Policy Analysis

On Tuesday, the Trump administration released the political portion of the long-awaited Middle East Peace Plan, six months after its attempts to publicly involve Arab states through the peace plan workshop in Manama, Bahrain, which introduced a $50 billion Palestinian investment and infrastructure proposal. The eighty-page document named Jerusalem as

The Palestinian Hamas movement briefly captured renewed attention when Ismail Haniyeh, a leader from Gaza, received the Ayatollah’s honors at the funeral of Qasem Soleimani in Tehran. Yet for the past few years, it has been Yahya Sinwar—head of the Hamas Political Bureau in Gaza—who has consolidated his stature as

The September 2019 election is viewed, with reason, as an important crossroad in the history of Arab society in Israel. This was an election in which the extent of Arab integration into the state emerged in an especially conspicuous manner. The Arab public’s chosen representatives opted for precedent-setting measures, most

The results of the Israeli elections have created mixed feelings, bringing a bit of despair along with a bit of hope as well. On the one hand, for Palestinians such as myself, there is a despair that there was little difference in terms of the peace process whether the right-wing

The choice of about half of Israel’s Arab citizens not to exercise the right to vote in Israel’s last parliamentary election in April dramatically affected election results, while also reflecting some powerful basic trends in Israel’s Arab society. While the voting rate—49 percent—was higher than expected due to concerns over

Palestinian public opinion clearly distinguishes between perceived rights and realities. Results from a new poll conducted June 27-July 15 show very mixed views on long-term peace issues among Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The “two-state solution” has lost majority support. Yet if that option were available

The latest survey conducted by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion, June 27-July 15, 2019, indisputably confirms this highly counter-intuitive finding from other recent polls: on many issues related to Israel, the two million Palestinians in Gaza actually voice significantly more moderate opinions than do the roughly equal Palestinian population

A new poll by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion, taken June 27-July 19, indicates that the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza oppose their leaderships’ preemptive rejection of the Trump administration’s peace plan—despite widespread popular disapproval of the current U.S. president. The survey also shows a

In one of its commanding verses, the Holy Quran calls upon the believers to pray to God to advance them in knowledge, "Say, My Lord, grant me more knowledge" (20:114). In late 2018, the Palestinian Authority (PA) issued new curriculum in its first revision of Palestinian textbooks since 2000. In

In his work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, (1895) French sociologist and social psychologist Gustave Le Bon writes, “The great upheavals which precede changes of civilisations… seem at first sight determined more especially by political transformations.” However, he argues, “A more attentive study of these events shows

On December 19, 2018, the Trump administration surprised the international community by announcing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria. While the Pentagon has begun crafting a strategy for withdrawal, the timeline for the departure is uncertain and could stretch over several months. With the process already in motion, Syrian

‘Iran has no objective interest in pursuing an anti-U.S. and anti-Israel policy, and would be amenable to a radical compromise, provided that its stature as the regional super-power is duly recognized.’ This is the blunt message communicated through various channels, including Iranian scholars associated with Tehran’s policy community during chance

An October 2018 poll of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem confirms a sharp shift against integration with Israel in the past two years. This surprising result was first reported based on our May 2017 survey, with the trend continuing towards Palestinian nationalism. In stark contrast to previous polls conducted as

Roy Kays, from the Israeli channel KAN 11 TV, wasn't the first Israeli journalist to contact me about Middle Eastern politics. However, he was the first to use a Twitter account to do so. After several exchanges of "How are you?" and "I'm fine Roy Kays, how are you?" it

Recently, the mayor of Jerusalem commended the U.S. plan to cut UNRWA funding and claimed that the agency is teaching children terrorism in its schools. To illustrate his statement, he referred to the fact that Dalal al-Mughrabi—a PLO operative who conducted a terrorist attack in 1978 during which 35 Israeli

In recent years, social media has provided a digital bridge across the short but physically uncrossable geographic distance separating Palestinian populations. Arab citizens of Israel consume a constant flow of social media content from the occupied territories; these connections strengthen the population’s Palestinian identity. Within an already-divided Israeli society, social

Over the past weekend, the Hamas rulers of Gaza took one old and two new steps. They launched more incendiary balloons at Israeli villages; they condemned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s official visit to Sultan Qaboos in Oman; and they equated the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre to the “terror” of “Israeli occupation.”

Introduction It is sometimes hard to imagine in 2018 that a different vision existed for Gaza than the one that currently exists in the news, and that Gazans live daily. Yet, I was a member of a hopeful group of technocrats who developed a clear roadmap for Gaza after Israel

While the very earliest civilizations in Iraq grew up around the gifts of the Tigris and Euphrates, millions of Iraqis from the North to the newly revived southern Marshes are at risk from the actions of Iraq’s northern and astern neighbors. Turkey and Iran’s increased limiting of water of the

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is driven by several factors: ethnic, national, historical, and religious. This brief essay focuses on the religious dimension of the conflict, which both historical and recent events suggest lies at its core. That much is almost a truism. What is less often appreciated, however, is how much