Posted in Alan Dowty, Bernard Haykel, Bruce Jentleson, Chuck Freilich, Egypt, Harvey Sicherman, Josef Joffe, Mark N. Katz, Mark T. Kimmitt, Martin Kramer, Michael Mandelbaum, Michael Reynolds, Michael Rubin, Michael Young, Michele Dunne, Philip Carl Salzman, Public Diplomacy, Raymond Tanter, Walter Laqueur on Jun 5th, 2009 3 Comments »
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On June 4, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a much-anticipated address to the world’s Muslims, from a podium at Cairo University. (If you cannot see the embedded video above, click here. The text is here.) The following MESH members responded to an invitation to comment on the speech: Alan Dowty, [...]
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From J. Scott Carpenter
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting yesterday with a group of young Egyptian activists at the State Department was a welcome and long-overdue development. These young people somehow managed to elicit the words “democracy” and “human rights” in the same sentence from the Secretary, something that until yesterday she had managed only [...]
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From Tamara Cofman Wittes
The selection of Egypt for President Obama’s long-awaited speech to the Muslim world was not an easy choice, but it is an audacious one. There was no easy option among the various Muslim capitals proposed for the address: a non-Arab capital risked alienating Arabs who view their region as the cradle of [...]
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From Michele Dunne
After several years in which Egypt seemed to have ceded the mantle of Arab leadership to Saudi Arabia (and even to small states such as Qatar), the octogenarian Husni Mubarak has become reenergized in the last few months. He came out swinging against Hezbollah last week, charging the Lebanese group with efforts to [...]
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From Harvey Sicherman
Churchill once observed that “jaw-jaw” was better than “war-war.” This advice has not been taken very often in the Middle East. Indeed, so rare is it that the very act of “jaw-jaw” has been celebrated as a breakthrough even if not very much—except a process—results from it.
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From Michele Dunne
During the recent Israeli military operation and subsequent efforts to reach a durable ceasefire, Egypt demonstrated that it has two principal interests related to Gaza: first, avoiding taking on responsibility for the one and a half million Palestinians living there; and second, transferring control of Gaza back to the Palestinian Authority led by [...]
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From Alan Dowty
There seems to be a general sense that the Gaza war is over. The shooting has stopped, at least for the most part, at least for now. The pundits, not excluding this one, are lining up to declaim. But in some respects all this is a bit premature; the outcome is not yet [...]
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