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This report highlights some of the major milestones of the Arab democratic transition. The countries covered include Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

This study aims to deconstruct the Algerian security approach towards the Sahara and Sahel region in Africa which is a concern that currently exemplifies a corne stone in its foreign policy, because of its considerable importance to Algeria’s security, as well as to its national interests. Algeria insists on maintaining an autonomous approach in engineering its security strategy in the region while remaining in cooperation with others. By identifying Algeria’s contribution to security arrangements in Africa, the study provides practical examples that reflect Algeria’s security vision on both: the regional and the continental fronts. This study aims to work as a base for future evaluation of Algeria’s contribution to building African security while preserving autonomy.

This research tried to explore different stages of the Zionist "penetration" of British political circles, and to identify the strategies and tactics, which were employed by the "Zionist lobby" organisations in order to win over the British public. The focus of this research was on the Zionist lobby organisations’ methods in Britain, where pro-Israel organisations run "soft" and "hard" pressure tools including publicity, propaganda, direct advertising, editorial advertising, public relations, and funding, to influence the attitude of the British public. The research found that the the pro-Israel lobby had intensified its activities in the last decade, to counter a British public opinion that appeared to have become more sympathetic and understanding of the Palestinian narrative.

This study discusses the most important developments in global climate negotiations since the Rio de Janeiro’s conference of 1992 until the Paris ‘conference in November 2015 that main focus was to control global warming rates. Nevertheless, these rates continue to rise in an unprecedented manner posing dangerous direct threat to all humanity. The study shows the most important achievements accomplished and the most important agreements that the international negotiations have arrived to, indicating the main shortcomings and gaps of these negotiation’s that may hinder the international efforts for reducing emissions’ gasses. The study emphasizes the importance of concentrating on environmental aspects, as well as on financing energy and economy so it would fit the needs of sustainable development, especially in developing countries.

This paper adopts the assumption that the series of foreign interventions which served to transform the Syrian crisis from a domestic revolution into a regionalized, and later globalized, conflict were not the result of factors intrinsic to the revolution itself, but rather the consequences of dramatic changes sweeping across the entire Middle East following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The fallout from 2003 included the collapse of the former tripartite of Arab regional powers: Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia. For the first time, the non-Arab regional powers of Turkey and Iran came to be directly involved in intra-Arab affairs. The latter effectively had an overland border tying it to Syria's Mediterranean coast once the US withdrew the bulk of its military forces from Iraq in 2011. While the Syrian regime had worked to strengthen its ties to both Ankara and Tehran in the wake of its losses following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Syria would fall victim to regional power politics between its two regional neighbors. Once the Syrian revolution was militarized, in response to the Damascus regime's iron-fisted approach to peaceful popular protests, Turkish-Iranian rivalry over the future of Syria quickly became bloody. In an attempt to limit the extent of influence not only by Turkey but also its ally Iran, the Syrian regime resorted to seeking out additional foreign support, latterly from Russia.

Discussions regarding the relative success of Tunisia's democratic transition, argues Ladrissi, remain premature. His paper examines the extent to which particular Tunisian specificities could explain the relative success of Tunisia to date when compared to other Arab Spring states: the role of women in society; the legacy of founding president Bourguiba; and the role of Tunisian civil society. The paper asks if Tunisia will ultimately succeed in sowing the seeds of a permanent and lasting democracy. It sets out from the assumption that a functioning democratic system is predicated on three main factors: political dialogue; social homogeneity; and an organic state. Later, the author moves on to examine three distinct, if seemingly interdependent, aspects of transitional justice: the political responsibility of the previous political leadership; the criminal liability of those leaders for violations of human rights; and responsibility in questions of bribery and corruption. Finally, the paper summarizes three major threats to the Tunisian democratic experiment: the country's economic crisis, the weakening of the Tunisian state and terrorism.

​A one-day academic symposium hosted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will bring together experts from Russia, the Arab world and the region to examine Moscow’s latest military intervention in Syria, on Saturday, October 24, 2015. While Russia’s decision to intervene directly in the conflict in Syria comes as the culmination of more than four years of diplomatic and military support for the Assad regime, the move by the Kremlin to deploy its military forces has come as a surprise to many observers, becoming a turning point not only in the militarized revolution within Syria, but also in the broader Middle East and indeed in a larger global arena. To better study the circumstances which gave rise to the Russian maneuver and the outcomes likely to result from it, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will convene “Russian Military Intervention in Syria: Motives, Objectives and Repercussions”. In the highly volatile climate which the Middle East is presently witnessing, selected participants at the meeting will be asked to examine the fallout of Russia’s actions on the future stability of the region.

This report chronicles some of the most significant developments relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict

In his paper Yilmaz reviews the main events since Turkey’s June 2015 elections prior to the rerun in November, the main results of the elections, the factors behind the result, and the implications of this for Turkish domestic and foreign policy.

The current Sinai issue poses many questions on the nature of the escalating violence there, the reasons for its emergence