Egypt’s security forces have begun a military operation in the northern part of Sinai. Their aim is to regain control after an explosive mixture of Islamists, criminal gangs and marginalized Bedouins have established a firm foothold in the peninsula. These networks thrive on smuggling drugs, weapons and human beings. Women are smuggled across the border to Israel to work in massage parlors, while thousands of Africans are being held hostage for ransom. In spite of their drive to establish government control, Egypt’s authorities have turned a blind eye so far.

© 2011 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable

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The Palestinian effort to end the four year old internal strife and forge a national unity government has run into difficulties. Most actors keep up a façade of cautious optimism, but the wide gap inside Palestinian politics seem hardly bridgeable. The common strategy to establish an independent state in September could be the dissent’s first victim.

© 2011 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable

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The Egypt after Mubarak’s ouster is plotting a new course. As part of its new foreign policy, it has abandoned the siege of the Hamas regime in Gaza. Israel is alarmed. But Jerusalem could actually reap a huge, if unintended benefit from Cairo’s new course of action.

© 2011 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable

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The fanfare touting the end of internal Palestinian strife can justifiably be met with skepticism, if not cynicism. In spite of the buoyant mood among Palestinians, a united Palestinian front against Israel still seems far away at best.There is, however, a different angle to the deal hammered out in secret talks in Cairo. Egypt appears to be back in the game.

© 2011 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable

Lessons that should be learned from Goldstone's surprising about-face.

© 2011 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable

In a surprising about-face, the former head of a UN fact finding mission on the Gaza conflict has recanted his former indictment against Israel and exonerated the Jewish state of having committed “crimes against humanity” in the January 2009 campaign against the radical-Islamic Hamas movement in the Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean. Writing in an open letter in the Washington Post over the weekend, Richard Goldstone stated that had he “known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” In Israel, which likes to pride itself in having the “the most virtuous army in the world”, the relief and vindication was palpable. The country was outraged a year and a half ago when the Goldstone report had accused them of having intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians during the war that had cost the lives of more than 1100 Gazans. In Gaza and Ramallah however, Goldstone’s surprising change of heart caused outrage, and fear that an exonerated Israel would be more likely to embark on a new military campaign against Hamas. 

© 2011 Gil Yaron - Making the Middle East Understandable