One of the most peculiar aspects of the Kerry mediation mission was the behavior of the Europeans. The head of the EU’s foreign policy team, Catherine Ashton would pop up on television every once in a while, admonish Israel, and then disappear again. Her appearances at conferences and before the television cameras appeared to be […]
In recent months, I have spent a great deal of time and effort tracking the latest attempt by the Americans to mediate a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In my discussion about the failure of that effort last month I was highly critical about how the Americans had gone about the job of mediating the […]
I now feel as though I am in much the same position that I was in three years ago. At that time, as a result of the revolts taking place in the Arab countries, the newspapers and news programmes were awash with breathlessly-written stories about breaking events. The same situation seems to be underway at […]
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 […]
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 […]
I can’t recall a single set of diplomatic negotiations that has been accompanied by as much spin as the recent Geneva talks on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. What is even worse is that the spin continued throughout the post-mortems. And so, rather than being used to clarify issues, the period after the interim […]
Last month I spoke about the growing gap in perceptions that has developed between Israeli and Diaspora Jews. Among other things, I attributed that development to the fact that because they have undergone different experiences, their political systems and social environments have had to change, and to change in different ways. Therefore their ways of […]
Last month, I tried to show just how clueless Americans are about the Middle East; and I strongly implied that American officials’ ignorance of the area’s cultures is a strategic danger not just to the United States, but also to the countries in the region. Now, I would like to address a subset […]
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” […]
Much has been said about John Kerry’s peace initiative; and much of that has been very pessimistic. But no matter what comes of his peacemaking attempts, he has already done Israelis a great service. Most Israelis at this moment are at the beach or dreaming of being at the beach. Another big chunk of […]