Middle East

By Anne Irfan | (The Conversation) | – – The Trump administration has announced that it will drastically cut its donations to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Instead of the US$125m expected, UNRWA will now receive only US$60m from the US to fund its services for […]

Israel/ Palestine

Palestinians in Jerusalem and West Bank join Gaza in General Strike to protest Pence

contributors

IMEMC | – – As U.S. Vice President and Christian Zionist Mike Pence visited Jerusalem Tuesday, Palestinian stores and businesses across the city and across the West Bank were shuttered to protest the Vice President’s visit. They joined a general strike that began a day earlier in the Gaza Strip to bring attention to the […]

Arab World

Jordan’s King Abdullah warns Pence-Trump of Major instability over Jerusalem

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Political scientist John Mearsheimer wrote a book on the tragedy of great power politics. While that subject is indeed shockingly depressing, imagine the tragedy of small power politics. Poor King Abdullah II of Jordan was forced to host Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, the world’s biggest […]

Pentagon

Top Trump officials, in Syria’s Raqqa, vow “Stabilization” w/out “Reconstruction”

Juan Cole

Middle East Monitor | – – The US government’s aid chief, Mark Green, made an unannounced visit to Raqqa in Syria on Monday, the most senior US civilian official from the Trump administration to visit the war-struck northern city months after it was retaken from Daesh, Reuters reports. Green was accompanied by head of the […]

Featured

Turkey launches Land invasion of Syria, Calls France opposition “Terrorism”

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – BBC Arabic reports that Turkey has launched a land invasion of the Kurdish-majority Afrin canton in northern Syria, home to some 500,000 Kurds. Turkey has also flooded Arab fundamentalist fighters into the region, calling them “Free Syrian Army.” The move comes after some 72 Turkish F-16s […]

Israel/ Palestine

Trump’s deeming Jerusalem Israeli Capital Portends Fiercer Mideast, Iran Conflicts

contributors

By Kenneth Brown | (Informed Comment) | – – As a visiting student in Jerusalem I witnessed the 1956 Suez war against Egypt, the attempt by Israel, France and the U.K. to bring down Nasser and undermine the Algerian revolution. I heard then P.M. Ben Gurion declare to an excited crowd in Zion Square that […]

China

Is China coming into Syria for its “One Belt, One Road”?

Neil Thompson

By Neil Thompson | (Informed Comment) | – – As the Syrian civil war begins to wind down after six and a half years of bitter fighting, a new phase is emerging in the battered country’s political life — plans for country’s postwar reconstruction are already being laid even as the fighting between Islamist rebels […]

Egypt

Pence starts Middle East tour in Egypt, pledges ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ support

contributors

Middle East Monitor | – – US Vice President Mike Pence kicked off a trip to the Middle East on Saturday with a visit to Egypt, where he pledged firm US backing to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the nation’s fight against militants. Pence said ties between the two countries had never been stronger after […]

Arms Sales

10,000 Deaths Later Germany Bars Arms Sales to Yemen Attackers

contributors

TeleSur | – – Only in the third financial quarter of 2017 German arms sale to Saudi Arabia accounted for US$550 million. Spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Friday the country will “immediately” stop all arms exports to countries involved in the ongoing war in Yemen, which began in March 2015 and has so […]