Policy Analysis

Keynote addresses by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. With Michael Mandelbaum, Martin Indyk, Steven Spiegel, Mordechai Gur, James Roche, Geoffrey Kemp, and Stuart Eizenstat.

Under the leadership of President Hafez al-Assad, Syria has emerged as the leading Arab military power. With Egypt at peace with Israel and Iraq weakened and isolated, Syria remains the only Arab state which currently poses a military threat to Israel. Future decisions concerning war or peace in the region

The period in which we live today is unique, and we cannot assume that the conditions and forces that have created this moment in history will continue to be the same in the coming years. From the point of view of Israel, we live in a unique period created by

Arabs and Israelis alike recognize the critical importance of water to the peace process and the future of regional economic cooperation. It is estimated that between 100 and 150 million cubic meters of the Yarmuk River waters flow to the Jordan River and are lost, unused in the Dead Sea

Of the many strategic interests that United States and its allies have in the Middle East, surely one of the most crucial is securing energy supplies from the region. The Gulf War of 1991 demonstrated the importance of Middle East oil in the international community’s strategic calculus. Since the oil

We are approaching an anniversary that I'm sure is etched in your minds, the thirtieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we faced hostile, nuclear- tipped missiles less than 100 miles from our shores. As President Kennedy prepared to respond to this threat, he sent envoys to each of

Now that we in Kazakhstan have won our independence we clearly see how far we are lagging behind the rest of the world. Our state policy is aimed at opening doors to the world. We seek the cooperation of the U.S. and the rest of the industrialized world, not only

Keynote addresses by Gordon Oehler and Gary Kasimov. With Zalmay Khalilzad, Bulent Aliriza, Peter Rodman, Shimon Shamir, and others.

Hamas--the Islamic Resistance Movement--arose during the intifada as the organization of Palestinian Muslim fundamentalists of the West Bank and Gaza. Because it views the Arab-Israeli conflict as a religious struggle between Islam and Judaism that can only be resolved by the destruction of the State of Israel, it opposes the

For nearly four decades, King Hussein of Jordan has managed to survive and consolidate his rule in the face of difficult internal and external circumstances. Indeed, Hussein’s will to survive has been and will remain the central organizing principle of his statecraft. In this Policy Paper, Uriel Dann, highlights the

The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the end of the Cold War have come almost too swiftly to be registered. As Czechoslovakia's dissident-turned-President Vaclav Havel has said, one no longer has even the time to be astonished. No less striking than the demise of Soviet power has been the

Executive Summary Since the formation of Iraq in 1920, the Sunni minority has held power and played the Shi'a and Kurdish minorities against each other. Aside from their shared enmity towards the Baghdad government, the Shi'a and the Kurds have nothing in common. The Iraqi opposition is structurally weak and

Executive Summary Traditionally, Arab states have been unable and/or unwilling to make peace with Israel for a variety of internal and external reasons -- domestic instability and external weakness in the case of Jordan, ideological and strategic militancy in the case of Syria, domestic opinion and regional weakness in the

Executive Summary Israel enters a new peace process at a time of considerable short-term safety and long-term uncertainty. The social and demographic consequences of the Gulf War have not fully expressed themselves on the politics of the region, while the military role of Iraq in the future is hard to

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Keynote addresses by Richard Haass, Les Aspin, and Dan Meridor. With Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Ze'ev Schiff, Zalman Shoval, Hussein Hammami, and others.

What I hope to offer here is a Congressional perspective on the Persian Gulf War, the end of the Cold War, and what these developments may mean for the Middle East peace process. The Gulf War in Retrospect First, to the Persian Gulf War: there were many articles and retrospectives

The Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad has in the past year seemed to change direction, first with tentative moves toward liberalization, then by siding with the American-led coalition that fought against Saddam Hussein and, perhaps most dramatically, by acceding to America’s wish to attend a peace conference with Israel. There

While economic issues have not been a driving force in the Arab-Israeli peace process in the past, they are sure to play a critically important role in the historic negotiations looming ahead. Across the wide Sinai expanse, Egypt and Israel have little to show in the way of economic ties