It is hard to get away from a central fact of Middle Eastern politics and statehood: the significant role played by the military and security forces in the business of government and the exercise of public authority. This is a largely unaddressed issue in the galaxy of political and economic reform issues being debated throughout …

The first time I met Anwar Al-Bunni, in June 2005, one of Syria’s numerous state-owned newspapers had just called him a traitor. Over tea that he made himself and countless cigarettes that he smoked as furiously as he defended human rights, Bunni explained that his presence across the desk from me in the office from …

Recently, the European Parliament condemned the Polish government’s attempt to strip Bronislaw Geremek of his parliamentary mandate. A leader of Solidarity, a former political prisoner, and the foreign minister responsible for Poland’s accession to Nato, Geremek refused to sign yet another declaration that he had not been a communist secret police agent. The European Union …

More than a year has passed since the European Union suspended its direct budget support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in response to the formation of the Hamas-led government. Although the EU’s intention was to pressure Hamas into accepting the Quartet’s conditions, the suspension of aid did not achieve this effect. Europe is now confronted …

WASHINGTON: At the present time, there is a fundamental perceptual difference between the so-called peace camps among Israelis and Palestinians, on the one hand, and, on the other, those who would like to see peace, but don t see it as possible. The members of the peace camp believe that majorities on both sides are …

Recently, Azmi Bishara, head of the Balad party, resigned from his post as a member of the Israeli Knesset. He announced that he would not return to Israel anytime soon because of serious charges leveled against him by the Israeli security establishment. The charges included assisting the enemy in a time of war, contacts with …

Turkey will hold its parliamentary election in July, four months earlier than scheduled, thereby narrowly avoiding a constitutional crisis over the choice of the country’s next president. Nonetheless, Turkey’s bout with political instability has damaged its foreign policy and international standing. At the center of the storm are Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of …

Long before the Winograd report was released to the public last week, the Israeli media had cast doubt on the qualifications of those who managed the second Lebanon war last summer (though not on the actual act of war). In the interim, Israeli newspapers discussed economic scandals in which senior officials were suspected of involvement …

However damning Judge Eliyaho Winograd’s report may be regarding the Prime Minister’s conduct of the second war in Lebanon, it would be far more damning and destructive for Israel if the political leaders seeking to replace Mr. Olmert lose sight of Israel’s ultimate national interests. The situation in the Middle East is deteriorating to a …

Why are Middle East experts so unfailingly wrong? The lesson of history is that men never learn from history, but Middle East experts, like the rest of us, should at least learn from their past mistakes. Instead, they just keep repeating them. The first mistake is “five minutes to midnight catastrophism. The late King Hussein …

Is France about to exchange the fake revolution of May 1968 for a sham counter-revolution this year? Or have French voters given Nicolas Sarkozy a mandate for real change to modernize their country? Why has Sarkozy won election as France’s president, and what are the likely consequences of his victory for France, Europe, and the …

Let’s get this meditation underway by first thinking of reasons NOT to impeach George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. I’ll kick-start with the ones I’ve observed in circulation. (1) It’s looking backward when we should be dealing with problems aplenty now facing us; there are many other things we should be working towards that will …

France has chosen – and it has chosen decisively. The new French president is Nicolas Sarkozy, elected with 53.1 percent of the popular vote, with a turnout, at 84.8 percent, the highest since 1981. This election is particularly rich in lessons. France was said to be to be a country mired in apathy and increasingly …

The tempestuous current developments in Turkey are historic in their implications for the country and the Middle East. However, they are about much more than a tug-of-war between Islamism and secularism. The constitutional stand-off concerning the election of the next president – pitting the ruling, mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) against the largely …

Today’s Arab media is rife with paradox. Compared to only a decade ago, today’s Arab world enjoys a dizzying variety of television stations, newspapers and internet sites. The news and political discourse in these media outlets have decisively shattered the ability of states to monopolize information or control public opinion. But while technological trends have …

MUMBAI: On July 11, 2006, terrorists blasted bombs on several suburban trains in Mumbai, the industrial and commercial capital of India. Over 200 commuters were killed while many more were maimed. Within 48 hours, over two dozen Mumbai-based maulanas, or religious leaders, representing the most prominent Muslim religious bodies in India – Jamiatul Ulema El-Hind, …

JERUSALEM: The exploration of possibilities for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations has highlighted a familiar paradox: the uneasy relationship between respective leaders and their publics in the delicate context of peace talks. Today, the limited legitimacy accorded Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas compounds the conundrum. Weak leaders do not have the popular support necessary to …

It is generally agreed that China’s impressive economic achievements during the last three decades are largely the result of the radical reform of its economic system. While private ownership of firms hardly existed when these reforms started, private firms today account for about 60 percent of total production. Ownership, however, is only one dimension of …

More and more young Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa are turning to cyber activism to fight for human rights and intellectual freedom in the region. The Web, the Internet, cyber space, whatever you want to call it, is a hugely powerful tool for the powerless and voiceless in our societies. Thus, while …

JERUSALEM: The Jerusalem issue has long been the centre of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, and a source of conflict and hostile feelings between the Arab/Muslim world and Israel, and sometimes the whole western world. The symbolic significance of Jerusalem, whether religious, national or political, is often exploited to varyingdegrees by the opposing sides. On the one …

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertive foreign policy stance of recent years reflects the confidence that comes with a booming economy. In 1999, the year before Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president, Russia’s GDP was a paltry $200 billion. By last year, it had reached $1 trillion. Real growth has averaged 7 percent for eight years, …

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s “hello to the Iranian foreign minister and her brief “businesslike meeting with the Syrian foreign minister Thursday at the international conference on Iraq in Egypt have generated considerable international attention. I join those who see these two gestures as small but significant steps towards a more rational American foreign …

After the Iraq debacle, nearly everyone seems to agree that “unilateralism in foreign policy is a bad thing. Leading the march of born-again multilateralists is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has been meeting with representatives of Syria, Iran and several dozen other nations in the hope that they can apply a collective tourniquet to …

The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that elevated Iran to dominant power status in the Persian Gulf , have also unleashed a nascent Shia Muslim movement that is altering the political balance of power in the Middle East. Anchored by the world s only Shia nation – the Islamic Republic of Iran, and ignited …

WASHINGTON: A recurrent excuse that has acted as an obstacle to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over the years is that of either the political weakness of the Israeli leader or the political irrelevance of the Palestinian leader, whomever they may be. The underlying assumption of these excuses is that the Israeli and Palestinian publics …

JEDDAH & PARIS: There will never be a durable peace in the Middle East without a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict acceptable both to most Israelis and to most Palestinians. That is a fact. There will also never be a lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without a solution to the status of Jerusalem acceptable …

JERUSALEM: One of the sad scenarios for Jerusalem s future is its transformation into an undivided, special status city, belonging to neither Israel nor Palestine. The significance of such an outcome, often suggested by those who seek solutions for our region, became clear to me while living in Washington, DC. Washington, created on lands taken …

Many Americans are unaware that declassified information reveals the CIA helped overthrow an Iranian Prime Minister in 1953 and thwart 1980 hostage negotiations to defeat US President Jimmy Carter. During 1979-1981 the American people were routinely told the reason for the Iran hostage crisis was that President Carter allowed the Shah to visit the US …

Saudi Arabia has undergone a remarkable political rebirth in the past few months, emerging as the Middle East’s most assertive Arab power. Until recently, various internal and international pressures constrained the kingdom’s ability to pursue its interests effectively. Deadly Al-Qaeda-inspired violence, an emboldened domestic reform lobby and the ratcheting up of post-9/11 anti-Saudi hysteria in …

After Israel’s inability last summer to achieve a conclusive victory over Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, public pressure forced Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government to appoint a commission to examine the causes of this surprising failure. How could a small militia, numbering less than a few thousand combatants, survive the onslaught of the Middle East’s most …