Sharmine Narwani

Since the first public protests broke out in Syria last March, the narratives about the Syrian crisis have stayed fairly true to the theme of all the Arab Revolts. An authoritarian ruler out to crush peaceful opposition to his regime opens fire on civilians and the number of protestors skyrockets...

For Middle East watchers, the revelation that a major head of state called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "liar" is, well, not exactly news. French president Nicholas Sarkozy needs to get in line behind the many other politicians who have thrown up their arms over Netanyahu's unusual...

I recently spoke with a friend who has been in and around Washington's Mideast foreign policy establishment for three decades. "I have never seen policymakers so confused," this political insider told me in regard to U.S. plans in the region.

The old paradigms of supporting Israel unconditionally, marginalizing political Islam...

The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), the UN Security Council-initiated investigation into the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, formally unveiled its indictment of four alleged Hezbollah "supporters" last week.

There was nothing new in this document. Almost all details had...

Note: The Arabic "Irhal," which means "Leave" or "Go away," is the most powerful slogan of the Arab Awakening that has emerged through much of the Middle East and North Africa since January 2011. It has been chanted against dictators in street protests in every Arab nation facing popular discontent....

On Thursday, the UN's Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), a Security Council backed investigation of the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, delivered its first round of indictments against four suspects.

Some had predicted that after six years of anticipation, followed by a year of...

On Sunday, around 1,000 unarmed civilians marched to the ceasefire line between Syria and the Golan Heights to protest Israel's occupation of Arab lands following the 1967 war. Hours later, in the worst bloodshed since the 1973 war between Israel and Syria, up to 23 civilians were dead...

UPDATE - see below

"You know what scares Israel more than Arab armies or Iranian nukes? Palestinian refugees simply walking home." - Seen on Twitter on Nakba Day

Sunday marked the Nakba -- or day of "catastrophe" in Arabic -- referring to the 1948 declaration of...

A public spat between Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made international headlines last week. Politics is rarely ever a harmonious business in any country, so why the brouhaha over this particular stand-off?

To be sure, the disagreement itself was an unusual occurrence. Khamenei's...

I'm not arguing that Shiites have a lot in common with rodents and insects. But you wouldn't know it by watching Bahrainis and Saudis snuff them out with barely a peep from Western and majority-Sunni Arab nations, both.

Shia-majority Iran, Iraq and the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah have been the...

Popular revolts may be spinning through the Arab world with a fervor and determination not seen in decades, but efforts to sidetrack the reform momentum are also gaining strength.

Three issues have plagued the region for decades and threaten to derail progress at every turn. I call them the Mideast's...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to have a tough time grasping what kids on the streets of Cairo and Manama understand with ease. Politicians -- elected and otherwise -- have no place to hide. Their every turn of phrase, their every move, is digested in real-time across the...

Valentine's Day, and not a whole lot of love in the Middle East, as clashes between government forces and protestors broke out in Bahrain, Iran and Yemen.

Washington, as usual, did nothing right.

After hemming and hawing through the widespread Egyptian uprising against staunch US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak, the Obama...

What is interesting about the tsunami of change sweeping through the Middle East this past month is that the "dumb, undeserving-of-democracy" Arab masses have turned out to be magnificently saavy, efficient , focused and determined in flipping over longstanding dictatorships.

And it turns out they are polite too. Arab populations...

The Palestine-Israel conflict is no pesky regional skirmish. This century-long battle over territory threatens to draw the entire global community into its bowels if it is not dealt with soon, and the only way out of the current paralysis is to kill the "peace process" once and for all.

There...

Picking up a copy of the English-language Daily Star in Beirut this summer, I was struck by the lead story. A photo of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, flanked by his Arab counterparts, accompanied this huge headline: "Arab Nations Applaud Turkey's Erdogan for Tough Stand on Israel."

What a...

The New York Times' lengthy explanation of why it decided to publish the WikiLeaks Cables leaves out one important consideration. What on earth would the State Department have done if a major US paper had not "interpreted" the information dump for the American masses?

Someone had to take on the...

This entry has been UPDATED - see below.

Welcome to the Pyramids. Here, to your right, lies the ancient world in all its glory and splendor. The birthplace of a civilization, the incubator of innovation, arts, sciences. And to your left lies modern Egypt and an example of the intrinsic...

Lebanon expects to hear the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) deliver indictments in the investigation of ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's 2005 murder imminently. Tension is rife as speculators ply their trade, and the country has split into predictable camps - those who believe the STL is an "Israeli Project"...

What do US comedian Jon Stewart and Hamas Chief Khaled Meshaal have in common? What does Stewart have in common with Syrian President Bashar al Assad or outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for that matter?

For starters, they're all sick...