The Middle East is in disarray, but in Gaza, of all places, there are fragile hints of better days.
Two weeks ago, for the first time since Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel permitted produce exports from Gaza into Israel and the West Bank.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged Gaza’s plight during a visit to the area in February.
Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947
A review of Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947, By Bruce Hoffman (Knopf 2015). This book review was first published by The Washington Post.
Mohammed Dahlan is making a comeback, and not for the first time since his ignominious ouster from Gaza almost eight years ago, when the Palestinian Authority (PA) forces he was leading as the PA’s security chief were routed by Hamas. These days, the 53-year-old, who grew up in the poorest of Gaza’s refugee camps, is seeking to do well for himself by doing good for Gaza.
“Crises left to fester sometimes find their own way to the front burner.” Written on January 5, 2015, this sentence reflected my fear that starving Libya of high-profile international attention was increasingly risky. The beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya by Islamic State (ISIS) extremists this week appears to have placed the situation in Libya front and center.
Egypt's Security Challenge: ISIS, Sinai, and the Libyan Border
On January 28, 2015, jihadis in Sinai launched multiple, simultaneous attacks against Egyptian security forces in the vicinity of El Arish and the nearby towns of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah. These attacks occurred only hours after President Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi said that he would die defending the region from terror. “We will never leave Sinai,” Sisi said. “Sinai is ours.
Despite an encouraging communiqué by the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) this week praising the commitment of the various Libyan parties to a dialogue, the continued postponement of the so-called Ghadames II peace talks does not bode well. Backed by external supporters, Libya’s warring factions appear to favor a military solution to the situation, rendering the crisis increasingly beyond repair.
This paper is part of an MEI scholar series, titled “Obama’s Legacy in the Middle East: Passing the Baton in 2017.” Click here to view the full project, or navigate using the table of contents to the right.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Obama’s Legacy
This paper is part of an MEI scholar series, titled “Obama’s Legacy in the Middle East: Passing the Baton in 2017.” Click here to view the full project, or navigate using the table of contents to the right.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone through a number of different phases in its long history. It is possible—though only time will tell—that a new phase is beginning now, but not a particularly hopeful one.[1]
Soft Islam: Indonesia’s Interfaith Mission for Peace in the Middle East
Historians and anthropologists have focused on Muslim networks of scholars, merchants, and pilgrims that connect the Middle East with Southeast Asia. Especially with respect to the study of Islam in Indonesia, where political scientists and anthropologists approach Islam largely in terms of national politics and local cultures, this burgeoning body of literature on global Muslim networks offers both ethnographic insights into actual practices and an historical appreciation for the longue durée. The importance of this scholarship notwithstanding, much of this work focuses on formal networks of migration, trade, learning, and pilgrimage. In this respect, the cultural and political work of Islam has been largely confined to the study of either Muslim scholars or lay Muslims who participate in trade, travel, study, and migration. Here I shift the focus to a religious diplomacy tour that connected Muslims with states, citizen-believers, and global politics.
Obama and the Maghreb in the Wake of the Arab Spring
This paper is part of an MEI scholar series, titled “Obama’s Legacy in the Middle East: Passing the Baton in 2017.” Click here to view the full project, or navigate using the table of contents to the right.
Excerpted from article first published on LobeLog.
Libya remains broken and violent. Secular forces made gains against Muslim extremists in Benghazi recently, but the advantage has shifted from side to side since early this year. And two rival governments vying for power amidst a near lawless country with open borders is an ideal setting for the outflow of everything from heightened concerns to munitions and fighters. Yet Libya keeps boiling away on the global back burner.
