Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Since Oct. 7, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been at the center of international attention. This is in stark contrast to the situation in recent years, when the issue has been sidelined in the international discourse and the question of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking has almost disappeared from the diplomatic agenda.
Since Oct. 7, humanitarian aid has been entering the Gaza Strip via land and air. Following US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 7, aid is also likely to enter via the sea, under an emergency US mission to establish a temporary pier on the Gaza coast that can receive large shipments of food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
On 13 December 2023, following discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, US President Joe Biden rejected congressional calls to stop or condition US military assistance to the Jewish state.
“We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel in the process. Not a single thing,” he said at the time.
A month earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris said the United States “(was) not going to create any conditions on the support (it) was giving Israel to defend itself.”
In mid-January, with the war in Gaza continuing to rage on, Iran launched a series of surprise missile attacks on its immediate neighbors Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan over two days. Taken together, these attacks illustrate that the Islamic Republic puts regime survival above national interest in its foreign policy calculations, which undermines its efforts to engender solidarity and good relations with other Muslim-majority states in the region.
Expert regional analysis by MEI scholars and contributors.
The ongoing catastrophe in Gaza is driving a surge in sympathy for Palestinians in the Western world that could mark a turning point in how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is engaged with moving forward. Changing attitudes among younger generations are primarily responsible for this shift, driven in part by a post-Black Lives Matter outlook and narrative that has simplified and distilled the conflict.
If the Knesset expels lawmaker Ofer Cassif, it will represent the national legislature’s first use of the Suspension Law and signal a sharp curtailing of legal space for non-Zionist players in Israeli politics.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
The decision by the United States and other donor countries to suspend financial assistance to UNRWA will have far-reaching and likely devastating consequences for the civilian populations that rely on its services, particularly in the Gaza Strip. Donor countries must realize that the consequences will hinder the humanitarian response to the Israeli war on Gaza, incurring a heavy cost in human lives.
On the evening of Saturday, Feb. 3, local time, US warplanes bombed facilities used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, in retaliation for the death of 3 US service members in a Jan. 28 drone attack on Tower 22, a US military base in northeastern Jordan on the Syrian border. The airstrikes primarily targeted locations in eastern Syria and western Iraq.
Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.
On this week’s episode, Director of MEI’s Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism Programs Charles Lister and MEI Editor-In-Chief Alistair Taylor talk about US policy toward Syria. The deadly Jan. 28 drone attack on a US military outpost in northeastern Jordan, near the borders with Syria and Iraq, has drawn renewed attention to the US military presence in the area. This comes against a backdrop of regional conflict and escalation.