Changing Attitudes Toward Religiosity: A Double-Edged Sword for Arab Rulers

Public opinion polling in the Arab world suggests that autocratic leaders like Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and his UAE counterpart, Muhammad bin Zayed, have gotten some things right. Both men have to varying degrees replaced religion with nationalism as the ideology legitimizing their rule and sought to ensure that countries in the region broadly adhere to their worldview.

Biden and Israel: Continuity and Change

The Biden administration will both continue and change Washington's fundamental approach to foreign policy. Biden will continue America's gradual withdrawal from world leadership, but will restore collaboration with the EU, NATO, and the UN, and assign more weight to human rights. He will try to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran and will be hesitant to expand the new Israel-Arab strategic alliance based on normalization agreements. He will continue the close strategic alliance with Israel and keep the US embassy in Jerusalem, but will reopen a consulate in East Jerusalem and restore economic aid to the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA.

Normalizing with Cairo Rather than Riyadh Could Be a Major Achievement

Normalizing relations between the two veteran peacemakers, Israel and Egypt, rather than making peace with Saudi Arabia could be the crowning achievement of the Abraham Accords peace process. An official Egyptian approval of the normalization of relations between Israel and Sudan could be the harbinger of change.

Biden and Israel: A Return to the Obama Era?

The election of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States requires an examination of the significance for Israel of the transition of power. After four years of unprecedented breakthroughs for Israel during President Donald Trump’s administration, is Israel destined to return to the Obama era in the shape of his former deputy?

What Biden’s Victory Means for Turkey

If Joe Biden remains loyal to his pre-election rhetoric, he might punish Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey with a slew of sanctions for buying critical weapons systems from Russia and helping to weaken US sanctions on Iran. But Biden’s history with Erdoğan gives mixed indicators of how he might deal with Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian leader. Biden will not be able to opt for a pragmatic approach to Ankara completely free of concerns over civil liberties and human rights—Turkey’s ever-widening democracy deficit makes that impossible. But Erdoğan’s team can “buy” a new modus operandi with Washington under Biden.

Israel Between Two Presidents

As President-elect Joe Biden starts to form his administration, Israel has to prepare itself for both the transition period leading up to the transfer of power on January 20, 2021 and the four subsequent years.

Biden’s Voice, Obama’s Actions?

Barack Obama believes he has not yet said his last word in American politics. He may thus view Biden's victory as an opportunity to revitalize his progressive agenda, on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts. This could have major implications for the Middle East region.

Saudi Chairmanship of G20 Proves a Mixed Blessing

Saudi Arabia’s chairmanship of the Group of Twenty (G20) is proving to be a mixed blessing. The country and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman saw the kingdom’s chairmanship as an opportunity to showcase its leadership and ability to be a visionary global player. But plans to dazzle the grouping and the international community with glamorous events at which officials, experts, analysts, and faith representatives would develop proposed cutting-edge solutions for global problems at a time of geopolitical rivalry and jockeying for a new world order had to be shelved as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the worst global economic downturn since World War II.

US Exposes Do-Gooder Antisemites

In the final days before the American presidential election, sources inside the Trump government indicated that the administration might declare three major human rights organizations—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Oxfam—antisemitic. These organizations practice what might be called “do-gooder” antisemitism, a widespread yet rarely mentioned form of this hatred. The prime operator of do-gooder antisemitism is the United Nations.

Western Multiculturalism and Islamic Terror

Large Muslim communities have formed in Western countries in recent decades. The terror attacks in France and Austria over the past few weeks again highlight the debate over the role of a multicultural, liberal, tolerant approach to separate, alienated minority communities, a small number of whose members support or perpetrate terror attacks.

Perspectives Papers