Monday Briefing: Responding to Orlando, ISIS in Libya, and Hamas-Fatah Meeting
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI chairman Richard A. Clarke responds to the mass shooting in Orlando, and Charles Lister and Antoun Issa provide analysis on events including the pushing back of ISIS in Libya and the upcoming meeting of Hamas and Fatah.
For several years, Israeli-Saudi collaboration over regional geostrategy to check Iranian influence has been the worst kept secret in the Middle East since the advent of Israel’s robust nuclear arsenal. Still, public coordination has been taboo, and while indirect, and even direct, coordination may be taking place behind closed doors, no official relationships can develop. This, of course, is due to the history between the state of Israel and the Arab world.
These days even the hint of a renewal of diplomacy on Palestine is enough to set tongues wagging. In recent months, France has led what remains an inchoate effort to fill the diplomatic vacuum created by the Obama administration’s decision two years ago to close its book on Palestine.
Presidential Race Shifts Discourse on Israel-Palestine
The 2016 presidential primaries have upended a wide variety of assumptions about the rules of American politics, and what the traffic will bear. One of these areas is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
New Gaza War Inevitable without International Action
With the exception of the extremely slow reconstruction process of what was destroyed during the last Israel-Gaza war in the summer of 2014, the conditions that preceded that war remain in place. The Palestinian reconciliation process remains cosmetic, negotiations for a truce between Israel and Hamas that were supposed to resume under Egyptian auspices have stalled, and humanitarian conditions in Gaza are becoming increasingly dire. Without improvement on any of these issues, the risks for a new round of fighting remain high.
Monday Briefing: Lebanon's Elections, Gaza Unrest, Syria Talks, and Saudi's New Oil Minister
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Paul Salem, Paul Scham, Charles Lister, and Jean-François Seznec provide analysis on recent events including Lebanon’s elections, unrest in Gaza, the ongoing Syria talks, and Saudi Arabia’s new oil minister.
The intensifying rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is raising sectarian temperatures in some smaller Gulf Cooperation Council (G.C.C.) states. Kuwait’s fractious parliament has seen growing tension and even physical confrontation between its Sunni and Shiite MPs in response to regional developments. Growing tension in Kuwait is also evident in the national media and online forums.
U.S. Should Allow International Input in Israel-Palestine
For the first time in almost half a century, the United States has acknowledged that it is “out of ideas” about how to address Israel’s occupation and fulfill a declared American interest in establishing a Palestinian state at peace with Israel.
Gulf Decisionmakers' Perceptions of Security Ties with China
The essays featured here are the products of a workshop series analyzing China’s position in the context of Gulf security, organized by the Department of International Affairs and the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of Qatar University under the direction of Dr. Imad Mansour.
Saudi-Iran Tensions Place Pressure on Smaller GCC States
The recent escalation in tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran is throwing the GCC into a crisis of unity. Riyadh’s actions in particular are built on the frustration of the Yemen war and the perception of Iranian encroachment in Arab lands that the Saudi kingdom believes is its domain. King Salman and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, feel the kingdom is being ignored by the international community in other hot zones, namely Syria, where the outcome of the war is being determined by Washington and Moscow.
The White House recently acknowledged that it was out of ideas on how to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, raising — for the first time — the prospect that Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank is permanent.
Only a few authors have works that can be found on both floors of the Oman Library at The Middle East Institute, and fewer still that have a personal connection to both the institute and the history of the region. The late Ambassador Richard B. Parker can claim this status, having served 31 years in the Foreign Service and as the third editor of The Middle East Journal. He was also a longtime MEI scholar-in-residence.
