Latest Articles

This paper discusses the escalation of the refugee crisis following the revolutions of the Arab Spring, which triggered a mass exodus of people fleeing the countries witnessing revolution, including Syria.

This paper monitors the post-2007 trends of US foreign policy towards the Gaza Strip. This paper's discussion first examines the general framework of the US approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict before discussing the quandary posed by the Gaza Strip to that framework. The paper then focuses on the role played by President George W. Bush's administration in creating the impasse over Gaza, deconstructs the efforts to overthrow Hamas, and tracks the attempts to isolate and marginalize the Gaza Strip. Finally, it analyses the status of the Gaza Strip in the respective administrations of US presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The paper concludes that the Gaza Strip represents a predicament to both the US and Israel, to a large extent the outcome of flawed and biased US policies as well as symptomatic of the Zionist project in occupied Palestine; an outcome that cannot justify the crushing crisis caused by the official Egyptian blockade on the Gaza Strip.

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

This study evaluates the strength of the legislative bodies in three Arab countries both on paper and in public opinion. It utilizes an existent measure, the parliamentary power index, to gauge the strength of parliamentary bodies, before comparing that with public perception. The study asks if the power given to legislative bodies reflects the actual impact on policy from the point of view of Arab citizens. This study uses the questions in the ACRPS Arab Opinion Index on the legislative councils of Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait, in comparison with the parliamentary power index, to make this assessment.

The fall of Mosul on June 10, 2014 following the assault by armed factions, with ISIL at the forefront, represented a major point of transformation for the political scene in Iraq, particularly following the withdrawal of the Iraqi military and police, and the succession of cities in northern and western Iraq that fell to ISIL. This paper looks at the accelerating developments in the Iraqi crisis since 2014. It tries to understand and describe the event, and presents two current narratives: the first is that ISIL is the only actor responsible for the planning and implementation of what happened and is happening; and the second observes the revival of the Sunni opposition movements in the context of the Anbar uprising against the Iraqi government. The paper reviews the positions of the forces active internally: the Iraqi government and its allies, the armed factions and their allies, and the Iraqi political forces participating in the political process, and externally in the region and on the global scene.

Book Title: The Women of Palestine in the Struggle to Live [Arabic]

By studying Tunisian foreign policy in the decade after the 2010 popular uprisings, this article contributes to Role Theory by explaining how regional audience expectations influence foreign policy roles. The article first demonstrates how achieved roles develop expectations among regional states as the audience. Then it explains how these expectations condition role enactment. The article shows how Tunisia developed and established a foreign policy posture of strategic distance, defined by neutrality in regional conflicts, adherence to legalism, and pursuit of economic interests. Strategic distance came to be expected by North African states.

Beginning with a review of existing theories of international relations that discuss policies of penetration, this study examines current politics of the Arab regional order. Four different aspects of penetration are reviewed, including intra-Arab threats, rivalry between Arab states to occupy a central position, historical legacy, and multinational companies. The role of Arab elites in processes of penetration by means of their links with international powers and interests is also considered. The study looks at ‘soft’ penetration through an analysis of language, education, media, and civil society organizations, as well as “blatant penetration” like the occupation of Iraq and the spread of foreign military bases. Beyond Arab state actions, the paper also considers intervention by neighboring regional states. The paper finds that variation in the development of political, social, and economic systems has a corresponding influence on the levels of foreign penetration, infiltration, or influence. It also finds that analyzing the Arab region as a single regional system reveals a deep level of military, social, and economic penetration on all levels.

Current scholarship on elections in authoritarian regimes has focused on exploring the relationship between elections and democratization, and it has generally used analytical frameworks and methods imported from the study of genuinely democratic elections to do so. These tendencies have kept scholars from asking a wide range of questions about the micro-level dynamics of authoritarian elections and the systematic differences among them. With these issues in mind, this review examines literature that investigates the purpose of elections in dictatorships; the electoral behavior of voters, candidates, and incumbents in these elections; and the link between elections and democratization. The review ends with a call to redirect the study of authoritarian elections toward uncovering and explaining the important differences among them.

Book Title: The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance Undermining America's Interests in the Middle East [English]