December 01, 2008

Obama's foreign affairs team and Arab-Israel diplomacy

His foreign affairs team comes, now, as no surprise. But what was welcome in his speech in Chicago today was the prominent mention he made of the need to find...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:40 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

November 10, 2008

Let's see the audacity in Obama's Mideast policy, too!

I loved Paul Krugman's column in the NYT today. He was arguing that Barack Obama could learn a lot from studying the record of the "New Deal" policies enacted by...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:32 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

May 21, 2008

Middle East: US losing 'Control'?

Two fascinating-- and hopeful-- items of Middle East news this morning. First, Syria, Israel, and Turkey have all confirmed that senior officials of Israel and Syria have been holding "proximity...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:13 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

May 10, 2008

Combustive Mideast mix: Political crisis, meet economic crisis

I want to underline something very significant about the multiple crises now simmering in the Contested (once 'Fertile') Crescent that stretches from Egypt through Israel/Palestine, to a lesser extent Syria,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:02 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

March 08, 2008

M.E. peace mission for Annan, Carter, & Robinson

The group of visionary retired world leaders called The Elders has announced that three of their number-- Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, and former Irish President Mary Robinson-- will be undertaking...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:11 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

December 10, 2007

Annals of imperial contraction: Aden, 1967

I'm a few days late, but November 30 was the 40th anniversary of the final withdrawal of British forces and power from Aden, now part of a unified Yemeni Arab...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:23 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

September 25, 2007

Ramazani: "Bridging the Divides"

** Updates posted below ** As regular justworldnews readers will recognize, Helena and I have presented and commented on numerous essays here by R.K. - "Ruhi" - Ramazani. Here's one...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 07:59 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

August 21, 2007

Why Arms Sales to the Persian Gulf will Backfire

Recent Bush Administration plans to sell $20 billion in arms to the Gulf Arab states (while giving $30 billion plus to the Israelis) are being defended primarily within the logic...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 01:25 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

March 29, 2007

Riyadh: current center of Middle East diplomacy

We should note, first, who is at the current Arab summit meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Not merely the heads of state of just about all the Arab countries...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:57 AM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

February 12, 2007

Shadid and others on the "widening" Sunni-Shiite rift

I see my younger colleague Anthony Shadid has been in Cairo, and he has a Cairo-datelined piece in today's WaPo to which his editors gave this scaremongering headline: "Across Arab...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:44 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 08, 2007

Sunni Arab view of US-Iran Tensions

If jwn readers and our generous host will pardon me, I (Scott) wish to draw early attention to Helena Cobban's important column in today's Christian Science Monitor. Writing from Cairo,...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 12:01 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 04, 2007

Whither the Shiite-Sunni "split"

So here I am in Cairo. One of the big issues I plan to look here at is this much-reported-on polarization of attitudes between the Shiites and Sunnis of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:39 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

January 27, 2007

The Bushites' latest weapon: SADDAM

What to call the new, Middle East-wide coalition that the Bushites are seeking to build in the Middle East (as described by David Ignatius in this fairly fawning account of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:23 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

August 15, 2006

After the war, the battle for the broader peace

This latest Israeli war on Hizbullah and the whole of Lebanon may not be over. But whether it is or not, it's already time to discuss important questions about the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:36 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

Ann Kerr and American values

My dear friend Ann Kerr, with whom Bill and I spent the past weekend in California, had a heart-rending op-ed in yesterday Christian Science Monitor that's appropriately titled The murder...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:55 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

July 29, 2006

Arab-Israeli peacemaking: comprehensive or not?

The International Crisis Group came out Tuesday with a report on the Israel-Lebanon and Israel-Palestine crises. It concluded with four recommendations, of which the first one is: First, the Gaza...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:31 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

January 05, 2006

Bring in the Security Council?

Suddenly, the Middle East is facing three very grave crises, each of which threatens international peace and security and all of which have the potential to reverberate very seriously against...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:50 PM | Fulltext link (31 comments)

November 11, 2005

Jordan and regional geopolitics

Jordan, location of Wednesday's very lethal bombings at three hotels, is in many ways a highly improbable country. It was created in the post-WW-1 carve-up of that part of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:40 AM | Fulltext link (20 comments)

November 10, 2005

Jordan (and again, Iraq)

Do I need to write anything here to note how grotesque the thinking was of the people who organized and undertook suicide bombings against the three hotels in Jordan yesterday....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:48 PM | Fulltext link (35 comments)

April 08, 2005

Israeli and Syrian prezes making nice

So there was Israel's figurehead president, Moshe Katsav, at the Pope's funeral in Rome, reaching out to shake hands not only with Iranian President Muhammad Khatemi but also with Syria's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:14 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

March 11, 2005

Arab attitudes on US, UK, France, terrorism

The Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan has recently come out with an intriguing report on the attitudes of people in five key Arab societies (Egypt, Jordan,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:09 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 07, 2005

Annals of "immmediate" withdrawals

The Bushies and the Israelis have been stepping up their calls for an "immediate" Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. They cite UN Security Council resolution 1559, passed last September. But remember,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:20 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

March 02, 2005

Radical change in Arab world

Nearly all Arab-world political systems have become completely ossified over recent decades. The last time there was a major, region-wide series of shifts was around 1970. That was the year,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:22 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

October 14, 2004

Middle Eastern powder keg

The post I put up here yesterday was not optimally organized. That's one problem of having to work over a very slow internet connection... Anyway, the latter half of it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:32 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)