Middle East Policy articles from March 2002

Middle East Policy archives from March 2002

Editor's Note.(Editorial)
March 1, 2002... Just under the wire for this journal's winter deadline, a startling new foreign-policy strategy was unveiled by President Bush in his State of the Union address. No one seemed more startled than his own foreign policy team. The very next day...

The United States and Saudi Arabia: American interests and challenges to the Kingdom in 2002. (Symposium: the United States and Saudi Arabia).(Transcript)(Statistical Data Included)(Panel Discussion)
March 1, 2002... CHAS. W. FREEMAN, JR., president, Middle East Policy Council We are here today to talk about Saudi Arabia and its relationship with the United States. This is, in many ways, an odd and ironic topic to be discussing because U.S. interests...

Address to the Gulf Cooperation Council. (Prince Abdullah: address to the GCC).(Transcript)
March 1, 2002... In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful: All thanks be to God, who says in His Holy Quran, "God intends for you ease and not difficulty." Peace and prayer be upon our Prophet Muhammad and all his followers. Your Majesties and...

Trying to Define Terrorism. (Keeley: trying to define terrorism).(Transcript)
March 1, 2002... My assigned topic is "Trying to Define Terrorism." It might be regarded as unwholesome and perhaps indeed unpatriotic to take up such a subject while we are engaged in a "war against terrorism," but as it appears that that war is likely to be...

Sadat lecture: a global partnership in the quest for peace. (Mandela: Sadat lecture on peace).(Transcript)
March 1, 2002... It is a great honour to have been invited to deliver this lecture in the name of Anwar al-Sadat, a great African leader and man who in his life faced and dealt with the complex challenges of making peace, whether within a single nation or...

The arrogance of occupation. (Grinberg: the arrogance of occupation).
March 1, 2002... Immediately after September 11, the Israeli government began a diplomatic campaign aimed at convincing the international community, and in particular the U.S. administration, that Israel is subject to the same types of terror attacks as the...

The Palestinian Authority: friend or foe of private investors? (Kanaan: the Palestinian Authority and private investors).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Policy makers in the United States are still reluctant to openly acknowledge the full extent of the damage suffered by the Palestinian economy since the onset of the border closures and internal blockade in September 2000. During 2001, per...

Declaration of conscience on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by South Africans of Jewish Descent. (South African Jews' Declaration of Conscience).
March 1, 2002... We the undersigned are compelled to express ourselves on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a matter of conscience and concern for the safety and well-being of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples and for world peace. 1. THE FUNDAMENTAL...

Algeria and U.S. interests: containing radical Islamism and promoting democracy. (Zoubir: Algeria and U.S. interests).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, will undoubtedly change international relations in significant ways. Those events will induce the United States to alter its policies toward a number of regimes. Indeed, soon...

Weak institutions and democracy: the case of the Yemeni parliament, 1993-97. (Sharif: the case of the Yemeni parliament).
March 1, 2002... The first elected Yemeni parliament (1993-1997) is, in many respects, an archetype of political liberalization from above. To the extent that this institution managed to survive, it had to become subservient to the regime that allowed it to...

Sudan and the United States: is a decade of tension winding down? (Ronen: Sudan and the United States).
March 1, 2002... Following over a decade of consistently hostile relations with Sudan, the United States indicated a willingness to consider Sudan's bid to rehabilitate its international stature in the fall of 2001. This shift was reflected in the U.S....

Political Islam in Somalia. (Menkhaus: political Islam in Somalia).
March 1, 2002... In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC, Islamic politics and movements around the world are coming under greater scrutiny than ever. The Horn of Africa is of particular importance on this score as a...

Principles of Islamic banking: debt versus equity financing. (Akacem: principles of Islamic banking).
March 1, 2002... It is difficult to pinpoint the start of Islamic banking, but the consensus is that it took place in Egypt in the 1960s. (2) The Egyptian experiment did not last very long, and it was not until the mid 1970s before Islamic banking started to...

The Impact of NGOs on state and non-state relations in the Middle East. (Gubser: impact of NGOs in the Middle East).(non-governmental organizations)
March 1, 2002... The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on international relations in the Middle East. It is organized in the following manner: First, the concepts of civil society and NGOs are defined and...

Central Asian Security: the New International Context.
March 1, 2002... by Roy Allison and Lena Jonson, eds. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2001. 279 pages, with index. $22.95, paperback "Weak states make bad neighbors,..." might serve as the topic sentence for this collection of perspectives on...

America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.
March 1, 2002... by Lawrence Davidson. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. 222 pages, notes to 252, bibliography to 257, index to 264. $55.00, hardcover. Midway through Lawrence Davidson's meticulous history of the first three decades of U.S....

Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine 1918-1948.
March 1, 2002... by A. J. Sherman. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 2001. 264 pages. $17.95, paperback. A. J. Sherman, an associate fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, tells us about the lives and reflections of the British civil servants, military...

The Transformation of Palestinian Politics -- From Revolution to State-Building.
March 1, 2002... by Barry Rubin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. 277 pages with notes, glossary and bibliography. $31.50, paperback. Barry Rubin's study of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian politics between 1993 and 1999 is a...

No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam.
March 1, 2002... by Geneive Abdo. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 223 pages. $25.00, hardcover. This is a study of the modern history of Islamic movements in Egypt. The author is an American journalist who lived in Egypt from the mid to...

The Body and the Blood: The Holy Land's Christians and the Turn of a New Millennium.
March 1, 2002... by Charles M. Sennott. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. 479 pages. $30.00, hardcover. Years ago while I was researching a book on the role of the Vatican in the Middle East,l the late Lebanese scholar and jurist Edmond Rabbath told me that...