Politics
A brief history of Western ‘jihadists’
April 2013 – From Guy Fawkes and Lord Byron to Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, Westerners have an ancient tradition of doing ‘jihad’ in foreign lands.
The clash within civilisations
March 2013 – This year marks the 20th anniversary of the clash of civilizations theory, but Samuel P Huntington was wrong.
Reading between the lines of the Middle Eastern media
February 2013- Despite its bottom ranking in the Press Freedom Index, the Middle Eastern media is freer than it appears at first sight.
Israel and Gaza: When attack is the worst form of defence
November 2012 – As the fog of war distort people’s vision and compassion, can Israeli and Palestinian reject the strategy of violence offered by their leaderships?
The Arab world’s missed opportunities
November 2012 – Early Arab rejectionism and division unwittingly helped to build Israel and to lose Palestine, with the Palestinian people paying the heavy price.
News of revolution (part III): Televising the life and death of an Egyptian president
November 2012 – Anwar Sadat was the first Egyptian leader to exploit television’s propaganda power – and even his assassination was unwittingly televised.
Israel’s missed opportunities for peace
October 2012 – Israel has squandered so many opportunities for peace that its very identity as a ‘Jewish state’ is in jeopardy.
News of revolution (part II): Voice of the Arabs or Nasserist mouthpiece?
October 2012 – The Voice of the Arabs steered Egypt from isolationism and towards a pan-Arabist vision in which Nasser was the anointed leader of the Arab world.
The stick of boycott v the carrot of recognition
October 2012 – The targeted boycott of Israel should be complemented with Arab recognition of the Jewish state and grassroots engagement with ordinary Israelis.
September 2012 – There is no conflict between Islam and the West – only clashes of interests between and within them. But there is a very real mash of civilisations.
Aanslag op Amerikaans consulaat in Benghazi valt niet uit de lucht
September 2012 – De aanslag op het consulaat in Benghazi was geen verrassing. De voortekens waren al lang zichtbaar.
August 2012 – Is it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to find common refuge in their shared notions of exile and return?
Israel and Egypt’s other revolution
July 2012 – The creation of Israel sparked a revolution in Egypt, and Nasser, the legendary champion of the Arab cause, once sought peace with the Jewish state.
High time for a fly-in to Syria
May 2012 – Though risky, a civilian fly-in to Syria will send out a clear message that the world cannot stand idly by while ordinary people are slaughtered.
The battle for the soul of the Arab man
May 2012 – The polarised debate over Arab women overlooks the fact that men can be victims of the patriarchy too and their identity is a cultural battlefield.
Can Hizbullah reinvent itself?
February 2012 – As Hizbullah sides with its brutal backers in Damascus, are the Shi’ite movement’s days numbered or can it regain its popularity and credibility?
February 2012 – Despite the ugly war of words between Israelis and Arabs, Israel does also get some good press in the Arab world and has some surprising admirers.
February 2012 – Despite the general Arab decline in the press freedom rankings, the region’s media have, in many ways, actually become freer.
January 2012 – The banning of a Jewish festival this year in Egypt is wrong, both from a secular and religious perspective.
Israel’s Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Netanyahu
December 2011 – Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu are so alike it is hard to tell them apart. The best way to neutralise them is through a nuclear weapons-free Middle East.
Islamist-driven democracy is not a snowball in hell
October 2011 – Islamists are not all Osama bin Laden and secularists are not all Atatürk . They can work together to achieve democracy.
October 2011 – Muammar Gaddafi once lived above the law, but his killers must not be permitted the same impunity to get away with murder. Justice must be done, even for fallen despots.
October 2011 – Gaddafi and his corrupt ‘jamahiriya’ may be gone, but Libyans should not give up on the dream of a direct democracy for the masses.
Should Arabs treat Erdoğan as a hero?
September 2011 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received a hero’s welcome across the Arab world. But should Arabs welcome or be weary of Turkey’s greater engagement in the Middle East?
Are we now ‘friends’ of al-Qaeda in Libya?
September 2011 – Belgium was one of the ‘Friends of Libya’ in Paris. But does the prime minister realise that these Libyan ‘friends’ include a former al-Qaeda fighter?
9/12: Turning over a new leaf in the Middle East
September 2011 – On the 10th anniversary of the day after 9/11, it is high time to trash the ‘clash of civilisations’ theory and the ‘war on terror’ and start a new chapter in the West’s relationship with the new Middle East.
Egypt and Israel: cold peace or cold war?
September 2011 – Relations between Israel and post-revolution Egypt are proving tetchy – but ordinary people hold the keys to peace.
September 2011 – Recognising the good qualities of the other side can be a first step to healing Arab-Israeli wounds.
Confessions of a ‘self-hating Arab’
August 2011 – Only self-hating Arabs and Jews can save the Middle East from itself.
August 2011 – The Arab uprisings are not just about democracy and dignity. But with domestic and global economic crises, how likely are they to deliver on bread and butter issues?
Egypt, Israel and Palestine: towards the promised land of peace?
August 2011 – It is high time for Israelis and Palestinians – with grassroots support from Egyptians – to unlock their latent people’s power and forge a popular peace.
David Miliband: revolution v extremism
July 2011 – Britain’s former foreign minister David Miliband has high hopes for the Arab revolutions.
Arab spring and Turkish autumn?
June 2011 – Is Turkey truly a role model for the Arab Spring or is it actually a secular democracy in its autumn years?
June 2011 – Rather than an almost miraculous blessing, Israel’s six-day victory in 1967 has proven to be a naksa for Israelis and Arabs alike.
How African is the Arab revolution?
April 2011 – Though the ‘Arab’ revolution started in North Africa, most debate has focused on the Arab world, but what about the rest of Africa?
Mobile revolution in the Middle East
March 2011 – “You won’t fool the children of the revolution.” Especially not if they’re Twittering away on their mobile phones.
March 2011 – Muammar Gaddafi and Silvio Berlusconi have something in common: delusions of grandeur that keep them desperately holding on to the reins of power.
February 2011 – The time is ripe to crystallise a creative vision for Egyptian democracy, one that can perhaps be used as a model by other Arab countries.
February 2011 – A democratic Egypt will not go to war with Israel, but for the cold peace to thaw, Israel must ends its occupation.
Diary of Dictator M, aged 82¾: a panicked call for Tunisia
February 2011 – In the first leaked extract from President M’s diaries, he calms an alarmed fellow dictator in Tunisia.
February 2011 – Tunisia’s revolution will spread the scent of its jasmine to oppressed nations all over the region.
The death throes of Arab dictatorships
February 2011 – Will the unfolding popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt lead to the region’s dictators falling one after the other like dominos?
Mubarak: the life and times of a dictator
February 2011 – To grasp the enormity of the change undergoing Egyptian society, it is well worth considering that the majority of Egyptians have never known another president than Hosni Mubarak.
December 2010 – Egypt is certainly the gift of the Nile, but the great river could become east Africa’s curse. What are the chances of a future ‘water war’?
December 2010 – Animal rights activists are calling for global vegetarianism, but the Middle East is not ready to sacrifice its meat-eating lifestyle.
September 2010 – Arabs and Israelis tend to view personal relationships that cross the divide between them with suspicion, perhaps because individual love has the power to undermine collective hate.
August 2010 – Malta’s complex heritage is living proof that cultures mash more than civilisations clash.
I say you want a revolution, Egypt
July 2010 – Activists in Egypt should look to the hippy movement of the 1960s for a successful model in bringing about long-term social change.
July 2010 – A return to an ancestral homeland is a dream that’s long inspired diasporas – often with troubling results.
Love and loathing in the Middle East
June 2010 – By calling Egyptians who marry Israelis traitors, Egypt has betrayed a group of vulnerable people who are guilty of little more than loving across enemy lines.
May 2010 – Jordanian journalists believe they do not enjoy enough freedom – a malaise shared with the rest of the Middle East. But why?
سبيل للخروج من فوضى الشرق الأوسط
يناقش خالد دياب بأن انتشار الأسلحة النووية سوف يستمر طالما استمرّينا في التعامل مع ترسانة إسرائيل النووية
A way out of the Middle East’s critical mess
May 2010 – As Barack Obama seeks to tackle the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it is high time for Israel to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.
Splitting Egypt’s political atom
March 2010 – Can Mohamed ElBaradei’s campaign for the Egyptian presidency save a country close to political meltdown?
March 2010 – The Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel remain controversial, but Arabs and Israelis can draw lessons from Anwar el-Sadat’s quest for peace.
Foreign hegemony or repressive self-rule?
February 2010 – The Arab world may debate the merits of external occupation versus repressive self-rule, but neither are acceptable.
February 2010 – For a new generation of young Egyptian artists, music is not just about love.
January 2010 – Israel is building a new anti-migrant barrier along its Egyptian border – leaving Mubarak’s regime with one problem fewer.
Diagnosing the Middle East’s ills
January 2010 – Author and journalist Brian Whitaker diagnoses the Arab world’s problems.
November 2009 – Reckless journalism is held responsible for the violence and tensions following the Algeria-Egypt World Cup playoffs.
Algeria and Egypt play political football
November 2009 – Preparations for a World Cup showdown are getting heated, but does the animosity between Algeria and Egypt run deeper?
November 2009 – As the singer prepares to visit Egypt, Christian and Muslim fundamentalists agree: Beyoncé is the root of all evil.
Palestinian reconciliation through the ballot box
October 2009 – To break the destructive deadlock between Fatah and Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas should step down as Palestinian president, call immediate elections and organise referenda on the future course of the Palestinian struggle.
October 2009 – The Arab world no longer dismisses environmentalism as a western luxury and is gradually awakening to the massive environmental challenges.
September 2009 – From fashion tips to adult breastfeeding – rulings by some clerics range from the eccentric to the downright bizarre.
EU election monitoring… junket, joke or both?
September 2009 – “The Afghan elections were fair, but not free,” declared European election monitors. Meaningless sound-bite or what?
August 2009 – The EU rose out of the ruins of war. Perhaps, with a little patience, a Middle Eastern union is not such a distant fantasy.
Who’s responsible for the Arab world’s mess?
August 2009 – A UN report has reignited the controversy over who is to blame for the sorry state of the Arab world: Arabs or the West?
July 2009 – Can we look forward to a boom in Arab science or will poverty, bureaucracy and religion be insurmountable obstacles?
What about the Western warlords?
July 2009 – Cherie Blair’s chastisement of the African Union for not co-operating with the International Criminal Court is pretty rich coming from the wife of a man many believe is a war criminal.
July 2009 – Tragic as the deaths of young British soldiers in Afghanistan are, why is the media not mourning Afghan civilian casualties?
July 2009- Wacky conspiracy theories cause damage by drawing attention away from the real plots being hatched by our governments.
July 2009 – Despite its dislike of the Ahmadinejad government, Egypt fears the spread of the Iranian protest contagion to its own borders, but why are Egyptians not showing any symptoms of the ‘Iranian flu’?
Is Obama’s change simply cosmetic?
June 2009 - Obama may gain some trust, but America’s deceptive belief that it is not an empire condemns its leader to repeating old mistakes.
Grassroots change we CAN believe in
June 2009 – One of Barack Obama’s winning campaign slogans was “change we can believe in”. And with his presidency, everything has changed and nothing has changed when it comes to US foreign policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
تغيير على مستوى الجذور نستطيع أن نؤمن به
كان أحد شعارات حملة باراك أوباما الناجحة “تغيير نستطيع أن نؤمن به”. ومع توليه الرئاسة، تغير كل شيء، إلا أن شيئاً لم يتغير بالنسبة لسياسة الولايات المتحدة الخارجية تجاه النزاع الإسرائيلي الفلسطيني
May 2009 – Why does India, despite its size and diversity, seem so much more stable than Pakistan?
The Middle East must look to the future
April 2009 – A secular society confines religion to the spiritual sphere where it belongs, and leaves worldly affairs to human resourcefulness.
April 2009 – An outward appearance of Islamism disguises the increasingly secular reality of some Arab and Muslim societies.
April 2009 -If Arabs want their concerns about other nations’ war crimes to be taken seriously, then they should not be welcoming Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to their countries and summits.
February 2009 – Like an ageing rocker, Muammar el-Gaddafi is on a mission to rid Africa of poverty and conflict. But are his dreams of a United State of African to prove as futile as his earlier visions of Arab unity?
January 2009 – Is there any chance that George W Bush will ever face indictment for his alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity?
December 2008 – An Iraqi journalist expressed his contempt for President Bush in a manner familiar in the Arab world: by throwing his shoes.
November 2008 – If we suspend scepticism and take up Barack Obama’s invitation to dream of change, what Middle East can the audacity of hope help to forge?
September 2008 – There’s more than enough fresh water in the world to sate our thirst. The problem is getting it to where it is desperately needed.
August 2008 – Does Obama’s choice of running mate mean he’s shaping up to be just another establishment candidate for the White House?
August 2008 – Israeli voters should give their next leader a clear mandate to negotiate an equitable peace with Syria.
August 2008 – A return to the negotiating table is encouraging, but Syria will have to make a daring gesture to win Israeli public sympathy.
The human cost of cluster bombs
September 2008 – Cluster bombs continue to hurt people and their livelihoods years after they were dropped.
Disarming the bomb in the basement
August 2008 – Israel’s weapons policy jeopardises the country’s own security and undermines efforts to create a nuclear-free Middle East.
September 2008 – The ICC indictment of Sudan’s leadership merits a balanced appraisal.
