CAMBRIDGE: There's a joke making the rounds in the Middle East these days: three of Egypt's former presidents, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar El-Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak, meet in hell and ask each other how they fell. Nasser replies “poison”; Sadat says (...)
CAMBRIDGE: The Arab revolutions have challenged many conceptions about change in the Arab world. They have also challenged perspectives regarding several key players in the region, including Al-Qaeda and other extremist organizations whose (...)
CAMBRIDGE: The lack of democracy in the Arab world results from an unholy alliance between Western interests and local autocrats, justified by what both sides claim to be the region's “cultural specificity.” In a nutshell, it has been much easier (...)
Last week I spoke to a group of former militants in the Khan Younes refugee camp in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. Many assured me that it was only a matter of time before Al-Qaeda arrived in Palestine. The atmosphere in Palestinian areas is (...)
In the month since the agreement reached in Mecca between Fatah and Hamas, the implications for Palestine and the region have become increasingly apparent. The "Mecca agreement may have registered in the international media mainly for its role in (...)
