October 10, 2011
"Power and Confusion in the United States and Palestine"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- To spend time speaking and listening to a wide range of people in Washington, D.C. on Middle Eastern issues, as I did last week, is to wander into a world of deep perplexity, for two main reasons: Every pillar of the United States’ Middle East policies is changing rapidly, and much of the change sees Middle Eastern actors taking charge of their own destinies, leaving the United States in a strangely weakened and often marginalized position. The principal manifestations of this situation are the behavior of the Palestinians, Saudis, Egyptians, Israelis, Turks, and Iranians, and the Russians and Chinese from outside the region. The two most telling arenas where American perplexity rises to the surface are the Palestinian bid for UN recognition and the Arab citizen rolling revolts across the region.
October 4, 2011
"Iran's Decline in the Arab World"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
WASHINGTON -- I get the impression after a month in the United States and many public and private discussions on the Middle East that the issue of Iran -- or the Iranian “threat,” as it has long been called in many quarters in the United States -- is no longer as pressing or threatening a matter as it has been in recent years. The main reason perhaps is that when it comes to the Middle East, the United States generally finds it difficult to walk and chew gum at the same time, i.e., it has trouble dealing with more than one major issue at a time.
October 3, 2011
"The Resumption of Arab History"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
WASHINGTON -- The momentous nature of several events in the Middle East has prompted many analysts or commentators to focus on a few issues and give them primacy in shaping the transformation of the region. These include the Arab citizen revolts across the region that comprise a veritable new Arab Awakening, the rise in Turkey’s role, and the Palestinian initiative to seek statehood recognition at the United Nations. These are indeed game-changing developments, but they should not detract from the much wider array of changes underway that represent a rare moment of historic and strategic transformation.
AP Photo
September 28, 2011
"After the Festival of Rhetoric"
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
BOSTON -- The Palestinian request last Friday for United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state in the land occupied by Israel in 1967 created quite a diplomatic stir, after weeks of anticipation and guessing whether the Palestinian leadership would ask the Security Council for full UN membership, or take the more sure route of asking the General Assembly for non-member observer state status. Now that the request for full membership has been made, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have made their speeches, and the diplomatic dust has largely settled, we can conclude several things.
September 26, 2011
The Third Intifada Targets Israel-America
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
BOSTON -- It remains to be seen what actually changes on the ground in the months ahead following the Palestinian initiative to ask the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state in the 1967 Israeli-occupied territories as a UN member or observer state. The move could be a substantive gain for the Palestinian people, a symbolic victory only, or a measurable setback if the United States and Israel translate their vindictive rhetoric into hard policies. While we wait for the impact of the UN move to become clearer, we should acknowledge nevertheless that this has been a historic week in several ways.
September 21, 2011
Palestinian Challenge Perplexes Americans and Israelis
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the past week in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington my discussions on Mideast issues with a wide range of knowledgeable people confirm the view I have held for some time now: Official and other American attitudes to the Middle East, especially on the Arab-Israeli conflict, are characterized by deep perplexity, contradiction and disarray. No wonder the region is in the midst of a historic transition that has radically shifted the center of gravity of political action and diplomatic control away from American-Israeli dominance, towards a greater role for Arab public opinion.
September 19, 2011
The Strengths and Weaknesses of American Democracy
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
PHILADELPHIA -- I had one particularly enlightening and depressing day last week as a student of American democracy and Arab-Israeli diplomacy, and know better now why most Arabs have totally given up on expecting anything positive or fair to emerge from the United States vis-à-vis our region. Democracy is a great and noble venture and a most utilitarian governance system, but it also has a dark and ugly side that is very visible here in the U.S. these days.
September 14, 2011
An American Commemoration
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
GROUND ZERO, NEW YORK CITY -- I am writing this after having spent time at Ground Zero in New York City on September 11, an experience at once moving, enlightening and troubling. It captured for me the many complex and puzzling dimensions of what the 9/11 terror attacks and their aftermath really mean to the American people. It sharpened what I had previously concluded about the meaning of 9/11 in American life: This is an epic tale of intense passion wrapped in perplexity, a drama of powerful moral and human fortitude that remains undiminished alongside the spectacle of political confusion, and an affirmation of intense self-confidence and strength at home in tandem with equally strong doses of ignorance about the rest of the world and how to relate to it.
September 12, 2011
The Arab Awakening
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in rural Tunisia on December 17, 2010, he set in motion a dynamic that goes far beyond the overthrow of individual dictators. We are witnessing nothing less than the awakening, throughout the Arab world, of several phenomena that are critical for stable statehood: the citizen, the citizenry, legitimacy of authority, a commitment to social justice, genuine politics, national self-determination and, ultimately, true sovereignty. It took hundreds of years for the United States and Western Europe to develop governance and civil society systems that affirmed those principles, even if incompletely or erratically, so we should be realistic in our expectations of how long it will take Arab societies to do so.
[This article appeared in the September 12, 2011 edition of The Nation.]
September 10, 2011
The Double Tragedy
Op-Ed, Agence Global
By Rami Khouri, Senior Fellow, Middle East Initiative
BOSTON -- The United States has been remembering and commemorating the tenth anniversary of the trauma and native heroism that marked the events of Sept. 11, 2001 for most Americans. The remembrances have been emotionally powerful, but they are also politically incomplete. Americans rightly emphasize the grave wound and incomprehensible crime that were inflicted on them, and also celebrate American resilience in the face of both. But the tragedy and suffering of the initial criminality have simply been perpetuated by the inability, or unwillingness, of American society to adequately explore why this happened to them -- because Americans for the most part still fail to address the wider context of the world in which dwell both the criminal attacker and the innocent victims.
