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

Securing Israel’s Future

February 27, 2008

“The Roadmap that Condoleezza Rice and President Bush are now attempting to force upon Israel is a repetition of the failed policies of the past. Led astray by imperfect and short-sighted Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the medicine the president proposes to force down the throat of the Jewish state is guaranteed to produce the opposite of a true and lasting peace. Instead, the outcome of endless concessions, forced only upon Israel, and known by the bankrupt euphemisms of 'land for peace' or 'risks for peace,' will be war without end.”
--Victor Sharpe, Israel Hasbara Committee, February 13, 2008

“Israel and the vast majority of Israelis adopted and accepted the idea of the two-state solution, because it is connected to our basic goal to keep Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and, in order to do so, we need a Jewish majority and we need legitimacy for Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people. In order to maintain these ultimate goals together… we need to give up some of the land. I believe that we need to do so, even though I believe in the historical, judicial, Biblical right of the Jewish people to the entire land. But since the goal is keeping the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, we need to take these kinds of steps.
--Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni, address to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, February 19, 2008