Hariri Tribunal to be postponed until next month in a move linked to a new US approach toward Iran. [Daily Star] Also read Ian Black’s: Rafiq Hariri tribunal: why many in Beirut have lost their thirst for justice and the Hariri Tribunal.
Erdogan becomes first Turkish PM to join Karbala mournings – He reaches out to [...]

Syria: A decade on
Syria, Volume 185 Oxford Business Group
21.07.2010 This month marks the tenth year of Bashar Al Assad’s presidency of Syria, a decade of steady reform which has seen greater economic freedoms extended to several sectors – notably banking and financial services – as part of a transformation from a [...]

Ibrahim Hamidi writes from Damascus about recent business activities that according to him, “are amazing.” A top businessman and banker in Syria also reports that the mood is “upbeat in Damascus.” Evidently people are standing by for important economic indicators during the March investor conference.
Hamidi in al-Hayat covers the serge of businessmen visiting Damascus, the [...]

Following peace-envoy Mitchell’s most recent trip to Israel and Syria, both Middle East countries began to threaten war and accuse the other side of fanning the flames of conflict. Neither Syria nor Israel have an interest in war; nor does Hamas or Hizbullah. They are jockeying for position should Washington insist on talks that that [...]

David Ignatius goes to the heart of Washington’s love -hate relationship with the mukhabarat in today’s Washington Post: Jordan’s ace of spies. The Mukhabarat are the secret police services that dominate Middle Eastern security regimes. The US has become dependent on them to protect its security interests in the region.
Mukhabarat are the antithesis of freedom [...]

“Jordan is a model that works, whether we like it or not,” explains Rami Khouri. He is probably right and this is in the face of the king’s recent dissolution of parliament. Democracy has few real proponents in the Middle East today.
Laith Shubeilat, a moderate Islamist, described Jordan as a police state in which no [...]

For Syria Comment, by Yoav Stern

posted by Alex
Turkish attitude towards the region was very clear last week. Syria in, Israel out.
At the last minute, when Israeli, American and Italian air forces were already on the move towards Turkey, it announced the cancellation of the international part of the exercise.
Israel, and also the US, were of [...]

Eyal Zisser, in a recent Dayan Center policy piece, argues that Assad should be like Sadat and fly to Jerusalem if he wants Netanyahu to give him back the Golan. He decries the lack of imagination among Syrian statesmen.
I like Zisser. He is the head of the Dayan Center, one of, if not the, premier [...]

The Arab Reform Bulletin published by the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace has been upgraded to a full website with comment sections. We have Michele Dunne to thank for this important source of balanced analysis of the Middle East. This month, a good article is: Repentant Jihadists and the Changing Face of Islamism in Egypt by Hussam Tammam.
Tzipi Livni is preparing [...]