Anti-Americanism as a form of resistance
Saturday, June 30, 2007 (415 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
30 June 2007
A new Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Survey published this week reveals that public attitudes towards the United States around the world continue to deteriorate, as they have for half a decade now, with particularly strong negative views about the US role in Iraq and American-style democracy. The massive survey of 45,000 people in 47 countries contained few surprises or any major new trends -- America is still admired by many around the world, and distrusted by many others. The survey results document the strong opposition to both the substance and manner of American foreign policy, but they also tell us something important about the societies being surveyed around the globe.
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Don't envy the envoy
Thursday, June 28, 2007 (700 reads)
Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi comments on Tony Blair's appointment as Middle East envoy. An abridged version of this article was published in the Glasgow Herald on 28 June 2007.
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Blair & the Quartet: Opportunity or hoax?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007 (496 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
27 June 2007
I was in Europe earlier this week speaking with assorted current and former officials, experts, and diplomats about the general situation in the Middle East, when the news broke of the expected appointment of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as special envoy of the Quartet (US, Russia, UN, EU) for Arab-Israeli peace-making. It is hard to know if this is a joke, an insult, or a possible positive new beginning.
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From Beirut to Osnabrück in quest of peace
Saturday, June 23, 2007 (420 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
23 June 2007
On my trip this week from Beirut, Lebanon, to Osnabrück, Germany, I feel as if I have experienced modern world history in reverse. The contrast between the two cities is instructive, as Europe and the Middle East both wrestle with a universal concern: What is the ideal relationship among the identity of individuals, the interests of communal groups, and the well-being and security of states?
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Sinister, stupid or sensible policy options for Palestine?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007 (429 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
20 June 2007
The separation of the West Bank and Gaza into separate political entities run respectively by Fateh and Hamas is a calamity. The rush by the United States, Israel and Europe to resume aid to the emergency government in the West Bank set up earlier this week by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will turn the calamity into an even greater catastrophe.
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Report: AMW event on Arab diplomatic 'surge'
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 (444 reads)
By Arab Media Watch adviser Guy Gabriel
The year of the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and Israel's subsequent occupation, has seen unprecedented Arab diplomatic activity on all fronts, be it the Arab-Israeli conflict or those in Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan or Western Sahara.
On Thursday 14 June 2007, Arab Media Watch, the Council for Arab-British Understanding and the Next Century Foundation assembled an impressive panel at the Arab British Chamber of Commerce in Mayfair to discuss this Arab diplomatic 'surge'.
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Palestinian despair & American-Israeli duplicity
Saturday, June 16, 2007 (473 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
16 June 2007
It's hard to know who appears more ludicrous and despicable, the Palestinian Fateh and Hamas leaderships allowing their gunmen to fight it out on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, or an American administration saying it supports the "moderates" in Palestine who want to negotiate peace with Israel.
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Three levels of death in Lebanon
Wednesday, June 13, 2007 (428 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
13 June 2007
The assassination Wednesday of pro-Lebanese government and anti-Syrian member of parliament Waleed Eido and at least nine others in a powerful car bomb along the Beirut seafront promises to catapult an already turbulent Lebanon into ever greater cycles of violence that many here see as being linked to regional actors and dynamics. The fact, timing, and context of Eido's death may all be significant, and surely spell more dark days ahead for Lebanon and the wider Middle East.
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A Middle East chance for progress
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 (442 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
12 June 2007
When the United States, Hizbullah and Hamas are aligned on the same side against a common enemy - as they are now in confronting the Fateh el-Islam militants in north Lebanon - you know a moment of some historical significance is upon us. This is precisely what is happening in that litmus test and proxy battlefield of Middle Eastern conflicts - Lebanon - where four simultaneous events in the past two weeks indicate that a moment of great historical change may be descending upon this country and the entire region.
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New possibilities beckon the Arab world
Saturday, June 09, 2007 (626 reads)
By Rami Khouri, Arab Media Watch adviser, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, and co-laureate of the 2006 Pax Christi International Peace Award.
9 June 2007
The Gulf and Arabian Peninsula attract attention often for the fast pace of their physical development, with the striking new commercial and government complexes appearing in the skylines of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait, Manama and other Gulf cities. Yet something more intriguing and politically significant than spectacular architecture is taking place in the Gulf these days, and its impact is being felt around the region.
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The new Syrian syndrome
Thursday, June 07, 2007 (643 reads)
By Rime Allaf, Arab Media Watch adviser and associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) whose blog is www.rimeallaf.com.
7 June 2007
Bittler Lemons Internationals
Syrian-Israeli negotiations once enjoyed high visibility, spreading over a decade and passing through several Israeli governments, from the toughest Likudnik to the supposedly softest leftist dove. Thus, judging from the continuing state of belligerence between the two countries, one might assume the difficulties in reaching a peace agreement were insurmountable.
It is true that relations between Syrians and Israelis have been at their most hostile in recent years. Having developed a "Syria syndrome", Israel pretends to believe its own fabrications and ironically turns all things Syrian into obstacles to conviviality and dangers to the stability of the region, ignoring its own history of aggression. Syrian propaganda, meanwhile, has been only too happy to play along, inflating Syrian capacity to defend itself and the Palestinian cause, if not to attack.
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Pleading for the Golan Heights
Thursday, June 07, 2007 (339 reads)
By Rime Allaf, Arab Media Watch adviser and associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) whose blog is www.rimeallaf.com.
7 June 2007
Creative Syria
The time has come to rain on the love parade. Observing a 40th anniversary not of peace, but of war, reminds us that there is clearly one party which is a big winner and another a big loser, a victor and a victim, an aggressor and an aggressed. A wrong, and a right. A strong warmonger, and a weak prey. Israel, and Arabs.
But judging from the commemorations, it would be easy for a newly landed Martian to think it was actually the other way around, given the unbelievable propensity, spreading like a virus, to convince, reassure, persuade, sweet-talk and beseech Israel to give back some land so that we could please have some peace. In fact, with every so-called peace initiative, Israel's victims are left asking for less and less.
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