Arab News Blog

If this story (via Laura Rozen from Yediot Aharanot) is true, Joe Biden was a lot more pointed with Netanyahu than his public response to Israel’s provocative act on his arrival:

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.

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 Joe “I am a Zionist” Biden goes to Israel, gets himself and his country humiliated (again), and everybody gets excited that he uses the word “condemns” about illegal settlements that are part of an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign. 

Helena Cobban picks up on an anecdote from Pat Lang:

Fiasco in Jerusalem

Mideast talks hopes in tatters

Arab League chief says Mideast talks off 

Biden Israel Trip: Apology for Timing of Settlement News

Bibi’s snub to Biden may backfire | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Israel welcomes Joe Biden with 1600 slaps in the face

Biden Appeals to Restart Peace Talks – NYTimes.com

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First results from Iraq’s election show PM Nouri Maliki’s grouping leading in two southern provinces, the electoral body says.
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Breaking news: late Wednesday evening in Cairo, Abu Mazen and his buddies at the Arab League decided there will be no ‘proximity talks’ between the PLO and Israel.

I’m kind of interested in the way Abu Mazen is getting Amr Moussa to front for him these days. It does indicate a serious lack of his own confidence in the depth of his support among Palestinians… But that matter is tangential to the main story here, which is–

The Amazingly Unsuccessful ‘Diplomatist’ Joe Biden!

Biden, lest we forget, is the man who in an interview with George Stephanopoulos last July, publicly gave Israel carte blanche to attack Iran whenever it wanted.

Biden was also, back in the pre-2003 day, one of Ahmed Chalabi’s main supporters in the U.S., and an enthusiastic backer of the idea of partitioning Iraq.

Since he became Vice-President, Biden has had a role “orchestrating” Washington’s Iraq policy on behalf of the president… Well, we’ve seen how that’s been going… To be fair, that is not as horrendously badly as it might have been going… But it hasn’t been going brilliantly, either– certainly not as brilliantly as most of the US MSM have been saying.

Biden has not done a particularly good job there, I think.

But he has really been bombing in Palestine.

Yes, of course we can and should lay the primary blame for what’s been happening in Jerusalem this past couple of days squarely on the Israeli government, the body that greeted Biden, on his first visit to Israel as vice-president, with not one but two announcements about the construction of new settler housing.

Notable that Yossi Sarid writes in Thursday’s Haaretz that,

Don’t believe Benjamin Netanyahu for one moment when he says he “never knew” [about the 1,600 new settler housing units announced Tuesday.] The Jerusalem planning committee is only too aware of what the bosses want, and the government has decided to step up construction in greater Jerusalem. Dispossession and taking possession, kicking out and moving in – that’s what it’s all about.

Sarid also gave us these additional details about Biden’s time in Israel:

This is one visit Joe Biden will not quickly forget. First he was compelled to sit through 25 minutes of an annoying speech in his honor by our president. Shimon Peres really believes that he is the destination for pilgrims from all over the world who drink in his musings and are intoxicated by his vision.

Later, Biden was given a certificate memorializing his mother, but the glass broke. Once again, Bibi didn’t pay attention, leaned on it and shattered it. No fear, his speeches have always diverted attention from such mishaps. And finally, to add a finishing touch of infuriating disgrace, the Haredi neighborhood Ramat Shlomo was dumped on the vice-presidential head.

Truth be told, the Obama administration just about asked for this slap. In Jerusalem, the lesson has been learned that the White House doesn’t fulfill its obligations – it just goes through the motions by issuing insincere rebukes.

Insincere rebukes, indeed.

Juan Cole and Pat Lang, two very seasoned analysts of Middle eastern dynamics, are just two of the people who say that, on hearing of the new settlement construction, Biden should simply have ordered up his plane and left Israel, rather than sitting there, going through the rest of the charade of the visit, while saying something on the record about how the Obama administration “condemns” the new construction.

I’m assuming Biden decided on this course of action after consultation with Washington. (He took 90 minutes to decide what to do.) Do he and his boss the Prez have no idea how disgusted most of the people in the world are with the fact that, though from time to time Washington might say something critical of Israel– meantime Washington never holds Israel to serious account, for anything, including “grave breaches of international humanitarian law” like implanting its settlers into occupied territories?

And the U.S. Congress continues to shovel money to Israel. U.S. diplomacy continues to get completely bent out of shape by defending Israel’s actions in every international forum, at every turn, and by zealously pursuing Israel-driven agendas throughout the entire Middle East, including with regard to Iraq and Iran.

And these actions by the administration and Congress put the lives of U.S. service-members deployed around the world, often in pursuit of Israel-driven agendas, in significant additional risk.

Regarding Biden, Pat Lang has this intriguing little vignette in his latest post:

I was in Biden’s senate office on one occasion when Biden’s Zionism boiled over in a truly repulsive display of temper. I was there with my Arab employer to visit the senator… The Arab made some pro forma positive reference to the “peace process.” Biden flew into a rage, grew red in the face and shouted that this was an insincere lie and that his guest knew that it was only Arab stubbornness that prevented “little Israel’ from living in peace. His “guest” sat through this with what dignity he could manage. I would have walked out on him if I had been alone.

Assuming that the vignette’s true– and I tend to trust Lang on that– it reveals quite a few disturbing things about Biden. Not just the guy’s knee-jerk pro-Israelism, which is endemic just about everywhere in Congress, with a few notable exceptions. But also his evident lack of any diplomatic skills. I mean, why fly into a pro-Israeli rage like that if an Arab guest should happen to mention the “peace process”? What on earth good was he hoping to achieve by doing that? Nothing that I can think of– except to vent his own feelings.

… And meanwhile, George Mitchell, Mr. “Senior Peace Envoy”, has completely dropped off the map.

It is honestly not clear to me at all, right now, what it is that Obama and his people are hoping to achieve in the Arab-Israeli arena. Their entire “peace diplomacy” is in shambles. It’s as if Obama really doesn’t care any more about any of the lofty– but oh-so-important– goals he articulated back in the first days and weeks of his presidency. But he should realize that letting his “peace diplomacy” fall into disarray, as he has now done, is something that will have consequences far, far beyond Israel and Palestine. And quite possibly, more rapidly than anyone in Washington realizes.

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It’s Tom Friedman, at it once again in today’s NYT!

Here we are now, almost exactly fourteen Friedman Units (F.U.’s) after George W. Bush’s (heavily Friedman-supported) invasion of Iraq, and the arrogant and over-rated “Sage of Bethesda” is now telling us that the decidedly mixed, and violence-plagued picture of what happened on Sunday’s election day in Iraq was unequivocally “a very good day for Iraq.”

Friedman completely omits to mention the big role that his own writings (and those of many NYT colleagues) played in 2002, in building up the nationwide constituency for the war. Instead, he just notes archly that,

Some argue that nothing that happens in Iraq will ever justify the costs. Historians will sort that out.

That is, of course, also GWB’s own, famously self-exculpating line about the war.

And the Sage of Bethesda (SOB) doesn’t fail to give us one of his frequent little, faux-intimate verbal sparring matches with a world leader… In this case, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, to whom Tom addresses the following:

How are you feeling today? Yes, I am sure you have your proxies in Iraq. But I am also sure you know what some of your people are quietly saying: “How come we Iranian-Persian-Shiites — who always viewed ourselves as superior to Iraqi-Arab-Shiites — can only vote for a handful of pre-chewed, pre-digested, ‘approved’ candidates from the supreme leader, while those lowly Iraqi Shiites, who have been hanging around with America for seven years, get to vote for whomever they want?” Unlike in Tehran, Iraqis actually count the votes. This will subtly fuel the discontent in Iran…

Oh my goodness. Do you think the SOB ever actually reads the news from Iraq where, as we know, Ahmed Chalabi’s extremely anti-democratic “Justice and Accountability Commission” intervened on Saturday to suddenly, on the eve of the election, disqualify 55 candidates– additional to the hundreds it had already disqualified, earlier on during the election campaign?

Chalabi is far from being a neutral figure in the election, since he’s running as a member of the Iraqi National Alliance, the Iran-backed list of mainly Shiite politicians.

So those 55 suddenly banned candidates– all of whom were affiliated with other blocs, mainly the Iraqiyya bloc headed by Ayad Allawi– still had their names on the ballots on Sunday; and thus not only were they subjected to last-minute banning, but in addition everyone who voted for them suddenly had their votes rendered essentially meaningless.

As the WaPo’s Ernesto London and Leila Fadel report from Baghdad today,

If the votes for the newly barred candidates are annulled, it could give the Iraqiya coalition powerful ammunition to allege vote-rigging by rival politicians, including some in the Shiite-led camp of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“It will be a very violent reaction,” Allawi said in an interview Tuesday. “A lot of violence will take place, and God knows how this will end. I will tell you there is already an existing feeling that there was widespread rigging and widespread intimidation.”

And it’s not just those 55 suddenly-banned candidates and those who voted for them who’re at risk of having their political rights suddenly stripped from them. Londono and Fadel report that,

Faraj al-Haidary, chairman of Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission, said Tuesday night that … under Iraqi law, the Justice and Accountability Commission could theoretically bar more candidates in the days ahead if it submits paperwork before the electoral board certifies them as lawmakers.

Ah, but my friend Tom, sitting in Bethesda, can assure us that Iraqis “get to vote for whomever they want”?

The WaPo journos also write about our friend the Iraq specialist Reidar Visser that he,

said the last-minute disqualification of candidates poses significant challenges for the electoral commission. Because Iraqis were able to choose individual candidates in the elections — as opposed to voting for slates that distribute the seats — disqualifying elected candidates could enrage voters.

“This could create a major problem for the whole process,” Visser said. “We have seen that there is no legal framework to deal with these eventualities, so they’re creating the framework as they proceed.”

So the post-election period in Iraq this time might well be– just as it was after the last national election, in December 2005– very messy, long-drawn-out and quite possibly even, as Allawi warned, violent.

So please let’s not sing any paens to the triumph of “democracy” in Iraq yet. (As Newsweek did last week, and as far too many other stalwarts of the US MSM seem to have been doing this week, too.)

George Bush’s hastily cobbled-together, back-up main “justification” for invading Iraq in 2003, remember, was– once he finally realized the “WMD justification” was a crock of nonsense– that the US occupation liberation of Iraq would usher in a new era of democratic, accountable, and successful government that would immediately become a model for the striving peoples of the whole of the rest of the region…

(Kind of like what the SOB was still arguing in his mendacious piece today.)

But in the aftermath of Iraq’s December 2005 election, the country was plunged into deeper sectarianism and social collapse than it had ever before experienced, and for roughly 18 months thereafter the violence and heartbreak continued unabated, sending streams of extremely distressed Iraqis fleeing for their lives.

Electoral “democracy”, it turned out, was not a “model” that anyone anywhere else in the region wanted to emulate, at all. (In the OPTs, interestingly, all the major political forces did continue with their plans to hold an OPTs-wide parliamentary election just six weeks after that Iraqi election, in January 2006. Washington’s ferocious response to the results of that election gave the lie to any lingering idea anyone might have had that George W. Bush really did have any gut sympathy for the norms and principles of democratic self-governance… )

And, contra to what the SOB is now telling us, I certainly don’t think anyone in the Middle East, whether Iranians, Arabs, Turks, Israelis, or anyone else, is sitting on the edge of their chairs thinking that the 2010 election in Iraq is going to usher in a fabulous period of successful, democratic self-governance in Iraq. The most that anyone is able to hope for, really, is that despite the machinations of Ahmed Chalabi and his gang– the ones who got us into the war and occupation in the first place, remember, along with Bush and Cheney– Iraq’s conflict-battered people may somehow find a governance system that works for them and allows them to rebuild a society that has been torn apart by two decades, now, of extremely vindictive, lethal, politicidal, and arrogant western policy toward their country.

How Iraq’s citizenry decide to govern themselves is completely up to them. For Tom Friedman or anyone else to claim they know what should happen is imperialist arrogance of the most outdated and destructive kind.

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Foreign Policy has just launched The Middle East Channel, a one-stop shop for its articles on the Middle East as well as original blog posts. It will be edited by Marc Lynch, Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah. Marc writes:

Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel is something different: a vibrant and decidedly non-partisan new site where real expertise and experience take priority over shouting, where the daily debate is informed by dispassionate analysis and original reporting all too often lacking from the stale and talking-point-laden commentary that sadly dominates most coverage of the region today. Its contributors range from academics to former policymakers, from journalists on the ground to established analysts — with an emphasis on introducing voices from Middle East itself. Most importantly, the Middle East Channel comes to you doctrine-free, open to political viewpoints of all kinds — but demanding honesty, civility, and genuine expertise.

Our scope is broad: Israel and its neighbors, Iran’s nuclear program and domestic politics, Iraq, Islamist movements, the Gulf, Turkey, and North Africa, and the struggle for reform and democracy. The Middle East Channel will highlight links between issues and areas of this diverse region of 400 million — as well as provide a unique perspective on America’s challenges there. We’ll have regular interviews with Middle East and Washington players, sharp commentary on the news of the day, and original analysis of new ideas and trends in the region.

I hope it will grow into a more centrist-liberal version of Harvard’s very right-leaning MESH.

There’s already a few interesting pieces up, including Marc on the Iraqi elections, the great Joost Hiltermann on Kirkuk. I have issues with Bernard Avishai’s piece on the Palestinian economy — he’s been peddling the idea that this is a priority, and while it’s important it’s not more important than ending the occupation. He does have some interesting insights into the Israel/Palestine economy in case a two-state solution happens:

Each side will be a culturally distinct city-state, building upwards, integrated with the other in a business ecosystem extending to Jordan, and sharing everything from water to currency, tourists to bandwidth. Over 80 percent of Palestine’s trade is with Israel. What won’t seem trivial is the capacity of Palestine’s economy–currently one-fortieth of Israel’s–to create employment. The mean age of Palestinians in the territories is about 19 years old. If we assume normal rates of growth, and the return of only half of the refugees to a Palestinian state, Palestine would soon become an Arabic-speaking metropolis of perhaps 6 million to 7 million people, radiating east from Jerusalem, and facing off against the Hebrew-speaking metropolis, anchored by Tel Aviv. Olive groves, picturesque as they are, will seem beside the point. So will military notions like strategic depth.

Each side will be a culturally distinct city-state, building upwards, integrated with the other in a business ecosystem extending to Jordan, and sharing everything from water to currency, tourists to bandwidth. Over 80 percent of Palestine’s trade is with Israel. What won’t seem trivial is the capacity of Palestine’s economy–currently one-fortieth of Israel’s–to create employment. The mean age of Palestinians in the territories is about 19 years old. If we assume normal rates of growth, and the return of only half of the refugees to a Palestinian state, Palestine would soon become an Arabic-speaking metropolis of perhaps 6 million to 7 million people, radiating east from Jerusalem, and facing off against the Hebrew-speaking metropolis, anchored by Tel Aviv. Olive groves, picturesque as they are, will seem beside the point. So will military notions like strategic depth.

And there’s more analysis of problems with the Palestinian economy — poor banking system, the mobility problems the occupation has created, and a call for Netanyahu to do more to lift the Israeli-imposed restrictions on the Palestinian economy. Anyway, read it for yourself.

My own contribution was just posted — it’s a reflection on Algeria’s recent regime intrigues:

Why was Algeria’s chief of police killed? The assassination of Ali Tounsi is sending political shockwaves through Algeria. Tounsi had been having a public tiff with the minister of interior, Yazid Zerhouni.  The killer, Chouaib Oultache – a close friend and colleague of Tounsi’s, and former Air Force colonel who headed the police airborne unit – is reported to have been alone with Tounsi.   Eyewitnesses to the murder have disappeared. Oultache is said to have shot himself, or been shot by others, or to have fallen down stairs as he made his escape. He was hospitalized at a military facility and is recovering from his wounds, or he fell into a coma, or he may have woken up and confessed, or he may be dead. His immediate family has disappeared, and his house is now encircled by police whose main job is dissuading journalists from asking too many questions.

Was the murder purely a personal affair, or is Oultache being set up as part of a shadow war carried out through corruption investigations – not only against Oultache, but also the national oil company Sonatrach and the ministry of public works? Do these investigations mean much whenthey steer clear of the really high-level stuff, such as the long-term oil and gas deals with Spain, France or the United States? Or are they simply warning shots to Bouteflika after he threatened to re-open investigations into the assassination of high-ranking security officials in the 1990s as a way to go after the last remaining generals in positions of influence? Some see it as a harbinger of more trouble to come, particularly as they came as rumors that Bouteflika – who is said to have stomach cancer – is dying. You can take your pick of what actually happened.

Read the rest here. 

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United States Institute of Peace, Next Generation Peacebuilding in Iraq is interesting in terms of this blog, as it will include a webcast from Iraq. [today, 2 pm to 3:30 pm (Eastern)]

Also see Meedan, The US Institute of Peace webcast "Next Generation Peacebuilding in Iraq"

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It will be interesting to learn what
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Photo by Iranian Flickr user Leila

As someone who spent part of the late 1990s working on Iraq, I am adamantly against pervasive, population-centric economic sanctions (as opposed to sanctions directed at elites). Perhaps to a greater extent than the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration, the UN sanctions regime pushed by the Clinton administration’s “dual containment” policy were criminally destructive, paving the way for the past decade’s civil war and the complete breakdown of Iraqi society. Charles Tripp, in his history of Iraq, wrote of the sanctions:

Food and medecines were theoretically exempt from the embargo. However, the import of fertilizers, agricultural machinery, pesticides and chemicals that might have a dual use, as well as parts for restoring Iraq’s ruined electricity and water purification systems, was forbidden. Within a relatively short time, the effects of these enforced shortages were being felt by the Iraqi population, as malnutrition and disease took their toll, causing infant mortality rates to rise to levels not seen in Iraq for over forty years. This had little impact on the regime’s priorities.

A more devastating assessment is made by Geoff Dwyer in his The Scourging of Iraq : Sanctions, Law and Natural Justice, which equates the sanctions with war crimes targeting civilian population. The type of sanctions carried out against Iraq were wrong, just as the current siege of Gaza is wrong, and similar sanctions against Iran would also be wrong.

Photo from Flickr user Iraqwar

So it’s somehow alarming to see move for generalized sanctions from the US Congress and energy companies already cutting their links with Iran:

Energy executives said Vitol, Glencore and Trafigura, which have hitherto sold Iran half of its petrol imports of 130,000 barrels a day, stopped supplying Tehran because of mounting political risk. “The political and public relations problems more than outweigh the business rewards,” said one executive.

The sale of petrol to Iran by non-US companies is legal as fuel imports have yet to be included in sanctions against the country. The companies declined to comment.

Vitol’s decision is particularly important as the company is by far the world’s largest oil trader. One executive familiar with Iran’s trade said “Vitol consciously decided not to participate in Iran’s tenders” at the start of the year. Trafigura, the Switzerland-based oil and metals trader, stopped selling to Iran about three months ago, an industry executive said. “They have concluded that there’s too much political and financial risk,” the executive said. Glencore stopped supply in late 2009, breaking a relationship with Iran of more than three decades.

The FT further analyzes where the Iran debate stands, and it’s scary to see this line of thinking:

Supporters, including US lawmakers, argue that cutting off supplies would bring the country’s economy to its knees. To cope, they say, Tehran would need to reduce subsidies to slash consumption, an unpopular measure that would also stoke inflation.

The imposition of petrol rationing in the summer of 2007 led to public anger, with protesters setting a dozen fuel stations on fire. Some opposition supporters hope the increase in energy prices or further economic pressure from sanctions may encourage poorer people finally to join the anti-regime Green Movement.

“If the regime faced damaging economic pressure from a significant reduction in gasoline supplies … it might decide that a nuclear bomb, instead of being the guarantor of the regime’s survival, could be the catalyst of its demise,” says Mark Dubowitz, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which supports sanctions.

I’m not convinced that sanctions would really stop Iran’s nuclear program (some argue that they might accelerate it), but even worse is the idea that they would push people to join the Green Movement. We know from the Iraq experience that sanctions hurt more than helped any resistance to the Saddam regime, and gave it extra tools to pacify the population. 

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Iraq’s election day went off remarkably well. Despite some scattered and tragic violence, there was nothing like the kind of devastating violence threatened by a few insurgent groups and only scattered reports of problems in the electoral process. The de-Baathification shenanigans of Chalabi and al-Lami did some
long-lasting damage to the credibility of state institutions and the
rule of law, but not enough to cripple the elections. The relatively calm election day was overseen, it’s worth emphasizing, by Iraqi security forces and not by U.S. troops — something which I was often informed, over the last year, couldn’t possibly happen. It did. This is simply excellent news, and a credit to the emerging capability of the Iraqi state. So now that election day is past, what now?

[[BREAK]]

First, don’t rush to speculate on who won or what it means. All the Iraqi lists are loudly claiming victory, but the truth is that no official (or even unofficial) results yet seem to exist. The anecdotal evidence still points to the pre-election speculation — Maliki on top, Allawi a strong second, the ISCI/Sadrist Shi’a list fading — but it’s only anecdotal. It does make a difference who comes out on top, and who becomes Prime Minister – Maliki and Allawi, for instance, would have very different styles, as would Chalabi or some such. But at the same time, there’s almost certainly going to be a coalition of some kind (fully inclusive or otherwise) and the differences probably won’t be as stark as some people expect.

Everybody has been predicting that the post-election coalition maneuvering will be long and painful, and could create the kind of security and political vaccuum which caused so many problems in the first half of 2006. I suspect that this is wrong. Iraqis learned from that experience, and they’ve been spending the last half-year gaming out coalition scenarios. I think that we’ll see some intense political jockeying, with escalating warnings of disaster which lead to some worried op-eds about how the U.S. must get involved to resolve the conflict. And then it will resolve itself, likely within a month. I could be wrong — lord knows, Iraq is hard to predict — but that’s my sense. Check back in a month and we’ll see.

The other main headline of the Iraqi election campaign has to be the overwhelmingly nationalist tone of all major politicians and the marginal American role in the process. The election campaign (as opposed to the results, which we still don’t know) showed clearly that Iraqis are determined to seize control of their own future and make their own decisions. The U.S. ability to intervene productively has dramatically receded, as the Obama administration wisely recognizes. The election produced nothing to change the U.S. drawdown schedule, and offered little sign that Iraqis are eager to revise the SOFA or ask the U.S. to keep troops longer. Iraq is in Iraqi hands, and the Obama administration is right both to pay close attention and to resist the incessant calls to "do more." This doesn’t mean ignoring Iraq — the truth is, the Obama administration has been paying a lot more attention to Iraq than the media has over the last year. It means moving to develop a normal, constructive strategic relationship with the new Iraqi government, with the main point of contact the Embassy and the private sector rather than the military, and adhering in every way possible to the SOFA and to the drawdown timeline.

Follow the Middle East Channel for a lot of analysis of the Iraqi election in the coming days!

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Welcome to the Middle East Channel! 

Some of you may have wondered why I haven’t been posting much lately.  Part of the reason is that I’ve been working hard on putting together the Middle East Channel at ForeignPolicy.com.  Creating this site has been my dream for a long time.  With today’s launch, it’s finally come true, after half a year of hard work, with the enthusiastic support of the leadership at Foreign Policy  and a vibrant partnership with Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah’s Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.  It’s also sponsored by the Project on Middle East Political Science, a new network of political scientists specializing in the Middle East which I have been putting together with the support of a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation — much more on that soon! 

I can’t think of a better way to explain what we’re trying to than to quote in full the "Welcome" post which we’ve put up to announce the Middle East Channel:

The world is hardly lacking for opinions about the
Middle East. But quantity should not be mistaken for quality: Too much of the
public debate about the issues of the Middle East is dominated by partisan
bickering and poorly informed punditry.

Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel is something
different: a vibrant and decidedly non-partisan new site where real expertise
and experience take priority over shouting, where the daily debate is informed
by dispassionate analysis and original reporting all too often lacking from the
stale and talking-point-laden commentary that sadly dominates most coverage of
the region today. Its contributors range from academics to former policymakers,
from journalists on the ground to established analysts — with an emphasis on
introducing voices from Middle East itself. Most importantly, the Middle East
Channel comes to you doctrine-free, open to political viewpoints of all kinds –
but demanding honesty, civility, and genuine expertise.

Our scope is broad: Israel and its neighbors, Iran’s
nuclear program and domestic politics, Iraq, Islamist movements, the Gulf,
Turkey, and North Africa, and the struggle for reform and democracy. The
Middle East Channel will highlight links between issues and areas of this diverse
region of 400 million — as well as provide a unique perspective on America’s
challenges there. We’ll have regular interviews with Middle East and Washington
players, sharp commentary on the news of the day, and original analysis of new
ideas and trends in the region.

The Middle East Channel is edited by Marc Lynch
of George Washington University and the Project on Middle East Political
Science and Amjad
Atallah and Daniel Levy,
co-directors of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.
Lynch, who writes the Abu
Aardvark Middle East blog on ForeignPolicy.com, is an expert
on Arab media and politics and is the author most recently of Voices
of the New Arab Public: Al-Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today.
Atallah is an expert in the law of conflict and post-conflict situations and a
former advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team. Levy was an advisor to
former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and is a leading commentator on
Israeli politics and Middle East peace.

You can follow the site on Twitter,
sign up for our RSS
feed,
and subscribe to our twice-weekly email updates to get the latest on what’s
happening on the Middle East Channel and beyond.

I’ll still be blogging here under my own name, while co-directing and co-editing the Middle East Channel.  Feel free to send me your ideas for stories or feedback.   Here we go!  

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