As the world’s attention shifts to the Iran war, Gaza is increasingly disappearing from the international spotlight. But more than six months after the United Nations endorsed a peace plan for Gaza, the humanitarian catastrophe continues. Israeli strikes remain relentless, while major international NGOs and aid groups say critical supplies are still not entering Gaza at anywhere near the scale needed.
How Israel-Backed Sweida Became Syria’s Narcotics Capital
In the early hours of Sunday, May 3, Jordanian F-16 fighter jets crossed into Syrian airspace and launched strikes on at least six locations in the southern province of Sweida. In a statement issued hours later, Jordan’s military said that “Operation Jordanian Deterrence” had targeted “factories, facilities and warehouses used by trafficking groups as launch points for smuggling operations into Jordan.”
Violence, Settlements, and Creeping Annexation in the West Bank
As international attention remains fixed on the fallout from the Iran war, conditions in the West Bank continue to deteriorate. Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj speak with MEI Senior Fellow Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen about the sharp rise in settler violence, expanding settlement activity, and growing Palestinian displacement across the territory. They examine how recent Israeli legal and administrative measures are reshaping realities on the ground, the implications for Israeli-Palestinian relations, and what the United States should do to play a constructive mediator role.
What’s behind the wave of mysterious incidents in Iran?
On the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Stuxnet computer virus, designed by the U.S. and Israel to target Iran’s nuclear program, the Islamic Republic is facing a new wave of unclaimed acts of sabotage.
For Palestinians, annexation spells further erasure of their history
With the impending U.S.-supported annexation of West Bank territory, Palestinians living in these designated areas stand to lose not only their long-held aspirations for an independent state, but further eradication of their presence — a “spacio-cide” — in support of an Israeli-envisaged demographic and political vision.
Monday Briefing: The UN Security Council must act now to save northwest Syria
This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Dara Conduit, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Mark Heller, Syed Mohammad Ali, Gonul Tol, and Guled Ahmed.
Gulf regimes may oppose annexation, but they helped bring it about
Leaders of Arab Gulf regimes now decry the attempt to implement the vision of the Israeli Right, which aims to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. But it is exactly the policies of the Arab Gulf regimes, through their normalization of ties with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, that directly contributed to the rise of the Israeli Right and made this annexation more likely.
Why aren’t mainstream Israelis and American Jews supporting Palestinians?
When the video emerged of a Minneapolis policeman pressing his knee on the neck of George Floyd as he lay on the ground, Palestinians were surprised by the image — the technique was all too familiar. But while hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the killing of George Floyd, an African-American male, by police across the U.S. and around the world, the response among Israelis and American Jews to violence against Palestinians is quite different. Many liberal Jewish leaders and thinkers who have spoken out forcefully against the killing of Floyd are silent when it comes to the atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers.
Quickly attributing or blaming a country for a cyber incident without technical analysis, proof, and government officials willing to go on record only inflames an already tense situation.
The May 20 announcement is something of a watershed, in which Palestinian decision-makers appear to have chosen to leave behind the professionalism of President Abbas and instead adopt the Fatah revolutionary way of making strategic decisions and then implementing them on an ad hoc basis while making adjustments along the way.
The last few days have seen an unprecedented flurry of Russian activity on the Israeli-Palestinian track. On May 19, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister and Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy for the Middle East and Africa Mikhail Bogdanov spoke on the phone with Assistant to the U.S. President and Special Representative for International Negotiations Avi Berkowitz.
The Abbas declaration: Why this time may be different
In a dramatic statement delivered yesterday in Ramallah and broadcast on Palestine TV, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to all agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and both Israel and the United States. In light of the newly sworn in Israeli government’s commitment to the annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, declared Abbas, the Palestinian leadership would henceforth be “absolved, as of today, of all the agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments and of all the obligations based on these understandings and agreements, including the security ones” — thus implying that the security coordination between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel would come to an end.
Israel finally has a government, but for how long?
Israel’s 17-month ordeal without a functioning government has mercifully come to an end. An unlikely coalition that agrees on little has given birth to a monstrosity that is the largest government in Israel’s history, with 34 cabinet positions (some reports say 36) plus 16 deputy ministers.
Israeli annexation “is a game-changer for us”: Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on the annexation threat, economic crisis, and COVID-19 in Palestine
On May 12, 2020, MEI hosted Dr. Mohammed Shtayyeh, Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, for a roundtable discussion on the many crises facing Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority.
The oldest peer-reviewed publication dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East, MEI’s flagship journal covers politics, society, and culture in the region.
