US Opinion and Commentary

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Israel Between Obama and Trump

Posted December 29th, 2016 at 3:20 pm (UTC-4)
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Acknowledging that United States policy will likely change on January 20, Secretary of State John Kerry nonetheless delivered an emphatic defense of the Obama administration’s decision to abstain from a vote on a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement policy.

In a speech Wednesday at the State Department, Kerry said the U.S. declined to exercise its veto because it “cannot, in good conscience, do nothing, and say nothing, when we see the hope of peace slipping away,” referring to Israel’s expansion of West Bank settlements and their impact on a “two-state solution.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Kerry’s speech “disappointing” and said “Israel looks forward to working with president-elect (Donald) Trump” to repeal the resolution.

Trump and Netanyahu traded tweets of support ahead of Kerry’s speech, leaving little doubt that a new chapter in U.S. relations with Israel and the Middle East is about to be written.

Some Not-Worse-Case Scenarios for 2017

Posted December 27th, 2016 at 10:14 am (UTC-4)
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By Barbara Slavin At long last, 2016 is almost behind us. For the majority of Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton and for millions beyond our borders, 2017 is filled with apprehension. But in the spirit of a new year, this analyst hopes that Donald Trump will exceed expectations and that those who opposed him […]

Controversy About Trump’s Ambassador to Israel

Posted December 21st, 2016 at 4:44 pm (UTC-4)
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Battle lines are being drawn over Donald Trump’s choice to be Ambassador to Israel.

David Friedman is a bankruptcy lawyer who has done work for Trump. Friedman is a vocal opponent to the long-standing U.S. policy of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, insulting American Jews who do support it.

When named last week, Friedman said he looked forward to doing his job “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem” instead of Tel Aviv, where the embassy has long stood, pending a negotiated deal about the status of the holy city.

Trump campaigned on promises to change U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere. What will that mean for the nearly 50 year stalemate between the Israelis and Palestinians and how the United States deals with other countries in the region?

Trump’s Choice for Israeli Ambassador Is a Danger to American Lives

Posted December 20th, 2016 at 1:52 pm (UTC-4)
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Friedman not only supports additional settlements and seems opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, but also wants to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, where it has been for decades, to Jerusalem….[which] the Arab world would take it as a slap in the face.

Why Diplomats Are Agog at Trump’s Ambassador to Israel

Posted December 20th, 2016 at 1:44 pm (UTC-4)
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Forty years ago presidents and prime ministers might have attended one international meeting each year; today they are on a summit treadmill. They phone one another and cultivate personal relationships. Diplomats are often sidelined and left to churn out reports that circulate in a bureaucratic vortex.

Diplomacy’s Aversion to Power: Consequences of Retreat

Posted October 26th, 2016 at 4:03 pm (UTC-4)
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In practice, aversion to the use of power undercuts the effectiveness of diplomacy. It has been said that power without diplomacy is blind, but it is equally true that diplomacy not backed by power is impotent.

Shimon Peres: A Complicated Legacy

Posted September 28th, 2016 at 4:41 pm (UTC-4)
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If you live until age 93 with more than 60 years in the public eye, you are going to have your share of admirers and detractors. What makes Shimon Peres so interesting is how many seemingly contradictory adjectives are used to describe him.
Consider these words from about a dozen articles used to describe Peres: arrogant, humble; pragmatic, Utopian; integrity, duplicitous; arrogant, eloquent; ambitious, technocrat; flawed visionary, strategic thinker; hawk, dove, Mr. Security; patriot, traitor, statesman.
Although they share the Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo Peace Accords, Peres and Israel’s assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had a longtime political rivalry, so bitter that Rabin described Peres as “the indefatigable subverter.” The irony is not lost that Peres will be buried alongside Rabin on Friday. President Barack Obama will lead the American delegation to Peres’ funeral.
Peres has been Israel’s defense minister and foreign minister; its president.and prime minister, although he was unable to win an election to lead the country. As the last of Israel’s founding fathers, Peres leaves a complicated legacy.

Obama’s Chance for Middle East Peace

Posted September 14th, 2016 at 1:54 pm (UTC-4)
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Leaving office without having made progress on an issue he specifically promised to resolve would be a colossal failure for Obama. Fortunately, he still has time…he should push for a UN Security Council resolution that establishes new parameters for a future peace accord…

Will Obama Roll the Dice on the Middle East One More Time?

Posted September 6th, 2016 at 9:37 am (UTC-4)
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 All along, the assumption has been that Obama might wait to act until after the presidential election, so as to avoid creating problems for Hillary Clinton. There’s plenty of precedent: Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all bid for a Middle East legacy during their final months.

The Right Target for the U.S. in Syria; Hezbollah

Posted July 28th, 2016 at 11:30 am (UTC-4)
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President Obama has focused instead on fighting terrorism in Syria, but U.S. targets are limited to Sunni extremists such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda affiliates. There is also a Shiite terrorist organization in Syria: Lebanon-based Hezbollah. It should not be immune.

Sykes-Picot +100 Years

Posted May 18th, 2016 at 4:37 pm (UTC-4)
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100 years ago this week, a British colonel and a French diplomat drew a few lines on a map of the Middle East. Those lines were the first draft of borders that are still disputed, and battled over today.
Mark Sykes and François-Georges Picot were empowered by their governments to secretly work out an arrangement to split up the Levant part of the Ottoman Empire even before World War I was over.
Sykes & Picot came up with areas of British (area A and area in red) and French influence (area B and area in blue). The brown shaded area would be internationally administered. The secret plan was signed on May 16, 1916, two-and-a-half years before World War I ended.
Sykes-Picot was seen as a betrayal of the Arabs by the British, who promised their support for an independent state in exchange for Arab support against the Ottomans.
Memories of that supposed betrayal remain strong. When the Islamic State bulldozed the barrier marking Sykes-Picot border between Iraq and Syria in 2014 they tweeted #SykesPicotOver.
So, is a line drawn in the sand 100 years ago the cause of the Middle East’s problems today?
Like most issues involving the Middle East, ask 10 people and you will get 10 different opinions.

Will Israel Reach Age 100

Posted April 12th, 2016 at 4:18 pm (UTC-4)
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The region in which Israel lives is melting down at a rate no one would have anticipated….if there are any state disappearing acts, these may be on the Arab side….even with all of their problems, the region’s three non-Arab states –Israel, Turkey, and Iran — are probably the most highly functioning polities in the region.

Netanyahu Bet the Future of the U.S.-Israel Relations on the GOP. Now He Has a Trump Problem

Posted March 8th, 2016 at 10:57 am (UTC-4)
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Trump, alone in the modern Republican Party, has tacked away from unconditional support for Israel. He has said he would take a “neutral” stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and suggested that if negotiations fail it might well be Israel’s fault

A Plague of Black Swans in the Middle East

Posted February 25th, 2016 at 10:04 am (UTC-4)
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[T]he Obama Doctrine…is a cruelly pragmatic strategy…(assuming) the U.S. cannot solve all the problems of the region…and is unwilling to act as a surrogate for our friends in the region…none of the (presidential) candidates would likely go back to a policy that was politically and financially costly, often related only distantly to actual U.S. interests,

Fight or Flight

Posted February 22nd, 2016 at 2:00 pm (UTC-4)
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If the next U.S. president is unwilling to commit to stepping up to stabilize the Middle East, the only real alternative is to step back from it…civil wars do not lend themselves to anything but the right strategy with the right resources, trying the wrong one means throwing U.S. resources away on a lost cause.