Research & Commentary Results

In the end, it all fell apart rather quickly. Instead of a long-awaited announcement about the details of a U.S.-Afghan Taliban peace deal, on Sept. 7 President Donald Trump tweeted that the talks were off, adding shortly afterwards that the Afghan peace process was “dead.” Only days earlier, Washington’s special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, had announced a draft agreement had been reached after nine rounds of gruelling negotiations.

The Sept. 14 attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing plant has put Pakistan in a place it never wanted to be: possibly forced to choose between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

For the first time in a decade, the upcoming UNGA will be held in the absence of the outgoing Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Gerald Feierstein, Alex Vatanka, Eran Etzion, Gonul Tol, Amal Kandeel, Marvin G. Weinbaum, Michael Sexton and Eliza Campbell.

Despite constituting about 20 percent of the Israeli population, Israel’s Palestinian minority does not wield significant political power; throughout Israeli history Palestinian parties have played the role of the permanent opposition. While low Israeli-Palestinian electoral participation and the resulting disproportionate parliamentary representation have hampered political influence, these factors are merely one part of a multi-faceted and multi-causal picture. This report seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the exogenous and endogenous drivers of reduced Palestinian political engagement. It is concerned with the structural obstacles –– primarily put in place and sustained by the Israeli right wing –– that seek to impede Palestinian influence at the polls and in the Knesset.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Ruba Husari, Paul Salem, Gerald Feierstein, Amal Kandeel, Grace Wermenbol, Robert S. Ford, Charles Lister, and Gonul Tol.

Israel’s upcoming election, set for Sept. 17, dragged on through the summer and looked set to be a repeat of its predecessor on April 9, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed by a single Knesset vote to put together a majority coalition. It has indeed been a largely sleepy affair, with the centrist Blue-White party dueling with the Likud for the crucial top spot and most other parties barely budging in the polls. This somnolence ended explosively the week before the election with a series of events whose impact is still unclear.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a fifth term in April, the first such victory for an Israeli politician. In May, he failed to form a governing coalition, a first for an Israeli politician as well. Snap elections are scheduled for Sept. 17 and, true to form, rivals and observers are saying that surely his era may be nearing an end. Notwithstanding the possible changes that could be witnessed on the local political scene, skeptics are hard-pressed to see how the elections could bring about drastic change for either Israel or the region.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Robert S. Ford, Fatima Abo Alasrar, Jean-François Seznec, Michael Sexton and Eliza Campbell.

Amb. Robin Raphel and MEI’s Marvin Weinbaum join guest host Jerry Feierstein to discuss the latest round of negotiations between the US and the Taliban and lay out their competing views on whether there is greater cause for optimism or pessimism as the US seeks to withdraw its troops after nearly twenty years in Afghanistan.

MEI scholar Lawrence Pintak speaks to Sardar Masood Khan, the president of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, about India’s early August annexation of the semi-autonomous territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Marvin G. Weinbaum, Randa Slim, Alex Vatanka, and Gonul Tol.

This week’s briefing on recent news and upcoming events in the region featuring Randa Slim, Gerald Feierstein, Alex Vatanka, Robert S. Ford, and Michael Sexton.

Israel has reportedly expanded its operations against Iran in the Middle East. In July, Israeli and foreign media attributed airstrikes on Iranian targets near Baghdad to Israel. Last week, U.S. officials confirmed that Israel was responsible for the attacks, which mark the first such air raids on Iraq since 1981, when Tel Aviv destroyed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor.