Research & Commentary Results

The announcements in mid-August that both the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait will be returning their ambassadors to Tehran after six years provided the latest indication that the diplomatic ice has started to break in the Gulf region.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

After achieving respectable growth in 2021, the GCC member states now face the risk of monetary (over) tightening due to the need to follow the U.S Federal Reserve’s interest rate adjustments. These increases are not warranted, however, as the GCC economies currently face relatively moderate inflation. Instead, they should use the available fiscal space to mitigate the negative fallout of monetary tightening and make greater use of PPPs for future infrastructure development.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

According to UNRWA, there are approximately 6.3 million registered Palestinian refugees across the Arab world. The majority of these are the descendants of the 750,000 Palestinians who were displaced between 1947 and 1949 over the course of Israel’s creation, an event known among Palestinians as the Nakba or “catastrophe.” This paper aims to evaluate past proposals on the refugee question and promote a new refugee-first framework that could produce tangible solutions for Palestinian refugees and for the conflict at large.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

In early June 2022, the Advisory Commission of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East met in Beirut. Facing a $100 million budget deficit and the indifference of donor countries, UNRWA’s future is uncertain.

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

After 16 years under Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz’s assumption of Germany’s chancellorship on Dec. 8, 2021 marked a new chapter in the nation’s politics. Within the “traffic light” coalition government formed by the Social Democrats, the Free Democratic Party, and the Greens, Annalena Baerbock heads the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Before taking office, the co-leader of Alliance 90/The Greens was known for both her welcoming attitude toward immigrants and her full-throated condemnation of human rights violations by authoritarian governments. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has no shortage of the latter: According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, 17 out of the 20 countries in the region are “authoritarian” and not one is characterized as a “full democracy.” Beyond human rights, other key MENA policy issues for the new government include Iran, Turkey, ongoing conflicts in the region, and immigration. The challenges are numerous, if well-known, but how will Berlin respond? Is Germany’s policy toward MENA likely to change or remain the same under the new government?

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

On June 6 Israel’s coalition government lost an important vote, in which more than half of the Knesset members on both sides voted against their own most fundamental beliefs in a desperate effort to either bring down the coalition or to save it. The substance of the legislation was barely more than a pretext, but the opposition smelled blood and was willing to do virtually anything to regain power.

On May 19, Ghaida Rinawi Zoabi, one of Meretz’s two Arab Knesset members, announced she was leaving the governing coalition and her party. On May 22, however, it was announced that she had rejoined both. What happened and what does it tell us about the state of Israel’s fragile coalition government?

Palestinian Authority (PA) officials repeatedly deny acquiescing to the economic peace model with Israel, but such rhetoric is not reflected in their actions. In recent years integration between the Palestinian and Israeli economies has only deepened.

There are certain events that are so impactful that you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you heard about them. The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the veteran Al Jazeera journalist, last Wednesday in the occupied West Bank was for me just such an event — both because of who she was and what I was doing at the time. 

The Dorra Gas Field, located in shallow waters offshore in the northern Arabian Gulf, lies at the junction of competing territorial claims by Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. With the growing gas demand in these countries, any production will be absorbed into the domestic network and the impact of production on the global gas and LNG market will be insignificant. However, the development of the field, if it occurs, may serve as a bellwether for regional relations.