Friday’s announcement by President Mahmoud Abbas that he will next week present the U.N. Security Council with a formal request for U.N. membership of a sovereign state of Palestine may be better news for Israel and the U.S. than it might appear, even if it confirms the failure of the Obama Administration to stop the …
Middle East
How Did Other Countries “Lose” in Libya?
In TIME’s international editions, Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican Foreign Minister, rates the “winners and losers” of the Libyan imbroglio, praising Western leaders like French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British P.M. David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama for pressing for intervention. Countries that abstained from action …
Why the Obama Administration is Failing in its Efforts to Stop the Palestinians’ U.N. Bid
The Obama Administration is flailing — and failing — in its eleventh-hour efforts to stop a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood next week. It’s as if Washington has woken in a panic after sleeping through its diplomatic alarm clock, and discovering that it has missed history’s bus. The Administration has dispatched delegations of …
Palestinian Official: Bid for U.N. Recognition Will “Salvage the Peace Process”
Slowly and possibly surely, the Palestinian approach to the United Nations endgame is emerging. And it sizes up as a relatively moderate strategy, one that suggests holding back on any attempt to charge Israel in newly available international courts as long as Israel stops expanding its settlements on Palestinian territory.
That, …
American Hikers’ Fate Again Caught in Iran’s Domestic Power Struggle
Once, the two American hikers still being held by Tehran after inadvertently straying into Iranian territory while hiking along the Iran-Iraq border two years ago could be seen as pawns in the strategic confrontation between their own country and the Islamic Republic. A simple misunderstanding that might have been easily resolved …
Even as He Clashes With Israel, Turkey’s Erdogan is Displacing Iran’s Influence
The handwringing in the U.S. over the rock-star reception Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is eliciting on his “Arab Spring” tour of post-dictatorship Egypt, Tunisia and Libya is misguided. Erdogan represents a reality-based, credible and very popular incarnation of the old Bush Administration idea of a moderate Middle …
Israel and Turkey: How a Close Relationship Disintegrated
Many are the challenges facing Israel on the cusp of a new season.
The Palestinians’ approach to the United Nations for statehood looms. The bid, set for Sept. 21, bears down on Jerusalem with the certainty of an autumn chill.
The weekend desecration of the Israeli embassy by a Cairean mob was one of those shocks that is not …
Arab Spring Over, Islamists, Generals and Old Regimes Battle for Power From Tunisia to Syria
There are countless great sources for those following the Middle East’s political clock by the movement of its second- and minute-hands. But for those looking to track the movement of the hour-hand, there are few better options than the New York Review of Books tag-team of Hussein Agha and Rob Malley. The former Palestinian …
Israel’s ‘Diplomatic Tsunami’ Has Arrived, As Ambassadors Are Forced to Leave Turkey and Egypt
As a raucous mob of protestors on Friday stormed past passive Egyptian policemen, breaching the wall around Israel’s Cairo embassy and sacking the unsecured parts of the building, Israel turned for help to the Obama Administration. Looking to the U.S. to shield it from international opprobrium has become a familiar pattern for Israel …
Hamas and Fatah Can’t Even Agree What Time It Is
Not to generalize, but in Gaza it’s said to be possible to estimate the political sympathies of the person approaching on the sidewalk without actually asking. A woman in a snug cloak, hair covered in a scarf of fuscia or some colorful print is likely aligned with Fatah, the secular Palestinian party. While a woman who understands …
Ten Years After 9/11, Is It Now Time to be Afraid of China?
As the commentaries, retrospectives and meditations pile up ten years after 9/11, expect quite a few in their closing paragraphs to look toward the next grand geo-political challenge facing the U.S. A decade of costly adventurism in the Middle East and Afghanistan, many will argue, distracted U.S. policy making from the new realities …
How 9/11 Provoked the U.S. to Hasten its Own Decline
During his first year in office, President George W. Bush was confronted by the key strategic challenge facing the United States in the new century, in an incident that began with the diversion of a U.S. aircraft — by Chinese fighter planes, which forced a U.S. Navy spy plane to land on the island of Hainan after a collision that …
Delayed Justice for Iraqi Civilian Who Died in British Custody
Baha Mousa, a 26-year old hotel worker in Basra, Iraq, died eight years ago following an “appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence” carried out by British soldiers in “a very serious breach of discipline,” a public inquiry has concluded.
In a damning 1,400-page report published this morning, retired judge William …