Palestinian President Abbas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority face regular criticism that they are being "more Israeli than the Israelis" in their...
Elizabeth Sellwood
At last – coherent international policy on Israeli settlements?
The Obama administration's Middle East policy is under construction. Despite Obama's new tone, it is still too early to see specific policy changes on most of...
UN not joined up but still being asked to do difficult things
Noah Pollak's National Review article, posted on Michael Totten's blog today, reminds me of our internal debates during the Lebanon war last summer (when I...
A bit more on van Creveld’s lessons
People involved with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - particularly Brits - tend to get a bit anxious when one compares it with Northern Ireland. Having read...
Palestinian democracy
Condoleezza Rice, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, was invited to reflect on the dilemmas of promoting democracy in the Middle East. Would...
Schools not bombs?
Yesterday, in Jerusalem, the acting President of Israel Dalia Itzik offered some advice to Israel’s enemies on the 59th anniversary of Israel’s independence:...
More from Global Dashboard
Let’s make climate a culture war!
If the politics of climate change end up polarised, is that so bad? No – it’s disastrous. Or so I’ve long thought. Look at the US – where climate is even more polarised than abortion. Result: decades of flip flopping. Ambition under Clinton; reversal...
Big Elephants and Small Islands: getting beyond the New Aid Orthodoxy
Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management...
Uncertainty and Humanitarian Action: What Donald Rumsfeld can teach us
Since its onset, one striking feature of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has been the narrative power of its novelty. This global narrative depicts COVID-19 pushing humanity towards a ‘historical divide’ of BC and AC (before and after COVID-19), where unknown,...