via Lobe Log
When I was living in Cairo, the transition to winter was sometimes smooth. The beastly oven of summer changed slowly into a bearable fall of cool-warm. The fall moved from the cool-warm to a few weeks of cold, or at least what was cold to Egypt. These were smooth changes. It [...]
via Lobe Log
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, provides seven takeaways from the Gaza ceasefire in the Daily Beast. From Number 5, “Denying Palestinian political realities just got (much, much) harder”:
Let’s keep this short. Hamas-run Gaza in the midst of conflict with Israel has just played host to the [...]
via Lobe Log
The Gaza Strip, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt and the State of Israel, is 25 miles long. At its narrowest point it is less than 4 miles wide, and at its maximum width, it’s 7.5 miles wide — a total area of 141 square miles. With a population of 1.7 million [...]
By Nadia Hijab
via al Shabaka
Whenever Middle East tensions rise, observers wonder whether the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt will weather the storm. It is no different this time. Asked at last Friday’s daily briefing if the peace treaty was “in jeopardy”, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, assured correspondents that the [...]
via Lobe Log
Mark Perry — who recently explained that the “chance for calm” has been assassinated by Israel in the past – on the current potential for a ceasefire (via CNN’s transcript):
MARK PERRY, MIDDLE EAST EXPERT: I would have said six hours ago if you had asked me that I [...]
via Lobe Log
What a difference four years can make! Almost a week into Operation Pillar of Defense and the Israelis have yet to make the case for the necessity of continuing the attacks on Gaza in order to prevent Iran’s expansion of its influence in the region. No more President Shimon Peres [...]
via Lobe Log
The Iranian rial has been in free fall for the last few days. Inflation has been ramping up for the last few months as the rial has lost more than 50 percent of its value over the last year. Unemployment is up to maybe 25 percent plus, and quite a [...]
via Lobe Log
In a recent Fox News article, the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin presents an issue that will consume Middle East policy makers for decades: “Is There Really Democracy in the Middle East?” He’s apparently not interested, however, in serious analysis of that question. Instead Rubin offers a partisan polemic [...]
via Lobe Log
News and views relevant to US Foreign policy for Sept. 14
“Moments of Truth in Libya and Egypt”: Marc Lynch, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, discusses the significance of the protests in Egypt and Libya for US relations. Although the events in Libya – [...]
The end of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran has been an occasion for pundits on all sides to engage in post-game spin. In Iran, the spin began right in the middle of the summit when Iranian television mistranslated — read lied about — Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s words to present his position on [...]
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