Peace Process

What do Middle Easterners have to learn from the Northern Ireland peace accord? Other than the common legacy of terrorism and the shedding of innocent blood, the two conflicts are fundamentally different and the solutions reached at Stormont last week and in Oslo in 1993 are very different, too. But

Netanyahu as politician: When asked about himself, Netanyahu replies that he is neither Shimon Peres nor Yitzhak Shamir. Indeed, Netanyahu is not the ideologue some think he is: he has met with Arafat, he never speaks of "Greater Israel" and by agreeing to the Hebron Accord of January 1997, he

When King Hussein meets with President Clinton this week, most media speculation will surround provocative comments he has made reportedly urging direct dialogue between the United States and Iraq. In the tradition of "good news is no news," little attention will be focused on one of the more upbeat developments

Two Problems: "There are two main reasons why the peace process has stalemated. The first is obvious - Oslo has yet to produce very much peace. Here, one needs to go to basics. In absolute terms, more Israelis have died in the four years since Oslo than did during the

Establishing the Guidelines for Settlement. The United Nations has been dealing with various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict since its inception. There are two basic UN resolutions that have had a direct bearing on shaping the future of the Middle East. First is General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), the partition

Amid continuing difficulties in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, focus has shifted to the role of the United States. There is a good deal of confusion concerning what the United States can and cannot do. The evolving role of the United States can be examined through a number of specific and

The Oslo accord is designed to divide the Israeli-Palestinian peace process into as many sub-phases as possible. Based on former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's concept of incrementalism, this cautious approach includes a review of the other side's compliance with past obligations before moving to the next sub-phase. Consequently, Israeli Prime

Redeployments and Final Status: In recent weeks, the main focus of the peace process has been on the question of "further redeployments" of Israeli troops in the West Bank, as called for under the Oslo Accords. However, the redeployments—or "strokes," as they are known in Hebrew—are in reality a side

With the world focused on the UN-Iraqi standoff, the fourth annual Middle East/North Africa (MENA) Economic Conference concluded quietly in Qatar earlier this week. As Arab world heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia officially boycotted the proceedings, the MENA summit ended on an ambivalent note: Though viewed as a general success