Residents look at buildings damaged during clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish fighters and at neighborhoods razed by the government in Sur, Diyarbakir. May 2016. Sertac Kayar/Reuters MER Article The Kurdish Movement’s Disparate Goals and the Collapse of the Peace Process with Turkey The Kurdish movement in Turkey has three stated objectives: to achieve a resolution of the Kurdish issue, to democratize Turkey and to establish a decentralized political system formulated as Democratic Confederalism by Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).[1] Although the PKK is at the Guney Yildiz • 15 min read
CelebratingUSembassyMove_May2018_IsrMinForAff Current Analysis Kushner's Technocratic Vision and the Unlearned Lessons of Fayyadism Jared Kushner unveiled the economic side of President Trump's "deal of the century" for Palestinians in June 2019. In addition to its economic flaws is a technocrat's aversion to confronting Israel's entrenched occupation. Alexei Abrahams • 13 min read
mundy_map Current Analysis Business as Usual in Western Sahara? The end of 2018 witnessed potentially promising peace talks in Geneva between the Polisario Front liberation movement of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco in an effort to kickstart the stalled peace process for the nearly 45-year conflict over this North African territory. Nevertheless, the Alice Wilson, Jacob Mundy • 12 min read
Current Analysis Hamas Back Out of Its Box Every year or so the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas confounds the Western policymakers who have worked to deny it power since its electoral triumph in January 2006. If the goal of Western policy is to keep the Islamists out of sight, out of mind, then Hamas is like a jack-in-the-box, periodical Nicolas Pelham • 14 min read
Current Analysis Israel’s Religious Right and the Peace Process It would be easy to describe the residents of the outpost of Amona as radicals. In February 2006 they led protests of 4,000 settler activists, some of them armed, against 3,000 Israeli police who were amassed to make sure that nine unauthorized structures in the West Bank were bulldozed as ordered. Nicolas Pelham • 17 min read
Current Analysis The Horrors of Israel's Peace Three weeks after the war on Gaza, Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire but refused to terminate its so-called defensive operations. In response, Hamas declared a ceasefire for one week, until the withdrawal of Israeli troops has been completed. For many in the West, the ceasefire might seem like Samera Esmeir • 5 min read
Current Analysis In Annapolis, Conflict by Other Means At an intersection in front of Nablus city hall, a pair of women threaded a knot of waiting pedestrians, glanced left, then dashed across the street. “What’s this?” an onlooker chastised them. “Can’t you see the red light?” Not long after, his patience exhausted, the self-appointed traffic cop himse Mouin Rabbani, Robert Blecher • 14 min read
Current Analysis Illusions of Unilateralism Dispelled in Israel In 1967 Israel’s government was headed by Levi Eshkol, a politician said to be easygoing, weak and indecisive, who four years earlier had replaced the country’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, as prime minister. The Israeli public, tired of Ben-Gurion’s authoritarianism and constant exhortations to great Yoav Peled • 11 min read
Current Analysis A Simulacrum of Internationalization The Palestinians have long sought, and Israel has long resisted, the internationalization of efforts to construct a process that would lead to a durable and comprehensive peace. Independent advocates for a just peace have echoed this call out of the realization that the near monopoly of Washington o Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Wasting Time In The Middle East Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice concluded her second trip to the Middle East in a month with little to show for her efforts. The meeting she hosted between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was undermined the day before it began. Olm Joel Beinin • 4 min read
Current Analysis Less a “Big Bang” Than an Earthquake The two successive strokes and the cerebral hemorrhage that struck down Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came just a few weeks after the somber ceremonies marking the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The causes of the two occurrences were very different, and so was the act Peretz Kidron • 8 min read
Current Analysis Mahmoud Abbas’ Mission Improbable Renewed, if somewhat less euphoric talk of a historic opportunity for Middle East peace accompanied Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas both heading to and returning from his May 26, 2005 summit with President George W. Bush at the White House. Yet the opportunity, of which much has been written since Mouin Rabbani, Chris Toensing • 10 min read
