Middle East Watch

475 Article

• The rotten state of Egypt is too powerless and corrupt to act

  1 January 2009, by Robert Fisk

  There was a day when we worried about the "Arab masses" – the millions of "ordinary" Arabs on the streets of Cairo, Kuwait, Amman, Beirut – and their reaction to the constant bloodbaths in the Middle East. Could Anwar Sadat restrain the anger of his people? And now – after three decades of Hosni Mubarak – can Mubarak (or "La Vache Qui Rit", as he is still called in Cairo) restrain the anger of his people? The answer, of course, is that Egyptians and Kuwaitis and Jordanians will be allowed to (…)

    continue
  

• Le monde arabe défie le mur de la peur

  30 janvier 2011,

  Un mur s’écroule sur l’autre rive de la Méditerranée. Une muraille invisible mais omniprésente qui a constitué pendant des décennies le principal ressort de régimes à la légitimité chancelante. Ce mur est celui de la peur. La peur d’un arbitraire systématique, à tous les échelons régaliens, à commencer par ceux de la police et de la justice, auxiliaires zélées prêtes à broyer entre leurs meules ceux qui osent revendiquer leurs droits.
  La peur ensuite d’une violence d’Etat laissée à la (…)

    suite
  

• Without Egypt, Israel will be left with no friends in Mideast

  29 January 2011, by Aluf Benn

  The fading power of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s government leaves Israel in a state of strategic distress. Without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East; last year, Israel saw its alliance with Turkey collapse.
  From now on, it will be hard for Israel to trust an Egyptian government torn apart by internal strife. Israel’s increasing isolation in the region, coupled with a weakening United States, will force the government to court new potential allies. (…)

    continue
  

• Fear Extreme Islamists in the Arab World? Blame Washington

  29 January 2011, by Jeff Cohen

  In the last year of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. questioned U.S. military interventions against progressive movements in the Third World by invoking a JFK quote: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
  Were he alive to witness the last three decades of U.S. foreign policy, King might update that quote by noting: "Those who make secular revolution impossible will make extreme Islamist revolution inevitable."
  For decades beginning during (…)

    continue
  

• Egypt Protests Show American Foreign-Policy Folly

  28 January 2011, by Stephen Kinzer

  One afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I walked into the British Foreign Office for a meeting with Middle East policy planners. “Tunisia is melting down and the Lebanese government has just fallen,” my host said as he welcomed me. “Interesting times.”
  During our meeting, one veteran British diplomat observed that since American policy toward the Middle East is frozen into immobility, change there comes only when there is a crisis. I asked where he thought the next crisis might erupt. (…)

    continue
  

• De la Tunisie à l’Egypte, un air de liberté

  28 janvier 2011, par Alain Gresh

  La tension est à son comble en Egypte, où le président Hosni Moubarak a décrété vendredi soir le couvre-feu. Le président de la commission des affaires étrangères de l’Assemblée, membre du Parti national démocrate (PND) au pouvoir, a appelé le président Hosni Moubarak à « des réformes sans précédent » pour éviter une « révolution ». M. Mostapha Al-Fekki, dans des déclarations faites à la chaîne Al-Jazira, le 28 janvier, a ajouté : « L’option sécuritaire seule n’est pas suffisante et le (…)

    suite
  

• The Egyptian Revolution

  28 January 2011, by Gary Leupp

  I’m watching live coverage of the Egyptian revolution on Al-Jazeera TV. Cairo is swarming with hundreds of thousands, defying the curfew, hurling stones at the police. The images recall the Palestinian youth waging their Intifadas. The National Democratic Party headquarters is in flames. Downtown Suez has been taken over by the people, two police stations torched. The security forces are out in strength and shooting into crowds. But the people have lost their fear.
  Reporters and (…)

    continue
  

• The Death of the Israeli Left

  18 January 2011, by Jonathan Cook

  Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, appears to have driven the final nail in the coffin of the Zionist left with his decision to split from the Labor party and create a new "centrist, Zionist" faction in the Israeli parliament. So far four MPs, out of a total of 12, have announced they are following him.
  Moments after Barak’s press conference on Monday, the Israeli media suggested that the true architect of the Labor party’s split was the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, (…)

    continue
  

• The Fall of the West’s Little Dictator

  19 January 2011, by Esam Al-Amin

  On New Year’s Eve 1977, former President Jimmy Carter was toasting Shah Reza Pahlavi in Tehran, calling the Western-backed monarchy "an island of stability" in the Middle East. But for the next 13 months, Iran was anything but stable. The Iranian people were daily protesting the brutality of their dictator, holding mass demonstrations from one end of the country to the other.
  Initially, the Shah described the popular protests as part of a conspiracy by communists and Islamic extremists, (…)

    continue
  

• Wikileaks Cables on Israel’s Gaza Onslaught

  19 January 2011, by Kathleen Christison

  CounterPunch has accessed Wikileaks’ file of cables on Israel’s Gaza assault two years ago (Operation Cast Lead, December 27, 2008 through January 18, 2009). Though the cables often simply rehash Israeli press reporting, providing little new insight into Israel’s attack or the planning behind it, they show with pitiless clarity the U.S. government to be little more than a handmaiden and amanuensis of the Israeli military machine.
  The cables make clear, were any further disclosure (…)

    continue