All Policy Analysis by Ehud Yaari

On October 16, 2006, Ehud Yaari addressed The Washington Institute’s Special Policy Forum. Mr. Yaari is an Israel-based Lafer international fellow with the Institute and an associate editor of the Jerusalem Report. The following is a contemporaneous article in which Mr. Yaari summarized the content of his remarks. It originally

President Bashar al-Adad of Syria is skittishly stamping his foot like a warhorse, restrained from galloping forward only by a tight grip on the reins. He is trying to tell us that he can hardly hold back from opening a front on the Golan Heights, after more than 30 years

On May 20, 2005, Hassan Abu Libdeh, David Makovsky, Terje Roed-Larsen, and Ehud Yaari addressed The Washington Institute's Soref Symposium. Hassan Abu Libdeh is the Palestinian Authority (PA) minister of labor and social affairs. Previously, he served as secretary of the PA cabinet and chief of staff to Prime Minister

Yasser Arafat was a leader who actively engaged his people in military conflict with Israel. His death presents the Palestinians with an opportunity to choose a leader who will pull them back from that aspect of the struggle. What Abu Mazen Must Do to Win Upon Arafat's death, former prime

Arafat does not have a designated successor, and none of the contenders for his mantle will be able to take over all of his functions and responsibilities. The Palestinian Authority (PA) revolves around Arafat and his leadership style; thus, in the immediate wake of his death, the PA will malfunction

The current Palestinian-Israeli truce—certified by the meeting between Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Yasir Arafat at Rafah Airport on November 26—has a greater chance of taking hold than any of the five previous ceasefire agreements announced since the outbreak of the intifada exactly one year

A New Intifada? The events of the past five weeks are not a repeat of the Palestinian Intifada of 1987–1990, a spontaneous uprising that caught both Chairman Yasir Arafat and Israel equally by surprise. Rather, the current uprising is a confrontation imposed by Arafat on the Palestinian street. Three major

For more than a year, Palestinian leaders have advanced the original partition resolution -- United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947 -- as the cornerstone of their diplomatic effort to gain international support for independent statehood. Whereas this was originally a tactic adopted to confront the policies of

Since the beginning of the Oslo process, Israel and the United States have consistently underestimated Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Yasser Arafat. Arafat is a historic figure who deserves respect. In his many years as leader of the Palestinians he has learned to employ a wide range of personas and emotions

The still-imminent agreement on Israeli redeployment in Hebron, though just technically a protocol detailing the implementation of one article of the Oslo II accord, has begun to assume the magnitude of "Oslo III." Not only does it represent the first-ever agreement between a Likud-led government and the Palestinians, but by

The Cairo agreement initialed yesterday by Chairman Arafat and Foreign Minister Peres is an important step toward the implementation of the Oslo accords, though hard negotiations remain ahead before any Israeli troop withdrawal can begin. This agreement, however, will not put to rest the wonderment, impatience, anger, and especially exasperation

With the UN Security Council debating a resolution on the Palestinian issue and Saddam Hussein demanding that the Gulf crisis be linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Middle East peace process is again floating to the top of the international community's agenda. Despite the rhetoric in New York and Baghdad

Executive Summary Israel's proposal for Palestinian elections stems from a realization that the status quo is not tenable and a fear that the intifada could escalate to a more violent pattern of confrontation. Despite continued controversy over its details, the elections proposal indicates several new elements in Israel's position: recognition