Format: 270 x 200 mm
Page: 40
Language: English
Publisher: MEI Publications Ltd, Nicosia
Year: 2009
ISSN: 0047-7249
Issues: 25 Issues/12 Months
Heading nowhere:
political paralysis in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon
Viewpoint
Despotism: the “Arab Exception” From David Gardner
For all that the intractable problems of the Middle East remain with us – Israel-Palestine, Iran and Iraq, to go no further – let us, just for a moment, willingly suspend our disbelief and imagine that serial miracles of statesmanship had...
News Analysis
Yemen
Trading charges From Ginny Hill in London
As Yemen’s intermittent five-year civil war rumbles on in the northern mountains of Saada close to the Saudi border, the government and rebel sides have been exchanging increasingly vocal accusations of foreign involvement. Yemeni President...
The Regional Dimension: War by proxy? From Omayma Abdel-Latif in Beirut
The Houthist rebellion is increasingly being portrayed in the Arab world as a reflection of the simmering regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In official statements, clerical pronouncements and, above all, in state-guided media coverage...
Background briefing: Fear of failure From Ginny Hill
If nationhood is a precursor for statehood, Yemen has enjoyed a 1,000-year head start over most of its neighbours. As a geographical concept Yemen predates the birth of Islam. A saying of the Prophet Muhammad praises the Yemenis as a pious and...
The view from the ground: Heading for economic collapse From Abigail Fielding-Smith in Mahweet
Abigail Fielding-Smith reports from Mahweet, 100 kilometres northwest of Sana’a, on the economic difficulties that Yemenis face in daily life. Nineteen-year-old Muhammad Sa’a slouches idly in the driver’s seat of his grandfather’s jeep,...
Iraq
Kirkuk imperils elections From Jim Muir in Baghdad
The fate of Iraq’s vital general elections, scheduled for 16 January, was hanging in the balance at MEI press-time, with parliamentary factions still at loggerheads over a revised election law to govern the poll, despite heavy pressure from the US...
Turkey
Turkey: Out of the straitjacket From Nicole Pope in Istanbul
Since he took the helm of Turkey’s diplomacy earlier this year, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has been actively promoting his “zero problem” policy with neighbouring countries. Rarely a day goes by without a foreign trip or a major...
Iran
The nuclear deal that wasn’t From Ian Williams in United Nations
Iran often seems to confuse causing exasperation with diplomacy. It certainly manages to irritate those who try to arrange a graceful climbdown, whether it is the EU states which tried to head off what looked like George W Bush’s rush to war or,...
Iran: Political paralysis persists From Paul Sampson in London
Iran’s failure to approve the nuclear deal proposed by the IAEA has exposed the political divisions among the ruling elite that have widened in the aftermath of the contested June presidential elections and left the country in a state of political...
Egypt
The rise and rise of Gamal Mubarak From Issandr el Amrani in Cairo
The saga of Gamal Mubarak’s bid — if bid there is — to succeed his father continues unabated. Since 2002, when he first entered politics as an official in Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), Gamal has climbed its ranks,...
Feuding brothers From Issandr el Amrani
Essam al-Erian is an affable man in his mid-50s with a mobile phone that rarely stops ringing and an easy sense of humour. One of Egypt’s best-known Islamist politicians, he is seen as a progressive, keen to distance the group from...
Tunisia
An election, but no real politics From Eileen Byrne in Tunis
At the polling station in Hay Taddamun, a lower-income neighbourhood on the outskirts of Tunis, there is a steady trickle of voters. Sitting on chairs by the entrance are a couple of plainclothes policemen, smiling in the sunshine behind their dark...
Yearning for dialogue From Eileen Byrne
Ziad Doulatli has suggested the lobby of the luxurious Hotel Africa, the largest on Tunis’ main boulevard, as the place for our meeting. A balding, soft-spoken man in his forties, he looks older. Fourteen years in prison, from 1990 to 2004, much...
Palestine
Palestinian hopes evaporate From Graham Usher in New York
On 31 October Hillary Clinton made her first foray to the Middle East as US Secretary of State. In the course of talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders she made it unequivocally clear that the Obama administration had abandoned its earlier...
Abbas opts for elections From Wafa Amr in Ramallah
Wafa Amr, Ramallah & Adnan Salem, Gaza When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decreed that presidential and legislative elections would be held in the Occupied Territories on 24 January 2010, he effectively drew a line under the...
Bahrain
No to normalisation From Deena Jawhar in Manama
US pressure on allied Arab states to make “gestures” to Israel has produced something of a backlash in Bahrain and presented the government with an unexpected and unwelcome challenge to its authority and style of political management. On 27...
Israel
Jerusalem Palestinians face new threat From Peretz Kidron in West Jerusalem
At first sight, a minor bureaucratic reform, of interest to few beyond the Israeli construction industry; on closer study, a looming threat to Jerusalem’s Palestinian population, that also raises doubts about the strategy long pursued by its...
Bashing Goldstone, mourning Bush From Haim Baram in West Jerusalem
The Goldstone report, arguably a very restrained account of the war in Gaza earlier this year, is still a potent time-bomb as far as most Israelis are concerned. Public opinion is largely united in its well-orchestrated outrage and characteristic...
United Nations
Goldstone weaves a sticky web From Ian Williams in New York
Amid the hysteria generated among Israelis in the wake of the UN report on last December/January’s assault on the Gaza Strip, it is easy to forget that the commission headed by the South African judge Richard Goldstone simply concluded that Israel...
Lebanon
Still waiting... From Nicholas Blanford
Five months after the Saudi-backed March 14 coalition secured a narrow victory over the Hizbullah-led opposition in the parliamentary elections, Lebanon’s bickering politicians appear no closer to forming a new government. The two sides accuse...
Preparing for another war? From Nicholas Blanford in Beirut
A mainly cold war pitting Israel’s intelligence services against Lebanon’s Hizbullah is showing indications of heating up, threatening the calm that has prevailed along the Lebanon-Israel border for the past three years. Recent weeks have...
Features
Conjuring up monsters: Israel’s claims of “righteous” violence From David Hirst
From David Hirst David Hirst strips the camouflage from Israel’s justifications, rooted in Zionism, for using extreme force against its Arab enemies. Israel’s is “the most moral army in the world”, says Ehud Barak. How, then, could it have possibly done...
Continuity masquerading as change: Obama’s Middle East promise fades From Graham Usher
A year after the new US president was elected, Graham Usher points to the gap between expectations and reality. Barack Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly on 23 September reminded many in his audience why his election as US president...
Iraq awaits test after an era of US military presence From Jim Muir
Jim Muir assesses Iraq’s political prospects up to and beyond the scheduled January 2010 elections and concludes that the indicators are mixed. Is the outside world beginning to forget Iraq? You might be excused for concluding that it is....
Saif-al-Islam: frustrations face Libya’s reformer From George Joffé
A top political role is being created for Col Qadhafi’s second son, but there is no shortage of critics in the wings, says George Joffé. On 6 October, during a visit to Sebha, where he had celebrated the anniversary of the founding of the...
Reviews
Winning or losing Muslim hearts and minds From Roger Hardy
A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World Emile Nakhleh Princeton University Press 2009, £18.95 ISBN: 9780691135250 Engaging the Muslim World Juan Cole Palgrave Macmillan 2009, £16.99 ISBN:...
Arabia Infelix From Issandr el Amrani
What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East Brian Whitaker Saqi, London 2009 £10.99 By choosing the title What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East, Brian Whitaker may have had in mind Bernard Lewis’ What Went Wrong? as well as other, less...
Long war against hunger From Eileen Byrne
The Politics of Food in Modern Morocco Stacy E. Holden University Press of Florida Press 2009 £57.26 “The rain is our stock-market index,” Moroccan Finance Minister Fatahallah Oulalou told reporters in 2004, referring to the preponderant...
Letter from Gaza
From Michael Jansen
My passage through the vast, empty, echoing Israeli Erez terminal was quick. As always, I began by meeting John Ging, Irish chief of the UN agency looking after Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip. Less stressed than when we met in January after...
