In-Depth Coverage

Original Commentaries

11/20/08: Pakistan: Learning the Right Lessons from Iraq —Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA), Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Original Commentary for Middle East Bulletin.
11/13/08: The View from Gaza —Taghreed El-Khodary, New York Times journalist in Gaza and Harvard University Nieman Fellow (2005-2006). Interviewed by Middle East Bulletin.
11/04/08: Getting on the Right Track —Dalia Rabin, chairperson, Rabin Center, and daughter of the late Yitzhak Rabin. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.

Setting the Record Straight

Keeping Focus on Long-Term Objectives

“[W]hile we do need to have a cooperative approach that involves many of our friends and allies in meeting with the Pakistanis, … as we work out with them a rough division of labor, the U.S., I believe, ought to be taking the lead in addressing the issues in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. And given the difficulty of doing so, I suspect that we will not have a great deal of difficulty in convincing them to allow us to take the lead there. But as we all know, there is a real tension between our short-term tactical aims in trying to capture or kill terrorists across the border and militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and our longer- term counterinsurgency pacification goals. We very much need to be focusing on the end state. What is it that we want this area to look like? ... In that context we need to have a common agenda with the Pakistani government and very much to include the military on counterinsurgency in that area. There needs to be, therefore, a focus on combining military efforts with economic, development and political development in those areas.”
—Robert L. Grenier, managing director and chairman for Global Security Consulting, Kroll, event, “Partnership for Progress: Advancing a New Strategy for Prosperity and Stability in Pakistan and the Region,” Center for American Progress, November 17, 2008

Middle East Analysis

Partnership for Progress —Caroline Wadhams, Brian Katulis, Lawrence J. Korb & Colin Cookman, Center for American Progress
Dealing With Pakistan Is Risky Business —Lee H. Hamilton, president, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, former chairman, House Foreign Affairs Committee
How Not to Lose Afghanistan (and Pakistan) —Peter Bergen, senior fellow, New America Foundation

What Would Have Happened If…

November 5, 2007

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)

Imagine a world in which the rally marking the twelfth anniversary of Rabin’s assassination does not take place. A world without Yigal Amir and his handgun and his infant son awaiting circumcision. A world in which Yitzhak Rabin got down off the stage in November 1995 and rode from there in his armored car with his loyal bodyguards and arrived at his home, and afterwards perhaps defeated Bibi and was elected as prime minister again, stubborn in his redheaded way and continuing the Oslo Accords.

Would that have been a completely different world from the one that surrounded last night’s rally for Yitzhak Rabin? Would it have been quieter? Would the many who were killed in the Intifada afterwards still be with us? History is full of such "ifs." But that thought did not leave me during this annual ceremony that repeats itself to exhaustion, that every year shows the last speech once again, Eitan Haber’s agonized cry, the shock. …

Is a ceremony necessary? After all, for some Israelis, all Israeli existence since 1995 is a kind of ongoing mourning rally in memory of the last prime minister who could be defined as a responsible man, a real person in charge, who sought to create a new Israeli agenda in which education, for example, moved to center stage.
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