After attending two back-to-back "international dialogues of civilizations," one in Doha, Qatar (Jan. 9-12) organized by Brookings Institution and the Emir of Qatar, and another at UNESCO in Paris (Jan. 17-19) hosted by UNESCO, Euro Mediterranean, and President Jacques Chirac, I cannot help but reflect on the promise and the politics of dialogues.
A letter purportedly written to senior al Qaeda leaders by a key associate, Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, appears to undermine a major thesis of hard-core neoconservatives who led the U.S. drive to war in Iraq.
On February 20th Iran elected its seventh Majlis (parliament) in an election that has been widely criticized by many Iranian and international observers for the heavy-handed manner in which the regime had interfered in the electoral process. The conservative Council of Guardians disqualified an estimated 2,500 candidates from standing for election–by some counts nearly four times the number of barred candidates in the 2000 Majlis elections. As a result, Iran ‘s conservative factions recaptured control of the Majlis at the expense of the reformist movement associated with President Mohammad Khatami. The political discourse within Iranian domestic politics has thus been re-centered within the conservative camp.
The U.S. veto of a proposed UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel’s March 22 assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin has once again placed the United States both on the fringe of international public opinion and in opposition to international legal norms. Despite the proposed resolution condemning “all attacks against civilians,” the United States once again was the lone dissenting vote, marking the 28 th time since 1970 that the U.S. has blocked a Security Council resolution criticizing the actions of its most important Middle Eastern ally.
The recent release on April 22 of Mordechai Vanunu from an Israeli prison provides an opportunity to challenge the U.S. policy of supporting Israel ’s development of nuclear weapons while threatening war against other Middle Eastern states for simply having the potential for developing such weaponry.
A major battle in the “War on Terror” was lost last month and not a shot was fired.
On its face, President George Bush’s recent endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s land grab in the occupied territories makes little sense. The plan, under which Israel would abandon Gaza while permanently annexing most of the West Bank, has met with almost universal condemnation.
“Scary Movie 3” may be hitting U.S. theaters this month but the real nightmare won’t be on Elm Street, but on the streets of Fallujah, Baghdad, and Cairo. U.S. public diplomacy is “a disaster,” according to former U.S. Information Agency (USIA) director Joseph Duffey, under whom I served as an educational exchange and cultural affairs specialist from 1993-1994.
On Wednesday, June 23, 2004, the U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, endorsed right-wing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s efforts to colonize and annex large sections of the Palestinian West Bank, seized by Israel in the June 1967 war.
The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences of the Israeli Wall in the Occupied Territories is a triumphant vindication of the Palestinian decision to get their case heard there, and of their long term strategy of underlining and restating their legal rights. In effect, the Court ruled against Israel and its patron, the U.S., on every point. It appears that even the Arab states and the Palestinians may not have been entirely prepared for such an unqualified victory.