Format: 270 x 200 mm
Page: 40
Language: English
Publisher: MEI Publications Ltd, Nicosia
Year: 2009
ISSN: 0047-7249
Issues: 25 Issues/12 Months
Empty promise of statehood
Viewpoint
Israel meets its match, From Edward Mortimer
On 9 November, just five days after the US House of Representatives had condemned his Gaza report as “irredeemably biased” and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy, Justice Richard Goldstone gave a lecture in Washington to launch the...
News Analysis
Palestine
Derailed on the fast-track to statehood, From Graham Usher in New York
The Palestinians’ West Bank leadership, no stranger to diplomatic setbacks, suffered two more in quick succession on 16 November when the United States and the European Union opposed its nascent plans to seek, without Israel’s consent, a UN...
Abbas plays the resignation card, From Wafa Amr in Ramallah
Mahmoud Abbas’ announcement that he will not seek another term as Palestinian Authority president, irrespective of whether a deal is concluded with Hamas on the political reunification of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has prompted a wholesale...
PASSIONATE DETACHMENT: Ian Williams' America
J Street opens to traffic, From Ian Williams
It should not be surprising that J Street – puckishly named after a street that is missing from Washington’s grid map – is blossoming in the present circumstances. A president who likes their message was voted into the White House with...
Reconciliation back on track? From Adnan Salim in Gaza
The stalled Egyptian-brokered reconciliation process between Fatah and Hamas seems set to start rolling again, with Cairo apparently willing to resume its mediation and Hamas showing renewed eagerness to do a deal. Presidents Hosni Mubarak and...
Israel
Smiles and scowls, From Peretz Kidron in West Jerusalem
On his return to Israel after his 10 November audience with President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu strove bravely to convince his home audience that the meeting had been a resounding success. It was reminiscent of the farcical...
INSIDE ISRAEL with Haim Baram
"Mistakes" not "war crimes", From Haim Baram
The sense of helpless disbelief engulfing our chattering classes after the debacle of the Netanyahu-Obama meeting brings us back, inevitably, to Israel’s tarnished reputation and to the price it will have to pay for its dismal record in the...
Hariri's limited room for manoeuvre, From Nicholas Blanford in Beirut
The formation of a new government in Beirut after months of bitter negotiations may herald a period of calm, but it is far from being a panacea for Lebanon’s many ailments. The protracted wrangling over who would fill the various portfolios in...
Syria
The Francop Affair, From Ghada Khouri in Nicosia
If Israel’s latest charges of Syrian involvement in channeling Iranian arms to Hizbullah were partly intended to derail Damascus’ ongoing rapprochement with former Western and other detractors, they appear to have been unsuccessful. The...
Yemen
The Saudis weigh in, From Ginny Hill in London
Nearly half a century after it last deployed forces to Yemen’s Saada border region, Saudi Arabia once again finds itself engaged there in a ground and air offensive against Zaydi Shi’i revivalists whose forebears it once supported. Five years...
Bahrain
Loyalty test, From Deena Jawhar in Manama
When representatives of the Bahraini Parliament sought to issue a statement in solidarity with Saudi Arabia condemning Houthi incursions into its territory, 17 MPs from the al-Wefaq parliamentary opposition bloc refused to sign up. This break with...
Saudi Arabia
Police action or entanglement?, From Omayma Abdel-Latif in Beirut
King Abdelaziz, the founder of Saudi Arabia, is said to have warned his sons on his deathbed of the dangers that Yemen might pose to the kingdom they would inherit. After two weeks of Saudi military operations against Houthi rebels on the Yemeni...
Iraq
Veto raises election uncertainty, From Jim Muir in Baghdad
There were sighs of relief when the Iraqi parliament, after months of haggling and delays, finally passed the new election law on 8 November, just in time for hurried preparations to be made for the January polls. Or so it was thought. But those...
An unprepossessing town, From Jim Muir
Not surprisingly, Kirkuk, one of Iraq’s thorniest and most intractable problems, emerged as the most contentious issue holding up the desperately-awaited revised Iraqi election law that was finally passed by parliament on 8 November, only to run...
Iran
Political hot potato, From Paul Sampson in London
In his first political victory since being sworn in at the beginning of August, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has persuaded the Majlis to approve his masterplan to phase out energy and food subsidies over the next five years and, crucially, give him...
Calling the shots, From A Special Correspondent
What makes Iran so hard to fathom is the proliferation of power centres that, in some cases, act as autonomous units with little or no accountability. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appoints the heads of the IRGC, regular army,...
Egypt
Dragons on the Nile From Issandr el Amrani in Cairo
In their recurrent attacks on moral degeneration, Egypt’s Muslim Brothers last month had two chief concerns. One was a performance by the American hip-hop star Beyoncé, which they denounced as “the nudity concert”. The other was that fake...
Football crazy From Issandr el Amrani in Cairo
The beautiful game took an ugly turn last week as the Pharaohs – Egypt’s national team – took on Algeria’s Desert Foxes in a home game. The match was a crucial qualifying round for the 2010 World Cup, and the two countries are competing in...
Morocco
Reasserting the claim From George Joffé in Cambridge
The Western Sahara conflict seems to be making another of its periodic appearances on the international agenda, but still with no obvious solution in sight. Morocco has recently been making its claim to the Western Sahara very plain. On 5...
Sudan
Mediators in need of mediation From Abdelwahab El-Affendi
The Qatari capital, Doha, is again the venue for efforts to bring lasting peace to the Sudanese province of Darfur. On 17 November a gathering of about 160 civil society activists began to debate ways of bringing peace closer. These are not exactly...
Features
Failure not an option: Turkey's Kurdish initiative From Nicole Pope
The Turkish government is reaching out to the country’s Kurdish population with a “democratic opening” aimed at addressing their grievances. Nicole Pope says this is a radical turnaround that challenges decades of state policy Prime...
Palestine: the other schism From Ben White
Ben White examines the growing challenge posed to the Palestinian leadership’s methods and assumptions by grassroots activists and their international supporters While the Western world was marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin...
The Gulf and the recession From Jane Kinninmont
Lack of transparency and a shortage of statistics make it hard to gauge the true impact of the global downturn on GCC economies, writes Jane Kinninmont There are worse places to be during a recession than the Arab Gulf monarchies. So far their...
How they compare From Jane Kinninmont
The impact of the global turndown has varied significantly among the different GCC countries, with Qatar being the least affected as its energy revenues are based on long-term gas supply agreements, which are not responsive to short-term...
Somalia: breaching the peace From Steve Sherman
US hostility to the Islamic Courts has been instrumental in taking the country back from the brink of potential peace into deepening conflict, reports Steve Sherman When African Union troops launched rockets and mortar shells at Bakara Market in...
Reviews
Plundering Tunisia From Kamel Labidi
La Régente de Carthage: Main Basse sur la Tunisie Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet La Découverte, Paris 2009 Euro 14.00 ISBN: 9782707152626 No book seems to have spurred Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali’s notorious enmity...
Ignoring the obvious From Sami Ramadani
Iraq: A Political History From Independence to Occupation Adeed Dawisha Princeton University Press, 2009 £20.95 ISBN: 9870691139579 Setting out to write the past century or so of any country’s history, let alone one that has undergone...
Encouraging engagement with Hamas From Michael Jansen
The Political Ideology of Hamas: A Grassroots Perspective Michael Irving Jensen I.B. Tauris, London 2009 £45 ISBN:9781845110598 This book is a useful addition to literature on Hamas and Muslim liberation movements, in spite of the...
Letter From
Letter from Tunis by Eileen Byrne
I walk off the street to check my email in the Internet space attached to a small theatre – somewhere I hadn’t noticed before, a couple of blocks from the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. As I wait for a problem with the PC to be sorted, a young man...
