All Policy Analysis by رابرت ستلوف

Jordan’s King Abdullah recently announced a major initiative for decentralizing political and fiscal authority in the kingdom by establishing a number of regional assemblies and empowering them with many of the responsibilities currently enjoyed by the parliament and central government. This effort should be viewed as one of the means

Of the more than 100 countries that have formally endorsed today's convening of the special U.N. General Assembly on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, not one is Arab. In the West, this is viewed as another manifestation of Holocaust denial, an increasingly commonplace feature of Arab politics

The most frequent criticism of President Bush's Middle East policy is that he has been too hands-off. Unless America takes the lead, so the argument goes, the "peace process" will languish. In other words, U.S. activism is the key to progress. This is, by and large, bad analysis and a

Jordan's King Abdullah stripped his younger half brother Hamzeh of the latter's position as crown prince yesterday. He has not yet named a new successor, though by the terms of the Jordanian constitution Abdullah's ten-year-old son Hussein would automatically inherit the throne. Background In January 1999, Abdullah was named crown

On November 10, 2004, Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute, and Fouad Ajami, director of the Middle East Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, addressed a Special Policy Forum luncheon on the occasion of the release of Dr. Satloff's new Institute monograph, The

With Fidel Castro now sporting double-breasted suits, the uniform-clad Yasser Arafat could rightly claim to be "the world's last revolutionary." In this regard, as in so many others, Arafat has no heir. None of the contenders to "succeed" him -- if the verb is appropriate to the situation -- wears

Introduction Even before the flames raging within the twisted steel of the fallen World Trade Center towers were extinguished, a debate began to flare up regarding the motivations of the perpetrators. How could Arab Muslim society produce young, well-educated men filled with such hatred toward America that they would kill

Morocco is a nation of nearly 30 million people, part Arab, part Berber, and overwhelmingly Muslim, yet distant enough from Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian arena so that those issues, while relevant, are not all-consuming. Hence, it provides an excellent vantage point from which to assess the ideological battle between radical

The North African chapter of the Holocaust is largely unknown; many would prefer to leave it that way.... The full text of this article is available to registered users of the Commentary Digital Archive.

The exchange of letters that occurred yesterday between President George W. Bush and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon marked an important watershed in the diplomatic history of the Middle East peace process. The short-term impact of the correspondence will be felt in domestic Israeli politics, as Sharon tries to parlay

A gathering of Arab civil society activists convened by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, last weekend provided a revealing glimpse into the two faces of reform in the Middle East today. In an opening address, Egypt's president for the past twenty-three years, Hosni Mubarak, presented the traditional case for

The Bush administration has recently circulated to its G-8 partners the details of the Greater Middle East Partnership (GMEP) that Washington hopes will win endorsement at the group's May 2004 summit in Sea Island, Georgia. The GMEP is a core element of the administration's larger Greater Middle East Initiative, which

After pan-Arabism and Islamism, it is heartening to consider the prospect that democracy may be the next great wave to wash over Arab countries. Whether it actually takes root or is merely a passing fancy depends on three sets of actors: local leaders, local populations, and what is euphemistically referred

Like legions of other proud parents, my wife and I sat beaming in the audience earlier this month, video camera in hand, as our son Benji, 6, stood with his fellow first-graders on the stage of his school auditorium and sang a medley of holiday songs. The adorably cute, multicultural

One of the more pleasant surprises to emerge in 2002—an exceptionally dreary year in the Middle East—was the inaugural volume of the Arab Human Development Report (AHDR). That path-breaking document, prepared by a group of courageous Arab researchers under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program, broke the mold