Format: 270 x 200 mm
Page: 32
Language: English
Publisher: MEI Publications Ltd, Nicosia
Year: 2010
ISSN: 0047-7249
Issues: 25 Issues/12 Months
Iran: living dangerously
Viewpoint
Israel: lacking imaginative diplomacy
From Ian Black
It is hardly surprising that little has been said about Israel’s rejection of Qatar’s offers to unfreeze relations in return for allowing humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip. Qatar runs a famously independent foreign policy – deftly...
News Analysis
Iran Nuclear Crisis
Moving to endgame?
From Graham Usher in New York
The grand chess game over Iran’s nuclear programme became a blur of move and countermove on 18 May after the United States tabled a new sanctions resolution at the United Nations Security Council that seemed to nullify a nuclear fuel exchange deal...
A stinging rebuff
From Nicole Pope in Istanbul
“If sanctions are to be brought back to the table despite all the hard work we did to prevent the emergence of new suspicions, why did we do all this?” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu commented on 18 May, the day after Turkey and...
Boost for the president
From Paul Sampson in London
When the television cameras captured Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flanked by the leaders of Turkey and Brazil on 17 May, his stern expression displayed none of the triumphalism that one would have expected on such an occasion. This was the Iranian president...
Iraq
Cabinet crisis
From Jim Muir in Baghdad
With more than two-and-a-half months gone since the general elections and a new government still well beyond the horizon, Iraqi politicians were decidedly sheepish at the sight of an unprecedented coalition government being pulled together in...
Palestine
Hamas hangs on
From Nicolas Pelham in Gaza
Filasteen, the Hamas-licensed paper in Gaza, has had more than a problem with some of its recent coverage. On Nakba Day, marking the 1948 Palestinian dispossession and exile, it carried archive photographs of Israeli home demolitions in East...
Settlement boycott
From A Special Correspondent
Some 3,000 Palestinian volunteers fanned out across the West Bank in mid-May, distributing a booklet listing goods produced in Israeli settlements. The ‘Karameh’ (dignity) campaign has styled itself as the moral high ground, its logo telling...
Israel
Acceptance and rejection
From Peretz Kidron in West Jerusalem
The self-congratulatory tone permeating the economic press ever since Israel achieved its longstanding ambition of acceptance by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on 10 May soon spilled over into the scientific and...
Lebanon
Challenging the hegemons
From Omayma Abdel-Latif in Beirut
The road leading to Bint Jbeil’s high school was jammed with vehicles and voters heading to cast their ballots to choose the 21-member municipal council. Posters of Hizbullah Secretary- General Hassan Nasrallah, and the yellow and green flags of...
INSIDE ISRAEL with Haim Baram
Bibi's roots
From Haim Baram
“It is really agonising to live in a country that stops Noam Chomsky from entering its border but elects Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister.” I received this message after the world-leading Jewish thinker was turned back by Israeli officials...
Sudan
Darfur talks in disarray
From Julie Flint in London
A dramatic reversal in the fortunes of Darfur’s strongest rebel group, the justice and Equality Movement (JEM), following a crackdown by Chad and Sudan, has thrown into disarray the Darfur peace process which Qatar has hosted for the past 15...
Lebanon View
Reflections on Liberation Day
From Nicholas Blanford in Beirut
When an Israeli officer padlocked the gate in the Lebanon- Israel border fence on the morning of 24 May 2000, moments after the last soldiers had exited Lebanon, few could have imagined that the 10th anniversary commemorations of that historic event...
PASSIONATE DETACHMENT: Ian Williams' America
Hyphenated America
From Ian Williams
In the equations of bigotry, substituting the terms, as in algebra, reveals the prejudice. For ace neo-con Daniel Pipes, Rima Fakih, an Arab-American of Muslim background, winning the Miss USA pageant, made him “suspect an odd form of affirmative...
Egypt
Dress rehearsal
From Issandr el Amrani in Cairo
Elections for the Shura Council, Egypt’s upper house of parliament, are rarely an exciting affair. Its candidates have mostly low visibility, and compared to the lower house, the People’s Assembly, the chamber is generally seen as a notables’...
Yemen
Unhappy anniversary
From Philip McCrum in Bath, UK
Two apparent assassination attempts carried out in quick succession in mid-May have served as a reminder that events in southern Yemen are heading increasingly in the direction of organised violence, and away from spontaneous clashes erupting out of...
Giving unity a bad name
From Philip McCrum
Yemeni unity, when it came into being on 22 May 20 years ago, proved to be a rushed and ill-conceived affair. Yet for Yemenis on both sides of the border, unity was the country’s ‘manifest destiny’, a universally-held aspiration, made all the...
Jordan
Not that new
From Sana Abdallah in Amman
Jordan’s new election law, endorsed by King Abdallah on 19 May, has drawn mixed but mild reactions, with little sign of substantial opposition that could entail boycotts from the main parties or prominent politicians of the parliamentary elections...
Media
Standing up to Mr Ammar
From Peter Feuilherade in London
Rapid Internet take-up and the growing popularity of social networking and blogging sites have led many Arab governments to step up their efforts to combat what they perceive as the threats from online activists. Internet use in the Arab world...
Bird on a wire
From Eileen Byrne
When old-school Tunisian policing meets the Twitter generation, the results can be bizarre. Late one Friday, Tunis-based blogger Slim Amamou found himself en route to a cultural centre in the capital, in the company of a couple of police officers....
Somalia
‘Constitutional crisis’
From Steve Sherman in London
Somalia’s internationally recognized parliament assembled for the first time this year in Mogadishu on 16 May, summoned by the speaker, Adan Mohamed Nuur ‘Madobe’, to discuss what he described as the failures of the Transitional Federal...
Bahrain
Blasts from the past
From Deena Jawhar in Manama
Historically, petty warfare involving the dominant tribes of the Arabian Peninsula was a key characteristic of relations between its pre-oil states. In the modern era, battles between the ruling families take on new forms. And as two recent...
Features
The threat from across the Gulf
From Neil Partrick
Neil Partrick writes from Riyadh on the Iranrelated security concerns of Saudi Arabia and its GCC partners, as they face the prospect of being dragged into a US and/or Israeli war, and Tehran seemingly prepares its pre-emptive options The Gulf...
Environmental dangers: the lesson seems lost
From Paul Hardisty
The Middle East is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, but the steps taken to address the challenges remain largely token, writes Professor Paul E Hardisty, an expert on international environment...
Reviews
Coalition of the Unwilling
From James Denselow
Coalition Politics and the Iraq War: Determinants of Choice Daniel Baltrusaitis FirstForum Press, 2009, Colorado, $65.00 ISBN: 9781935049159 In 2003, the United States launched combat operations in Iraq with a “coalition of the willing”...
Orientalism revisited
From Siona Jenkins
Out of Arabia: Phoenicians, Arabs and the Discovery of Europe Warwick Ball East & West Publishing, 2009, London, £14.95 ISBN 9781907318009 It is more than 30 years since Edward Said published Orientalism, but his legacy lives on in the...
Letter From
Letter from Sana'a
From Kate Nevens
The al-Saleh presidential mosque dominates the Sana’a skyline. My taxi driver Muhammad remarks that it cost $60 million to build, chuckling in disbelief at the enormity of the figure. Built to accommodate more than 40,000 worshippers, the mosque...
