Middle East Policy articles from September 2007

Middle East Policy archives from September 2007

Editor's note.
September 22, 2007... Washington policy circles were abuzz in August over a New York Times op-ed by the Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack entitled "A War We Just Might Win." They were referring to the one in Iraq, having just returned from...

The future of the Middle East: strategic implications for the United States.(Symposium: The Future of the Middle East)
September 22, 2007... The following is an edited transcript of the forty-ninth in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council The meeting was held on June 26, 2007, in Room 1334 of the Longworth Building with Chas. W. Freeman,...

Israeli-Palestinian peace: inching toward and looking beyond negotiations.(Essay)
September 22, 2007... This article starts with the proposition that the political and military developments of 2006 have sharpened the dilemma that has marked the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since the breakdown of negotiations at the beginning of 2001. The...

Speech at a demonstration in Tel Aviv commemorating 40 years of occupation.
September 22, 2007... Good evening. It is a great honour for me to stand on this stage beside my friend and brother Bassam Aramin, a man of the Palestinian peace camp, one of the founders of the Combatants for Peace movement of which two of my sons, Alik and Guy,...

Speech to the South African parliament on the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation, June 6, 2007.
September 22, 2007... Madam Speaker, Honorable members, this speech is dedicated to the memory of David Rabkin, South African freedom fighter, who died in Angola. Forty years ago this week, Israel's military unleashed lightning attacks against Egypt, Jordan and...

Saudi Arabia and the Arab-Israeli peace process.
September 22, 2007... In late 2006, Jordan's King Abdullah warned against three potential civil wars that are likely to further destabilize and polarize the Middle East. He was referring to the sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, the political...

Islamic social justice, Iranian style.(Essay)
September 22, 2007... The ideal of social justice was a prime goal of Iran's 1979 revolution. The monarchy was mercilessly chastised by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for having neglected the plight of the poor and the disenfranchised, the mostazafan. A new...

Iran and Israel: the avoidable war.
September 22, 2007... The summer war between Israel and Lebanon was not limited to the Israeli Defense Forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah. The 34-day war, whose immediate spark was a border attack by Hezbollah that left several Israeli soldiers dead and several taken...

Muslim exceptionalism? Measuring the "democracy gap".
September 22, 2007... While delivering the keynote adress at a National Endowment for Democracy event in 2005, President George W. Bush singled out Islamic extremism as the number-one foreign-policy challenge facing the United States. A primary reason for this...

Engaging "primitive democracy": mideast roots of collective governance.(Essay)
September 22, 2007... The issue of Middle Eastern democracy in the late twentieth/ early twenty-first century has been controversial from at least as far back as Samuel Huntington's 1984 essay "Will More Countries Become Democratic?" In it, he stated that "among...

Crisis in Turkey: the conflict of political languages.(Essay)
September 22, 2007... Turkish democracy continues to fluctuate between contending poles. This includes conflict between republicanism and democracy, majoritarian and consensual democracy, French and American versions of secularism, and civic and ethnic nationalism....

Qatar's natural gas: the foreign-policy driver.(Essay)
September 22, 2007... Qatar finds itself in a very peculiar position, nestled sometimes uncomfortably between oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia to the south and a bellicose Iran and chaotic Iraq across the Persian/Arabian Gulf. (1) For most of its existence as an...

The United States Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... The United States Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual, with forewords by General David H. Petraeus, Lt. General James F. Amos and Lt. Colonel John A. Nagl, with a new introduction by Sarah Sewall. University of Chicago Press, 2007. 419...

Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower, by John Brady Kiesling. Potomac Books, 2007. 320 pages. $19.95 In February 2003, John Brady Kiesling, a mid-level Foreign Service officer stationed in Greece as head of the political...

Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, by Trita Parsi. Yale University Press, 2007. $28.00, hardcover. By the time this review is published, Israel may have ordered its F15 and F16 fighter-bombers...

Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism, by Danny Postel. Prickly Paradigm Press, 2006. 130 pages. $10.00. I first met Mohsen Sazegara in his office at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP),...

Distant Relations: Iran & Lebanon in the Last 500 years.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Distant Relations: Iran & Lebanon in the Last 500 years, H.E. Chehabi, ed. Center for Lebanese Studies, Beirut. I.B. Tauris & Co., 2006. $28.95, hardcover. The connections between Iran and Lebanon have received much attention in recent...

From Oslo to Jerusalem: The Palestinian Story of the Secret Negotiations.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... From Oslo to Jerusalem: The Palestinian Story of the Secret Negotiations, by Ahmed Qurei ('Abu Ala'). I. B. Tauris & Co., 2006. 319 pages. $45.00, hardcover. No Palestinian official is more qualified to tell the inside story of the secret...

A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... A Framework for a Palestinian National Security Doctrine, by Hussein Agha and Ahmad S Khalidi. Chatham House, 2006. 139 pages. $18.95. The task of addressing the components of a Palestinian national-security doctrine has always been...

The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... The Emergence of a New Turkey: Democracy and the AK Parti, edited by M. Hakan Yavuz, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2006). 354 pages. $25.00. The experience of Turkey's Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development...

Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation, by Abdullah Ocalan. Translated by Klaus Happel. Pluto Press, 2007. 320 pages, with notes, bibliography, and index. $40.00, hardcover. For almost a quarter century, Abdullah (Apo) Ocalan led the...

The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, by Andrew G. Bostom. Foreword by Ibn Warraq. Prometheus Books, 2005.759 pages, including index. $ 28.00, hardcover. Professor of medicine Andrew G. Bostom has compiled in...

Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East.(Book review)
September 22, 2007... Oil Titans: National Oil Companies in the Middle East. by Valerie Marcel and John V. Mitchell. Brookings Institution Press, 2006. 322 pages. $22.95, paperback; $52.95, hardcover. Valerie Marcel's timely book Oil Titans brings insight into...