Middle East historian James Gelvin speaks to Cairo Review editors Sean David Hobbs and Leslie Cohen about Middle Eastern current affairs, including where Syria is headed, and whether America’s moment in the Middle East has passed.
Donald Trump claims he is the master of deal-making, but will his much-touted “Deal of the Century” be favorable to the Arabs and Palestinians?
Jordan’s economic, demographic and geographic characteristics have left the country vulnerable to mass protests and external pressure that can only be overcome by a comprehensive reform program.
The crisis in Gaza and possible Israeli policies which could create real change on the ground.
A look at the state of Arab Youth protest at the American University in Cairo, Egypt and the greater Middle East.
A century ago, the Balfour Declaration paved the way for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The President of the State of Palestine asks the United Kingdom’s government to apologize for a document that set off a century of suffering and dispossession for the Palestinian people.
Europe’s role in the Middle East has evolved from colonial overlord into a partner for peace between Jews and Arabs. European leaders should no longer delay in showing equal respect to Palestinian and Israeli national aspirations: they should recognize Palestinian statehood now.
The Arab World should accept responsibility for its leading role in achieving peace in Palestine, but global leaders should remember that the “Palestinian question” remains central to both regional and international relations.
For decades, the United States has billed itself as an “honest broker” in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. Ten principles for renewing confidence in U.S. leadership, and the Arab-Israeli peace process.
President Donald Trump has boasted “We will get this done” on peace in the Middle East. Negotiations between wary Israeli and Palestinian leaders might need a provocative jolt in order to stop the slide toward a “one-state reality.”
Understanding the lessons of a conflict deeply steeped in history is essential to resolving it. The strength of facts on the ground, the futility of “might makes right,” and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict’s persistent role in the region’s instability are all part of a legacy that must be acknowledged to achieve peace.
Peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis in the last quarter-century were never designed to support the establishment of a two-state solution. Brokers of the conflict should look beyond the “land for peace” formula and return to some of the finer details of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine.
As the Israeli state ramps up exclusionary policies against its Palestinian citizens, the Palestinian community is increasingly resorting to protests and grassroots activism to produce results.
Expansion of Israeli settlements, restriction on access to water, and land confiscation are displacing Palestinians from agricultural livelihoods they have known for centuries. But olive tree growers and backyard gardeners are refusing to surrender their heritage. This is a story of farmers under occupation.
The defeat in the 1967 war with Israel deeply altered Egypt’s position in the Arab World.
To understand the messy state of the Middle East today, look toward its past.
By crushing the Arab armies, Israel paradoxically resurrected the Palestinian national movement. But fifty years after Israeli forces captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the bitter struggle over Palestine continues, and continues . . .
Were Arab leaders determined to launch an attack on Israel? Were Israeli leaders willing to seek peace after their stunning military victory? New scholarship easily challenges the falsehoods long prevalent in Western circles.
The Trump administration has suggested dropping the two-state solution and moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Influential Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi speaks out.
U.S. policy threatens to undo not only the two-state solution, but stable relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
Popular sentiments in the U.S. and the Middle East have started to play a more significant role in determining what happens in this conflict that is almost a century old.
Small majorities of both people still cling to the idea that a negotiated two-state solution could happen. What is lacking is leadership.
Veteran U.S. policymaker Dennis Ross argues that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is “doomed to succeed.” But a hardheaded look at the political, demographic, and ethnic changes in both countries suggests otherwise.
A two-state solution is the only equitable resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Former U.S. diplomat and policy director at Americans for Peace Now Lara Friedman explains why.
There are tens of thousands of more terrorists operating in the world today than there were in September 2001 when the global war on terror was launched. Something is not working here.
Critics of Israel’s most egregious and often illegal policies—occupation, colonization, mass incarceration, assassinations, and direct and indirect siege of Palestinian civilian communities—now also call for measures to deter or punish it.
Palestinian rights are popping up in more venues around the world, with a regular public focus on countering and even sanctioning Zionist actions such as expropriating and colonizing occupied Arab lands.
An American-Russian-French-European peace initiative, with the active participation of the moribund Arab League and expressions of support from Iran, Turkey, and other key players, is achievable and worth attempting.
“As the wider Middle East continues to be gripped by a relentless wave of extremist terror, Israelis and Palestinians have an opportunity to restore hope to a region torn apart by intolerance and cruelty.” —Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General
Resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, should be seriously grasped as a global priority.
Putting on hold now for two years serious diplomacy aimed at reaching a permanent peace agreement will only allow attitudes of militancy and murder to continue their upward trends.
It is a crime against rational language and thought to speak of “restoring calm” and “reducing the violence” in a situation where the Israelis are the occupiers, tormentors, colonizers, and mass killers of mostly defenseless Palestinians who are largely leaderless and unprotected by international law.
