لن يسمح الشعب المصري لفرعون جديد أن يحكم مصر يجب أن يوفر الدستور الجديد العدالة الاجتماعية وحقوق المواطنة تطبيق الشريعة يعني الارتقاء بمستوى معيشة المصريين وليس تطبيق الأحكام لا مكان لامتيازات جديدة للقوات المسلحة في دستور مصر More »

Opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi clashed near the presidential palace in Cairo, Wednesday.  More »

Egypt’s constitution-making process has seemingly attained warp speed. Facing the threat of judicial dissolution, members of the Egyptian Constituent Assembly voted last Thursday to accept a draft of a new constitution. President Mohamed Morsi has called for an “almost immediate referendum” in which a majority is likely to approve the document. Is this extralegal process More »

President Mohamed Morsi’s recent constitutional declaration was a blow to the goals of the revolution – to achieve a real democratic transformation, to establish the rule of law, a separation of powers, and an independent judiciary. In effect, the president declared himself Pharaoh, putting himself above any challenge or opposition. Despite the decree extending the deadline for More »

This week saw continuing conflict in Syria with the added twist of the Internet being completely shut down in the country. Protests were seen in Bahrain and Kuwait, but the ones getting the headlines were in Egypt, where strife continued over the president’s new powers and the draft of the new constitution. But the More »

As U.S. President Barack Obama approaches the beginning of his second term, experts caution that his Administration must radically rethink its strategy to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal or risk seeing its stated goal of a two-state solution slip away. Such was the conclusion of a Washington symposium organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International More »

Outside of Bahrain government supporters, it’s hard to find anyone who thinks the country’s reform process is going okay. To mark last week’s anniversary of the publication of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), the report ordered by the King of Bahrain into human rights violations in early 2011, the regime evaluated its own More »

Gunmen have killed a diplomat from Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a.  Yemeni security officials and diplomatic sources say attackers wearing security force uniforms shot at the Saudi diplomat’s car today, killing him and his bodyguard. Susan Yackee asked Robert Powell, a senior Middle East analyst and Yemen expert with The Economist Intelligence Unit More »

Well, at least President  Mohamed Morsi knows when to retreat. Last week, basking in the glow of having helped broker a cease-fire in Gaza, Morsi issued a decree that in essence gave Egypt’s president power over the judiciary. But in the face of growing street protests, he now appears to be backpedaling away from More »

On Friday, President Mohamed Morsi gave a heated speech outside the presidential palace, before an enthusiastic crowd. His supporters chanted “The people want God’s law,”  and also called for the dissolution of the Supreme Constitutional Court. An equally enthusiastic group of Egyptians amassed in Tahrir protesting against a constitutional decree issued by Morsi the More »

The week began in a military conflict, ended with a political conflict, and had a truce in-between. The clash between Hamas and Israel ended with an Egyptian brokered cease-fire. While Palestinians in Gaza celebrated, those in the West Bank pondered the future of relations with Israel and with Hamas. Meanwhile, deaths continued to mount in More »

For any astute observer watching Jordan over the past several months, the violent protests that erupted last week in response to hikes in fuel prices were certainly no surprise. While Jordanians appreciate their relative stability – particularly with news of the deadly destruction in Syria and tinderbox tension in nearby Lebanon – the underlying More »

It is a curb on freedom of expression to temporarily refuse to grant licenses for public demonstrations. However, freedom of expression in an absolute sense is also curbed when a magazine refuses to publish cartoons highly offensive to millions of Muslims; or when a prominent Holocaust-denier and anti-Semite who incites hatred is banned from More »

Egypt’s draft constitution is supposed to be ready by December 12; however, many political forces are already rejecting the draft constitution and the deadline may not be met. Amr Hamzawy, founder of the Free Egypt Party and former liberal member of the Egyptian People’s Assembly, explained at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington More »

A small number of exiled Syrians in Paris, Cairo and other cities launched a radio station called SouriaLi (My Syria / Surrealist) in October for the people of war-torn Syria. The programming is uncensored and available from a Cairo studio as a web-based series of podcasts on www.souriali.com. Two of the station’s founders spoke More »

In Turkey, it is not “publish or perish” that scholars must fear.  It is prison. There was a time, not very long ago, when Turkey seemed on the edge of a new era of academic and intellectual freedom.  New private universities created institutional support for more independent scholarship, while the Turkish government showed at least More »

All eyes were on the Gaza Strip and Israel as the tension between them turned into an air battle. Egypt and others are trying to mediate a truce, but Israel is preparing for a ground war. Jordanians protested the lifting of fuel subsidies, making some think the demonstrations could turn into anti-government disobedience. The More »

As Middle East protests go, it was hardly a blip on the radar screen:  2,000 people staged a rally in downtown Amman Friday to protest the cutting of fuel subsidies earlier in the week.  The protest was largely quiet – and the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and best-organized opposition group, did not participate. Reporter Paul More »

Asia specialists will not openly admit it, but they hate the Middle East. To them, the Middle East is the great distraction that keeps people from focusing on what’s really important – their own area in the Western Pacific. The media are primarily to blame, according to this narrative. The media love sudden drama, even More »