via LobeLog
by Mitchell Plitnick
The fighting in Gaza will continue for some time, as a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt fell apart. Despite the bellicose language Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has employed over the past week, it was Hamas and not Israel that rejected the proposal. This was, to be [...]
by Emile Nakhleh
As the Egyptian revolution against Mubarak celebrates its third anniversary, the military junta under General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is resurrecting dictatorship under the veneer of “constitutional” legitimacy and on the pretense of fighting “terrorism.”
Syria is still ablaze. Yemen has yet to sever the tentacles of the Saleh regime, and [...]
via LobeLog
by Mitchell Plitnick
It’s time to ask some tough questions about US policy regarding Egypt. The most pressing being what that policy is, exactly?
I agreed with the easily assailable decision by the Obama administration to refrain from labelling the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup. It still [...]
via Lobe Log
The economy is clearly the most important problem facing Egypt today. Unemployment and underemployment are vast. Tourism has been shattered by recent events and may take a long time to get back on track. Foreign investments have dropped and have even turned to a net outflow from the country rather than [...]
BBC poll data indicates that 25% percent of Egyptian respondents view Iran favorably, nearly the same number as view U.S. influence as positive (26%). Nearly equal numbers of Turkish respondents approve of the influence of the U.S. (35%) and Iran (36%). Half of those polled, in countries long regarded as the staunchest Middle East allies of both the U.S. and of Israel–50% in Egypt, 49% in Turkey– expressed negativity about U.S. influence, with only 32% of Egyptians and 45% of Turks worried about Iran.
As the Obama administration backs a transitional government in Egypt led by vice-president and Mubarak loyalist Omar Suleiman, Issandr El Amrani writes that “we are quickly heading towards the formation of another strongman regime that cannot be trusted to deliver on the changes needed in the political environment.” This verdict appears to be [...]
While Hosni Mubarak’s thirty years in power appears to be coming to an end, another, quieter change appears to be overcoming U.S. mainstream media. Outlets such as CNN and MSNBC have been asking pointed questions about the U.S.’s tangled Middle East policy.
On January 28th, MSNBC’s Richard Engel and Rachel Maddow had a surprisingly frank [...]
Everyone’s watching Egypt. Everyone. But Daniel Pipes sees right through it, to where Iran is lurking in the background.
It’s right there in the opinion section of the Washington Times, where even Frank Gaffney is zoomed in on the Muslim Brotherhood and has the decency not to mention Iran. (Gaffney’s piece is [...]
Commentary editorial director and Weekly Standard co-founder John Podhoretz has an op-ed in today’s New York Post. Podhoretz, not wasting an opportunity to float a “linkage”-denying argument, says that the pro-democracy protests in Egypt show that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just a sideshow compared to the real issues facing Arabs.
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Neoconservative Pundits: Arabs are obsessed with Israel; Arabs don't care about Israel
Iran hawks and neoconservatives have had a tendency to pick one of two arguments on the issue of whether Israel plays a central role in Middle East politics.
The first argument states that Israel is a central character in Arab nationalism and that irrational hatred of Israel and Jews has a prominent place in any [...]