Policy Analysis

Earlier this week, Israel's Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna announced that he would not look to resume a broad coalition government with the Likud Party following the country's upcoming January 28 election, a crucial decision that dropped Labor from 24 to 20 seats (according to today's Yediot Aharonot poll) and

This week, hundreds of U.S. soldiers will participate in Juniper Cobra, a joint exercise with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to test the interoperability of U.S. Patriot and Israeli Arrow antiballistic missile systems. Such bilateral cooperation, coupled with reports that the Bush administration is considering providing Israel an additional $4

DENNIS ROSS Dilemmas for U.S. Middle East policy will arise in the immediate post-Saddam aftermath. Foremost will be America's preoccupation with stabilizing Iraq and transforming its new government into a democracy. Vague at present is whether U.S.-led forces will focus on existing institutions (e.g., the Iraqi military) or build new

Operation Smoke Screen In 1996, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard at a cigarette wholesaler in North Carolina noticed young men entering the building with grocery bags full of cash. The men would queue up in the cashier's line with 299 cartons of cigarettes each, while one

Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda affiliate active in Iraqi Kurdistan since September 2001, is a prototype of America's enemies in the "war on terror." The group serves as a testament to the global spread of al-Qaeda affiliates, achieved through exploitation of weak central authorities and a utilitarian willingness to work with

Remarks made on the CNN program Insight. JONATHAN MANN, CNN ANCHOR: Talking Turkey. Washington tries to get a new and nervous government to take a big role against Iraq. What's a war going to be worth? Hello and welcome. Prominent Turks and Americans have been traveling this week in essentially

The gap between London and Washington on foreign policy is widening. Crevasses have often opened or closed in the past -- or have had to be perilously bridged. But the issue of the post-Saddam Hussein Middle East -- or even achieving this nirvana -- now looks dangerously like causing a

The slide in the polls of Ariel Sharon's Likud Party over the last six weeks has been rather dramatic, transforming the character of the campaign from an expected Sharon landslide into a closer contest. In Thursday's Yediot Ahronot-Dahaf poll, Likud dropped from 40 to 28 seats in the 120-member Knesset

On December 11, 2002, the Canadian government banned Hizballah, labeling it a terrorist organization. Strangely, some in Canada are having second thoughts about this measure, likely under the assumption that Hizballah is not a terrorist group but a social and political organization engaged in armed struggle against Israel. Yet, evidence

The information in this PolicyWatch is partially drawn from a larger article entitled "The Political Economy of Middle East Terrorism," Middle East Review of International Affairs 6, no. 4 (December 2002). Read the full text of that article. At least five terrorist suspects who entered the United States illegally from

Excerpted from Israel, the Middle East and Islam: Weighing the Risks and Prospects, ed. Oded Eran and Amnon Cohen (Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003). On November 9, 2001, faced with a journalist's question about Iran's refusal to cooperate with the investigation into a

In the months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it became increasingly clear that Saudi Arabia was no longer fulfilling its U.S.-backed leadership role in the Persian Gulf. Troubled by apparently widespread domestic sympathy for Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist network, the Saudi royal family began

On December 20, 2002, the Quartet convened at the White House to discuss the Middle East when President George W. Bush met with UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov, and three ministerial representatives of the European Union (Stig Moeller, Javier Solana, and Chris Patten). The purpose of

The temporary seizure by the Spanish navy last week of a ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen was a reminder of the extent of missile proliferation in the Middle East. Similarly, Yemen's insistence on receiving the missiles, despite U.S. pressure, is a reminder of how much priority

Satellite photos published last week showed two sites in Iran that might house a civilian energy program and/or a nuclear weapons program. To determine exactly what purpose these sites serve would require an on-site inspection. Yet, inspections performed by international regulatory agencies are bound by certain limitations. What are the

UN Security Council Resolution 1441 required Iraq to submit a full and complete declaration of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and associated delivery systems by December 8. Given the stakes, and the fact that Iraq's previous declarations have been incomplete and misleading, the international community remains concerned, and

In my 20 years involved in Middle East diplomacy, there have been many times when the effort toward peace appeared futile to the parties involved. But none of those times had the ring of hopelessness that I see in the region today. It is clear that Israelis, after two years

Parallel to the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel is a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah. Years of tensions have culminated in Gaza street clashes between the two organizations in recent weeks. An Egyptian-sponsored summit designed to achieve rapprochement between the two groups sputtered in Cairo last month, but talks

U.S. policy on promoting democracy in Muslim-majority countries took two steps forward and one step back last week with Secretary of State Colin Powell's major address unveiling the new Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). On the positive side was the simple fact that democratization merited such cabinet-level focus, along with

MARTIN KRAMER Over the past twenty years, U.S. academic "experts" on the Middle East have failed to explain or anticipate change in the region they purport to study. This debacle is the result of their lack of intellectual distance, as well as the field's subversion by ideologically driven or faddish