Policy Analysis

Yitzhak Rabin was elected in 1992 as prime minister of Israel based on his pledge that he could deliver an autonomy agreement with the Palestinians and that there would be no major deal with Syria. Nevertheless, between 1993 and 1996, two dramatic opportunities arose for an Israel-Syrian peace agreement; both

The visit to the United States from Wednesday September 23 (the Saudi national day) by Crown Prince Abdullah, the heir apparent of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is part of a rare world tour which has so far taken in Britain and France, and is scheduled to include later China

As U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross continued his efforts this week to bridge gaps preventing an Israeli-Palestinian agreement on "further redeployment" (FRD), Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat was at the Arab League Foreign Minister's meeting in Cairo seeking backing for his plan to establish a Palestinian state next year. His efforts

The peace process has, in practice, meant Israel's acceptance by the Arab world. This process, however, is not irreversible. It is mainly a function of Israel's military, economic, and strategic strength and the Arab recognition of structural weakness. Only as long as current conditions hold, the peace process will continue

Testimony before the House National Security Committee U.S. policy toward Iraq is at a turning point. Decisions made in the coming weeks and months will affect American interests in the Middle East and the fate of the region for years to come. Unfortunately, there is no clear, obvious solutions to

Return of U.S. Mediation: Less than four months after the standoff between the Clinton and Netanyahu administrations over the extent of Israel's further redeployment (FRD) from the West Bank, Special Middle East Coordinator Dennis Ross is back in the Middle East trying to "narrow the differences" between the Israeli and

On September 2, 1998, H.E. Baki Ilkin, Turkish ambassador to the United States, addressed The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. The following are excerpts from his opening remarks and a rapporteur's summary of the subsequent question-and-answer session. Read a full transcript. Transformation of Bilateral Relations "We are no longer only

As Ambassador Dennis Ross begins a diplomatic mission to resurrect the dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, inside the Palestinian Authority, reverberations are still being felt from one of the most important political developments to take place since the PA's founding -- the Authority's first judicial executions. These executions, along with the

It is impossible to determine exactly what Iraq is concealing because Iraq has not accurately reported what it had to begin with. Therefore, it is not possible to produce a precise material balance of initial and current holdings. However, it is possible -- using data derived from Iraqi documents in

Richard Murphy's Aug. 25 op-ed piece in support of the administration's "new diplomatic approach" toward Iraq is a recipe for disaster. Ambassador Murphy asserts that this "new approach . . . may prove more effective" than the policy abandoned by the administration after the last confrontation with Iraq that ended

The August 20 bombing of Osama bin Laden's terrorist bases in Afghanistan and the alleged bin Laden-funded chemical weapons production facility in Khartoum, was a decisive and appropriate U.S. response to the atrocities in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and President Bill Clinton should be commended. Although Washington has, in

The U.S. cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese chemical weapons precursor plant and the Afghanistan terrorist camps raises questions about the future direction of U.S. policy on several fronts: the emphasis on state linkages to terrorism, the means used to counter proliferation, the role of law enforcement and military force

U.S. military attacks on terrorist facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan highlight the continuing threat to U.S. interests from terrorists -- and their state sponsors -- around the globe. Since the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings, various Middle Eastern actors have speculated on the culprits of the attack and their

Saudi terrorist financier Osama bin Laden has posed a significant problem for the United States for some time. The extradition from Pakistan to Kenya this past weekend of Mohammad Saddiq Odeh, a reported Bin Laden associate, heightened speculation Bin Laden was involved in funding and planning the attacks on the

Two Visions of Peacemaking: The fundamental difference between Labor and Likud lies in their willingness to take risks for peace. Likud believes that the first step toward peace is a change in the basic attitude of the Arab people toward the State of Israel, an evolution that will take a

With Yasir Arafat in South Africa and Benjamin Netanyahu poised to take his summer vacation, Israeli spokesman David Bar Illan recently predicted "not much progress [in the peace process] the next couple of weeks." Recent days have, in fact, witnessed significant, though not yet successful, backroom maneuvering inside the fractious

Saddam Husayn's refusal to cooperate with United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) has re-opened a confrontation with the U.N. and the United States that was temporarily resolved through Kofi Annan's diplomatic efforts in February 1998. Over the course of that earlier crisis, U.S. officials made strong statements about the threat posed

Early Turkish elections, recently set for April 18, 1999, hold little prospect for change in a longstanding political impasse, yet they raise potential problems for Turkey's domestic and foreign policies -- not least its approach to Greek Cypriot plans to deploy Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles. Meanwhile, the departure of the

In the aftermath of the August 8, 1998, bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the United States has initiated investigation into who was responsible for the attacks, which wounded nearly 5,000 persons and killed 200, including 12 Americans. These bombings required extensive in-country infrastructure, logistical support and

On July 29, 1998, Amatzia Baram, an associate professor in the Department of Modern History of the Middle East at Haifa University and the recipient of The Washington Institute's 1998 Ira Weiner Fellowship, addressed the Institute's Special Policy Forum to discuss the findings of his new book, Building toward Crisis