Research & Commentary Results

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.

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.

Today’s landscape is dramatically different from that to which we awoke on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s a complex mix of foreign and domestic forces influenced by economic and social conditions that breed extremism which ebbs and flows across physical and cyber space often defined by great power competition. While terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS have innovated and adapted, U.S. counterterrorism strategy has remained unchanged, fighting yesterday’s war while neglecting present day threats as well as those over the near horizon. America is long overdue to update its counterterrorism strategy and, perhaps more importantly, how we measure success.

Despite the mixed signals from Israeli and U.S. officials, some form of annexation in the coming weeks or months may be inevitable.

It is in Syria where ISIS’s future appears most secure, and its insurgency has demonstrated particular strength in territory controlled by the regime.

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.

Counterterrorism strategies can be made more effective by incorporating deradicalization and rehabilitation measures. Deradicalization is a key element of Malaysia’s counterterrorism and violent extremism strategy. This article discusses the Malaysian Government’s multi-stage deradicalization process.

A somewhat surprising assortment of organizations and interest groups are lining up to oppose annexation, alongside the usual opponents.

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.

It has been more than a year since the fall of Baghouz. Eleven Malaysians have returned from Syria under the Malaysian government’s offer, conditional upon compliance with checks and enforcement, and a one-month rehabilitation program. Since then, the authorities are optimistic that more will be able to return. However, the anticipation of more returnees raises questions about Malaysia’s readiness to receive incoming batches of Malaysia Islamic State (IS) fighters. Given Malaysia’s lack of experience dealing with battle-hardened terrorists and questions about the efficacy of existing deradicalization efforts, can these structures tackle issues that Malaysia has never faced?

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.

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.

There was no other way to end the political logjam in conflict-ridden Afghanistan than to make current President Ashraf Ghani and the outgoing Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah agree to share power. The deal announced on May 17 has been widely welcomed by the international community because the political tensions between the two rivals were viewed as one of the major hurdles to the advancement of an intra-Afghan reconciliation process. The political jockeying in Kabul is far from the only impediment to reconciliation though and there are deeper obstacles to the peace process.

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.