Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Contemporary discourse on democratic transformation in the Arab world often lacks a critical assessment of the kind of progress that is taking place on the ground. Marina Ottaway and Julia Choucair-Vizoso launched their new book Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World, a critical assessment of political reform in the Arab world based on ten case studies.
Carnegie's Amr Hamzawy appeared on BBC Radio Scotland to discuss President Bush's visit to the Middle East. The poor domestic situation in Israel and Palestine make significant diplomatic gains unrealistic, argued Hamzawy. Mr. Bush is more likely to make progress on his Iran agenda—pulling Gulf countries closer to the American perception of Iran as the main threat to Western and Arab interests.
Since global change accelerated a decade or so ago, mentioning globalisation has tended to upset many people in the Arab world. Was 2007 the year that the region moved closer -- and more comfortably -- to the rest of the globe?
This week, President Bush will be hosting representatives in Annapolis, MA for an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference. Carnegie's Mohammed Herzallah argues that the Palestinian leadership will be in a position to haggle in Annapolis without being held accountable by their own constituency. There must be a democratic connection between the Palestinian negotiators and the people they represent.
A series of unusual scenes on the streets of the Middle East nurtured an inspiring story line of an emerging “Arab spring” that mimicked the earlier triumph of democracy from the Philippines to Prague: mass demonstrations in Lebanon; joint rallies of Egyptian Islamists and liberals against the Mubarak regime; and elections in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia.
The problem of using democracy as a tool for taming Islamists is not that it fails but that it works far more slowly and uncertainly than policymakers can tolerate. As a long-term solution, however, there is probably no sounder approach than using democracy to incorporate Islamist movements as normal political actors.
On June 25, Carnegie senior associate Nathan Brown presented his commentary "The Peace Process Has No Clothes: The Decay of the Palestinian Authority and the International Response." Daniel Levy of the New American Foundation served as discussant and Marina Ottaway moderated.
Facing an urgent need to defuse crises in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, the United States is now focusing primarily on Arab states' foreign policy behavior and relegating democracy promotion to the background. But despite the risks of encouraging political change in an already chaotic region, abandoning Middle East democracy as a strategic goal would be a tragic and unnecessary mistake.
As the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq enters its fifth year, conflicts and political rivalries in the region appear to be assuming a sectarian edge unseen since the Iraq-Iran war. This time round, though, a new element is in play. It has to do with what is perceived as the growing role being played by Arab Shia who many see is making a radical break with a long tradition of political inactivity.
The International Quartet Committee's proposed roadmap to Israeli-Palestinian peace lacks enforcement mechanisms and wrongly focuses on security issues as preconditions for political progress, argues Sufyan Alissa. Organising internal Palestinian affairs is useless if Israeli policies of building settlements, the separation wall, of controlling natural resources and imposing closures, continue.