Monday Briefing: Brexit’s Impact on the Middle East; Syria File Changes Hands in Iran
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Daniel Serwer, Paul Scham, and Alex Vatanka provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including Brexit’s impact on the Middle East, how Brexit is distracting the E.U. from Israel-Palestine issues, and Iran’s more moderate reshuffling of officials focusing on Syria.
Information Filtering in Social Media During Disasters
Disaster relief systems are built upon the assumption that information provided by volunteers is accurate. In recent years, social media have become widely used tools to assist in disaster relief. This essay brings to light the various types of unwanted data and their characteristics. Drawing on the case of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the essay shows how social media can support as well as impede relief efforts. The essay concludes with suggestions regarding how to ‘filter’ information so as to help make social media a more effective disaster relief tool.
A small, darkened theater in Hackney was transformed this month into a portal for Palestine, Bradford, New York City, and a London suburb. But the quartet of monologues by Hassan Abdulrazzak—performed admirably by Asif Khan—traversed these disparate landscapes using humor as subversion, providing a unique window into otherwise humorless subjects.
Blanket Approaches in Humanitarian Response: Reflections from the 2015 Nepal Earthquake
In April and May 2015, two large-scale earthquakes struck Nepal, killing almost 9,000 people, damaging over half a million houses and displacing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. This essay focuses on a particular aspect of the response to this disaster—namely, the use of the ‘blanket’ approach as a basis for the distribution of relief. It suggests that while blanket approaches are commonly used in the immediate aftermath of rapid onset disasters, unless replaced as soon as feasible with approaches that target vulnerability, they can very easily result in the exclusion of those most desperately in need.
Israeli President Reuven “Ruby” Rivlin was recently asked about the prospects for a two-state solution to Israel’s long conflict with the Palestinians. He described this concept for building a future between Israel and its neighbor as “irrelevant.” Indeed, he claims to have said as much to President Barack Obama when they last met.
What does “irrelevant” mean in this context? The dictionary lists as its synonyms “immaterial” or “beside the point.”
Monday Briefing: ISIS to Lose Fallujah; Pakistan to Join S.C.O.
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Robert S. Ford, Paul Scham, and Marvin G. Weinbaum provide analysis on recent events including the battle against ISIS for Fallujah, Israel’s upcoming address to the EU Parliament, and Pakistan’s upcoming accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Amidst great excitement, Jordan signed a $10 billion agreement with Russia to construct the country’s first nuclear power plant in March 2015. Chairman of Jordan’s Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) Khalid Toukan confidently asserted, “We aim to build a state of the art nuclear power plant that will be a showcase for the region.” Promising cheap energy, Toukan assured that nuclear power is the optimal way forward.
This essay provides a brief look at the Philippines experience as a means of highlighting the interplay between disaster risk reduction and politics with regard to disaster diplomacy across the Asia-Pacific and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions and beyond.
Egypt, which enjoys friendly relations with both the Palestinian Authority and Israel, understands that it must normalize relations with Hamas to be able to act as a mediator between the three parties. The Egyptian government, which has yet to achieve convincing results in the fight against terrorist groups in Sinai, is also in need of Hamas’ cooperation in this area.
