Shibley Telhami

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Illustration by Mark Harris; Photo Source: Reuters

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Israel’s devastating response to Hamas’s shocking October 7 attack has produced a humanitarian catastrophe. During the first 100 days of war alone, Israel dropped the kiloton equivalent of three nuclear bombs on the Gaza Strip, killing some 24,000 Palestinians, including more than 10,000 children; wounding tens of thousands more; destroying or damaging 70 percent of Gaza’s homes; and displacing 1.9 million people—about 85 percent of the territory’s inhabitants. By this point, an estimated 400,000 Gazans were at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations, and infectious disease was spreading rapidly. During the same period in the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers or Israeli troops, and more than 3,000 Palestinians were arrested, many without charges.…  Seguir leyendo »

Palestinians arguing with Israeli soldiers in Susya, West Bank, June 2020. Mussa Qawasma / Reuters

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In response to Israel’s One-State Reality.

By Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami

Dangerous Delusions

Anyone seeking to understand why U.S. policy in the Middle East keeps failing—especially on the Israeli-Palestinian issue—need only read “Israel’s One-State Reality” (May/June 2023) by Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami. The essay suffers from the same refusal to face facts that led the United States to launch abortive wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and reflects the same devotion to ideological nostrums that convinces Washington, time and again, to brand dictators as reformers and allies as pariahs. The result is a scattershot argument that blames Israel for the death of the two-state solution and urges the United States to shun its closest friend in the Middle East in order to force it to abandon its Jewish identity.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israel’s One-State Reality

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in Israel with a narrow, extreme right-wing coalition has shattered even the illusion of a two-state solution. Members of his new government have not been shy about stating their views on what Israel is and what it should be in all the territories it controls: a Greater Israel defined not just as a Jewish state but one in which the law enshrines Jewish supremacy over all Palestinians who remain there. As a result, it is no longer possible to avoid confronting a one-state reality.

Israel’s radical new government did not create this reality but rather made it impossible to deny.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israeli soldiers monitor a street to prevent Palestinians from entering through an Israeli security fence into Israeli area in the village of Tarqumiya near the West Bank city of Hebron on Sunday. (Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

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Is the Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution dead? Would a Biden administration decision to return to the JCPOA — the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — reduce the risk of Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb? How important were the Arab uprisings a decade ago, and are they coming back?

The Middle East never lacks for commentary and opinions. Several high-quality surveys regularly ask political scientists and foreign policy experts their views on U.S. policy in the region. But what do scholarly experts on the Middle East think?

Last week, we fielded a unique survey of scholars with expertise in the Middle East, the first of our new Middle East Scholar Barometer.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israeli police officers carry the coffin of their comrade Zidan Saief, 30, a member of Israel's Druze minority, during his funeral in his northern home village of Yanuh-Jat, on November 19, 2014. Saief died after suffering severe injuries, bringing the death toll to five, when two Palestinians armed with a gun and meat cleavers burst into the synagogue and killed four Israelis before being shot dead in Jerusalem's bloodiest attack in years. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

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The horrific attack on a Jerusalem synagogue last month has generated heated discussion about the causes of violence. The latest villain — an old one, really — is inflammatory Palestinian rhetoric. But it’s the wrong explanation for a much deeper problem. Incitement can make matters worse, but it is rarely a primary cause of violence and often is its outcome.

We have been here before. From 1998 to 2000, I served on the American side of the Trilateral U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee, which came out of the Wye River agreements. Benjamin Netanyahu was in his first stint as Israeli prime minister and, having opposed the Oslo agreements, he had been pressured into the talks by President Bill Clinton.…  Seguir leyendo »

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The debate over how to handle Iran’s nuclear program is notable for its gloom and doom. Many people assume that Israel must choose between letting Iran develop nuclear weapons or attacking before it gets the bomb. But this is a false choice. There is a third option: working toward a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. And it is more feasible than most assume.

Attacking Iran might set its nuclear program back a few years, but it will most likely encourage Iran to aggressively seek — and probably develop — nuclear weapons. Slowing Iran down has some value, but the costs are high and the risks even greater.…  Seguir leyendo »

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As the Palestinians seek U.N. support for a state of their own, Washington has advanced two arguments to dissuade them: first, that taking the issue of statehood to the United Nations is a unilateral move away from negotiations with Israel; and second, that the effort will be counterproductive because the United States will veto any such U.N. Security Council resolution.

These arguments miss the point. The United Nations may in fact be just the place to invigorate stalled diplomacy. The question should not be what would happen when the United States vetoes the U.N. resolution but what if it doesn’t.

Israelis and Palestinians have been in conflict for decades, and Israel has controlled the West Bank and Gaza for 44 years.…  Seguir leyendo »

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As President Bush travels through the Middle East, the prevailing assumption is that Arab states are primarily focused on the rising Iranian threat and that their attendance at the Annapolis conference with Israel in November was motivated by this threat. This assumption, reflected in the president's speech in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, could be a costly mistake.

Israel and the Bush administration place great emphasis on confronting Iran's nuclear potential and are prepared to engage in a peace process partly to build an anti-Iran coalition. Arabs see it differently. They use the Iran issue to lure Israel and the United States into serious Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking, having concluded that the perceived Iranian threats sell better in Washington and Tel Aviv than the pursuit of peace itself.…  Seguir leyendo »