubin, the onetime US Treasury Secretary, he certainly brings some positive attributes to the job. First, as a key …
The June 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the subsequent occupation of Palestinian lands that followed marks a time when relations between Israelis and Palestinians reached such a low point that many on both sides are increasingly despairing of peace efforts. The rationales on all sides vary as the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day war nears, as …
