Jordanians protest both Israeli soldiers shooting Amman magistrate court judge Ra’ed Zu’eiter and King Abdullah’s lack of a response.
Jordanian Officials Fail to Respond to Israeli Shooting of Amman Judge
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Jordan
Jordanian Women Who Marry Immigrants Denied Civil Rights
If they marry non-Jordanians, Jordanian women are only granted something called “services rights.”
Will the Jordanian Parliament Expel the Israeli Ambassador from Amman?
Why did 89 members of Parliament decide to create a false perception of solidarity with the Palestinians?
King Abdullah of Jordan Learns How Loaded His Gestures, Words, and Facial Expressions Are
The carelessness with which King Abdullah conducted his Atlantic interview was a disaster that could easily have been prevented.
Arab Democracy Now!
The campaign against dictatorship in the Arab world has brought together some strange bedfellows. The Bush administration’s neoconservatives darkly dreamed of democracy promotion in the Middle East before the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires became the stuff of nightmares. Sharing the same bed, but dreaming different dreams, have been the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Islamists who have long railed against the injustices of authoritarian regimes in locales such as Egypt, Syria, and the Gulf States. And now, of course, the predominantly young protestors of Tunisia have turned dream into reality by ousting their dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years at the helm.
On the Brink of Peace in the Middle East?
Over the past half decade a broad consensus has emerged among informed observers in the Middle East that recent U.S. policies in the region – from Iraq and Iran to our approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah – have been ill-conceived and executed, and have damaged both America’s standing in the region and prospects for peace and stability in the area. Yet a series of local initiatives this year suggests that an important restructuring of relationships across the region might lead to some resolution to a number of the region’s thorniest problems.
The Iraqi Refugee Crisis
With the violence in Iraq showing no sign of slowing down, civilians increasingly suffer. The UN estimates that 2.6 million Iraqis have fled violence in their country since 2003 and at least 40-50,000 more Iraqis are leaving their homes every month. Two million have fled to surrounding countries, while some 1.8 million have vacated their homes for safer areas within Iraq. Middle Eastern countries, Syria and Jordan in particular, have shown great generosity in welcoming Iraqis in the past three years, but that welcome is wearing thin. Other countries throughout the Middle East, including Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Iran and Turkey are also seeing increased flows.
The Horrors of "Extraordinary Rendition"
Editors Note: Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who is barred from entering the United States, delivered his acceptance speech for the Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award in a pre-recorded videotape. This is a transcript of his speech, which was viewed at the award ceremony hosted by the Institute for Policy Studies on Oct. 18, 2006 in Washington, DC.
Bush at the UN: Annotated
President George W. Bush’s address before the United Nations General Assembly on September 19 appeared to be designed for the domestic U.S. audience. Indeed, few of the foreign delegations or international journalists present could take seriously his rhetoric regarding the promotion of democracy in the Middle East, given the reality of U.S. policy in the region.
In Iraq, with Zarqawi Gone, It’s on to the Next Villain
While U.S. coalition forces and Abu Musab al Zarqawi were intertwined in a perverse deadly duel, Iraqis were caught in the crossfire. To most Iraqis Zarqawi was an American creation–he was just another foreigner using Iraq to stage his pyrotechnics under the auspices of spreading his ideology. Iraqis are happy to see him eliminated from the scene.