Alon Ben-Meir

In April of this year, I wrote that the upheaval in Syria (the Sunni majority revolt against the Alawite-dominated regime) has turned into a battleground between the Sunni axis led by Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the Shiite axis led by Iran. As events continue to unfold in...

I strongly believe that the time is right for Turkey and Israel to mend their critically important bilateral relationship, which has suffered a precipitous decline since 2010. With the Middle East in turmoil as a result of the Arab Spring, the perilously unfolding crisis in Syria, the concerns around the...

Prime Minister Netanyahu's move to expand his coalition to include Kadima with 28 Knesset members provides him with a majority of 94 out of 120 parliamentarians and represents nothing short of an ingenious political coup or an insidious political scheme, depending on what he does with his historic mandate. Reaching...

As the carnage in Syria continues, the powers that are capable of taking serious measures to stop it are busy finding excuses to explain their collective ineptitude. Meanwhile, the Syrian people are paying with their blood day in and day out while the international community is shamelessly hiding behind UN...

As Israel recently observed sixty-four years of independence, it is critical that Israelis reflect on the path they have taken and ask if the current one is sustainable in the long-term. Much has been achieved since the nation's founding and the Israelis should take immense pride in what they have...

In the past few weeks, the Egyptian revolutionary youth's worst nightmare has come to pass: they have been caught in a horrifying struggle between the old regime and the Islamists amidst chaos in every aspect of Egyptian life. Before the transitional period deadline of June 30 of this year, the...

With the victory of Shaul Mofaz in the leadership contest of the Kadima party, the fractious nature of Israeli politics once again haunts what remains of Israel's peace camp. Mofaz is by no means a perfect candidate but he at least came up with a peace plan with the Palestinians...

In a late 2011 article, I argued that Syria's upheaval thrusts Turkey and Iran into a collision course because they have opposing geostrategic interests in an outcome that neither party can afford to ignore. Four months later, it has become increasingly clear that the Syrian uprising transcends Iran's...

In a recent article, I argued that Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt should accept the fact that they exist and will continue to exist in the same neighborhood indefinitely, both as an acknowledgement of their mutual realities and as a way to end the Israeli-Palestinian...

Regardless of what may come out of Kofi Annan's peace plan to end the internal conflict in Syria, and whatever may emerge from the Arab League meeting this week in Baghdad, the prospect of Assad's fall offers the Kurdish minority in Syria a historic opportunity to gain equal...

A little more than a week ago, a heart-wrenching photo by Rodrigo Abd appeared in the front pages of the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. The horror on the face of...

Since the fall of the Mubarak regime, the conventional wisdom in Israel has suggested that the emergence of an Islamist government in Egypt would necessarily be hostile to the Jewish state. Egypt's parliamentary elections, in which the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) won close to 50 percent of the vote,...

A few days after the Egyptian uprising, I argued that the Arab Spring could well turn into a long and cruel winter due to a host of prominent factors including: the lack of traditional liberalism, the elites' control of business, a military that clings to power and the religious divide...

The failure of President Obama to impose crippling sanctions a few months after assuming office in 2009 makes the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran nuclear facilities in the coming few months increasingly more likely. To prevent Israel from taking unilateral action against Iran, the Obama administration must insist...

Seldom has the dividing line between the forces of moderation and the forces of extremism been so clear in the Middle East. The extremist anti-West, Iran-led Shiite Crescent, consisting of Iraq (largely operating at Iran's behest), Syria, and Lebanon, heavily subsidized by Tehran with political capital and financial resources for...

Israel's National Security: the Psychological Dimension:

No one should fault the Israelis for their preoccupation with national security. Indeed, the Jewish historical experience speaks for itself: centuries of persecution, expulsion, anti-Semitism and segregation culminating with the Holocaust and followed by incessant, violent confrontations with Arab states and the Palestinians....

Russia's foreign policy doctrine appears to be based on rejecting every policy initiative that the United States and the European Union take and only then, beginning to negotiate from ground zero. This has been demonstrated in Russia's Middle East approach where Moscow has chosen extremely shortsighted policy options, allowing the...

This is the first of a series of articles that will address how the psychological dimension of Israeli-Palestinian conflict has and continues to impact every conflicting issue between the two sides and what can be done to mitigate these psychological impediments to reach an agreement based on a two state...

It was strongly suggested by close top officials in the Syrian government that I spoke with more than a decade ago that when Syria's President, Bashar Assad, first assumed power he was determined to introduce some significant political reforms. Why then has he failed to implement at least some of...

Many observers and analysts of the Arab Spring have tended to draw quick conclusions about the successes or failures of the revolutionary upheavals that have swept the Middle East and North Africa based on what has thus far transpired on the ground. This is a common mistake. Every Arab country...