Policy Analysis

August 24, 2017 In "Why Israel Should Listen to Jordan on the Temple Mount," Abdullah Sawalha asserts that in handling the recent Temple Mount crisis, Israel prioritized domestic political considerations over coordination with Jordan. While I agree that Israel could have handled the crisis better, I believe the piece presents

August 10, 2017 This week King Abdullah of Jordan made a rare visit to Ramallah, his first in five years, to confer with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the wake of a crisis over security at the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. This latest outbreak of small-scale violence

One-third of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians want to “escalate the resistance against Israel, even if that makes life harder right now,” according to a late-May survey conducted by the reliable Palestine Center for Public Opinion. The majority, however, prefer other options: a compromise deal with Israel, a focus on

June 15, 2017 Surprising results from a highly credible new survey in the West Bank and Gaza conducted May 16-26, 2017, demonstrate that Palestinians are often more moderate than their leaders on short-term political issues -- such as "pay for slay" bonuses for terrorists, a U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem

In 2014, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned that Israel risked becoming an apartheid state if a two-state solution could not be reached. In March 2017, a UN report titled "Israeli Practices toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid," published by the Economic and Social Commission for

February 14, 2017 The newly established state of Israel captured West Jerusalem in the aftermath of the 1948 War and East Jerusalem in the 1967 War; however, neither military acquisition was recognized internationally. In 1995, though, the US Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act claiming Jerusalem as the eternal capital

If Iranian leaders want to advance a world governed by the relative justice of international law, which however imperfect is better than a world in which "the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must", they will have to cede the same implicit claims of exceptionalism that they loathe the U.S. and Israel for.

An interview with peace activist Professor Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi As a non-violent form of resistance to the Israeli occupation, the anti-normalization movement gained ground in the aftermath of the Al-Aqsa Intifada of 2000. Extremist groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) oppose

Normalization remains controversial in Arab circles but is no longer taboo, as more Arabs come to view Israel as a potential partner against enemies like Iran.

If the Europeans continue to act independently of local actors' wishes, they could further complicate matters in a region already beset by daunting challenges.

The May 6 meeting between Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, and Israeli Major General Yaakov Amidror, Israel's former national security advisor—hosted by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy—has spurred a wide range of differing voices in the Arab press to comment. Some newspapers have denounced the

The principal gain yielded by the exchange of ideas between two adversaries is mutual understanding. Admittedly, at the conclusion of a dialogue it could turn out that the pair really do have irreconcilable views – but at least the discussion has allowed both participants to map out the other’s position

The United States, the United Nations, and other Western capitals have widely acknowledged the unlikely prospects for Palestinian-Israeli peace in the near future. This is notably due to the variety of obstacles, mostly from the Israeli side, against internationally brokered negotiations. Nevertheless, France has insisted on holding an international peace

April 22, 2016 In a statement issued in early March in by the headquarters of State Security in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City, Egyptian Ministry of Interior General Magdy Abdel Ghaffar announced that Hamas was responsible for the June 2015 assassination of Egyptian Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat. Abdel Ghaffar

April 22, 2016 Following a number of nationalist, independent and partisan Egyptian newspapers, including: Al-Ahram, Al Gomhuria, Al Akhbar, Al Youm Al Sabeh, Al-Masry Al-Youm, Al Wafd, Sawt al-Ummah and Al Shorouk in the past weeks reveals a surprising lack of discrepancy in their rhetoric towards events related to the

April 22, 2016 In the 1990s and early 2000s, American media referred to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the “Middle East Peace Process,” a testament to the positive political developments achieved in Wye River and Oslo under the stewardship of former President Bill Clinton. President Clinton, a self-declared “honest-broker,” took calculated

April 8, 2016 Future relations between the Palestinians and the Israelis will likely be hamstrung by issues of the past. Namely, Israel continues to illegally occupy and support settlements in Palestinian territory, among other restrictive activities. As a result, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has warned Israel of its readiness to

April 8, 2016 Language plays a key role in the lives – and deaths – of humans. Great speeches have stirred many nations and religions into terrible wars. Conversely, language has also given voice to peace talks and anti-violence rallies. In other words, it has consistently been a mutable force

March 15, 2016 When the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited me to visit Israel as part of a delegation of European-based Arab journalists and media representatives, I accepted without hesitation. The goal of the invitation was to provide us with an opportunity to freely explore the different dimensions to

On October 30, the newly installed Swedish government recognized the state of Palestine, becoming the first major country within the European Union to do so. This makes Sweden the third EU-country to take such a step, following Iceland in 2011 and the Vatican, which signed a diplomatic treaty with Palestine