Archive for the ‘Egypt’ Category

Space in the Middle East

Last time, I noted with great sympathy that most people have become totally confused about the events taking place in the Middle East. Since then, that confusion has risen to unprecedented levels…not least because US jets bombed the Iraqi city of Tikrit in order to aid the Iranian-supported Shiite militias doing battle there while, at […]

The New Diplomacy in the New Middle East

I have long preached that major economic, social, political and military events do not just happen. They are invariably the product of processes that have been underway for a very long time.   That presumption is certainly true for all the events we have been witnessing in the Middle East during the past few years. […]

The Israeli-Hamas Cease-Fire Negotiations: Real-Time Middle Eastern Politicking that American can Learn From

    The political and diplomatic negotiations leading up to the announcement of each Israeli-Hamas cease-fire were among the most fascinating and revealing political exercises in recent memory.   However, to paraphrase a man much wiser than me, never in the course of human endeavour has so much nonsense, with so few insights, been said […]

The Israeli-Hamas War–An Interim Assessment

  Israel is now at a crossroads in its war with Hamas. If there is no cease-fire by the time that the IDF finishes demolishing the tunnels that it has found leading into Israel (expected to take about five more days unless new tunnels are found), the government will have to take one of three […]

The Impact of the “Arab Spring” on Israel

I think that it is time for those of us who have been tracking events in this region for the past three years to get out of the news sluice for a moment and assess what we have learned, if anything.   As I was making up my own checklist, one thing that amazed me […]

Arab Spring? An Assessment Three Years later

The revolts in the Arab states have now been underway for three years and more. The first, in Tunisia, began on December 18, 2010, the one in Egypt on January 25, 2011, and the one in Syria on March 15, 2011. One would have thought that after all that has happened in the interim, the […]

The Clueless Americans in the Revoutionary Middle East

I never thought that the day would come when I would call the wealthiest country in the world, and the country with the most powerful army in the world, “pitiful.” I also never thought that I would call the citizens of that country, the nation state with the best university system in the world, “clueless” […]

Tribalism: The Basis for Middle Eastern Politics

I long ago came to the belief that American and European diplomats, think tank denizens, NGO activists, and sundry mediators and political activists are clueless about the Middle East and what makes people tick here. That belief has only been strengthened since the beginning of the so-called “Arab Spring”—and the insistence by almost every American […]

Middle East Water Crisis–Lecture at Waterloo University

  There is no more precious a commodity in the Middle East than water. Historically, when the Saudi peninsula had plenty of water, about 40,000 years ago, it acted as the land bridge to Europe during the second great exodus of early man from Africa. The fertile river valleys further north, in what is today […]