In-Depth Coverage

Original Commentaries

08/07/08: How to Deal with Jerusalem —Lt. Col. (Res.) Ron Shatzberg, Project Director, Economic Cooperation Foundation. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.
08/07/08: How to Deal with Jerusalem —
08/05/08: Why Did Maliki Call for a Timeline? —by Christopher Kojm who teaches at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and is a former senior advisor to the Iraq Study Group. Original Commentary for Middle East Bulletin.

Setting the Record Straight

Already Divided

“Even the Arab minority in the city has shown its preference for living under Israeli rule, as many have moved to the Israeli side of the security barrier being built around Jerusalem. Their choice is reasonable, as Jerusalem offers the quality of life of a modern western city while only a few kilometers away the norm is a third world standard of living, chaos and religious intolerance. An undivided Jerusalem is the best guarantee of a better life for all Jerusalemites.”
—Nathan Diament, Director of Public Policy, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, July 23, 2008

“Those who believe that Jerusalem should not be divided, and mean by that that the Arab neighborhoods should not be separated from the city, should be the first to insist that an active policy be adopted by the government and the municipality to improve the lot of local Arab residents. Barring that, Jerusalem will continue to remain a divided city.”
—Moshe Arens, former Israeli defense and foreign minister (Likud), “A Story of Neglect,” Haaretz, July 28, 2008

Middle East Analysis

Israel Releases 199 Palestinian Prisoners —
Significant Lebanese-Syrian Meeting Overshadowed by Bombing —
The Challenge of Jerusalem —Prof. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, head, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies; professor of international relations, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.

Letter of the Law, Spirit of the International System

October 22, 2007

"We are selling weapons to Syria, as we do to many other countries; accordingly, we are doing the same as many other producers of arms. Everything that we sell... fully transparently meets our international obligations and our... export control legislation [is] one of the toughest in the world… Deliveries to Syria are for defensive arms and in no way can that balance be disrupted."
--Russian Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov, remarks after a Quartet meeting at the UN headquarters, September 23, 2007

"[N]ot everything that is legal in the narrowest sense is good for the international system. And clearly, in the case of Iran and Syria, you have states that are engaged in destabilizing behavior in one of the world's most volatile regions, and by the way a region where we and the Russians are working together to try to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a more stable Lebanon, a more stable Iraq. And so yes, it's a problem that we're continuing to work on."
--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Interview with ABC, Moscow, Russia, October 13, 2007