Jordan

On November 9, Jordan conducted its first-ever parliamentary elections monitored by domestic and international observers. I was one of the observers and was impressed by the transparency of the process. Indeed, notwithstanding some isolated incidents of violence, the elections themselves set a regional gold-standard for free and fair balloting. When

On Friday, August 20, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the resumption of direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, to be launched in Washington next week. On September 1, President Obama will welcome Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Egyptian

PolicyWatch #1585 is the first in a two-part series discussing trends within the Muslim Brotherhood. This piece focuses on the organization's divisions in Jordan, while PolicyWatch #1588 addresses the potential for the group's return to violence in Egypt. In early September, three senior leaders of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood (MB) resigned

UNRWA -- is it part of the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict or part of the problem? The humanitarian aspect of the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas has cast a fresh spotlight on the presence in Gaza of the nearly sixty-year-old United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine

This PolicyWatch is the second of a two-part series on Jordan's reengagement with Hamas. Read part one. Almost a decade after expelling Hamas from its territory, Jordan is in the process of reassessing its ties with the militant Palestinian group, an organization dedicated to undermining the two-state solution. Although Jordanian

Upon returning from the latest Washington Institute Study Tour to the Middle East, senior fellow David Makovsky discussed his findings and impressions at a special Institute Policy Forum. The following is his own summary of his remarks at the forum. Senior fellow Soner Cagaptay addressed the forum as well, discussing

On July 31, in a contest widely seen as a tune-up for November's parliamentary balloting, Jordanians went to the polls for municipal elections. Amman had hoped these would showcase Jordan's relatively advanced style of representative democracy in the Middle East. Instead, in a surprise development, the Islamic Action Front (IAF)

From high-level diplomatic tours to multilateral summits in Baghdad and Sharm al-Sheikh, Washington has devoted increasing attention to Iraq's Arab neighbors. Yet, although speculation about the role of regional states in stabilizing Iraq has become something of a cottage industry in Washington, much of this analysis has focused on non-Arab

On June 4, 2007, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy held a symposium marking the fortieth anniversary of the June 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The purpose of the symposium was to grapple with the failure of U.S.-led diplomacy on the eve of the war, exploring