July 1, 2012

In-depth

Israel, Do Yourself a Favor And Treat Gaza as a State

Writing in Al Monitor, Israel’s former National Security Advisor and retired Major General Giora Eiland lays out his own plan for dealing with the hostile leadership in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli policy should be based on the understanding that Gaza is a de-facto state for all intents and purposes. It has clear geographic borders, a stable government that was elected democratically and an independent foreign policy. Our self-righteous refusal to recognize the Hamas regime is folly. The fact that Gaza is a state, even if it is ruled by “evil people,” is preferable to chaos or even the situation that existed in 2007, when the rulership was formally in the hands of the Palestinian Authority but, in effect, its main military power was Hamas.

‘There is a need for a Middle Eastern Ataturk’

Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew K. Brzezinski talks to Al Ahram about post-revolution Egypt, American influence in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Populism is an aspect of democracy, but it is not itself, in every case, the point of departure for creating a democracy. Populism can be very intolerant. It can also be violent. It can be extremist in its views. Populism, in order to become democracy, requires “enlightened leadership” and at the same time some shared notions of what a democracy really involves and what a real constitutional order is like. I fear, and I have said this repeatedly, that the Arab Spring may well be followed by the Arab Winter.

The Lessons of Yitzhak Shamir

Jonathan S. Tobin of Commentary Magazine pays tribute to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who died on June 30 at the age of 96.

Shamir was a man whose life experience had been forged by European anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the War of Independence. But rather than this limiting his understanding of the world as his critics charged, it gave him the foresight to avoid the traps that snare more idealistic leaders. For that he was accused of living in the past, of lacking imagination and of seeing only enemies and struggle. Yet rather than living in an imaginary world in which the Arabs would give up their war against Israel’s existence or where the West could be beguiled into embracing the cause of the Jewish state, Shamir prefer to dwell in the more bleak reality in which Israel actually existed.

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