- Dmitri Shufutinsky
- Paper No. 1740
In order to counter Ankara’s aggression in the eastern Mediterranean and disrupt its plans to dominate Cyprus, the US should make a peace deal on the island a top regional priority for 2021.
Perspectives Papers
Perspectives Papers provide analysis from BESA Center research associates and other outside experts on the most important issues pertaining to Israel and the Middle East.
- Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
- Paper No. 1738
For five years, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy has been trying to combat the large number of international delegitimization and boycott campaigns against the Jewish State. Its options to combat international antisemitism are limited, and it is doubtful whether it has properly prioritized the issues at stake. Israel urgently needs a separate anti-propaganda agency, something the Strategic Affairs Ministry should have recommended long ago.
- Dr. James M. Dorsey
- Paper No. 1737
A rift between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia throws deepening fissures in the Muslim world into sharp relief. Coupled with the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and myriad conflicts in the Middle East, the dispute poses serious challenges to Saudi Arabia’s quest for geopolitical and religious leadership of the Muslim world.
- Irina Tsukerman
- Paper No. 1736
The recent explosion at Beirut Port highlights both Turkey's growing defense cooperation with Iran and its strategic interest in Lebanon, which facilitates Ankara’s provocative and worrisome agenda in the Eastern Mediterranean. However, Turkey’s unrestrained aggression in that region may be a diversionary tactic from its slow and patient pursuit of a complex strategy to surround Egypt with hostile forces on multiple fronts and undercut its powerful regional role.
- Lev Stesin
- Paper No. 1735
The foreign policy of a progressive US administration could entail a fanatical pursuit of race-based “intersectionality” policies, similar to the proletarian internationalism of yesteryear. If US foreign policy were in fact composed of such policies, many countries would consider China the lesser of two evils. A world dominated by a progressive US on the one hand and communist China on the other could devolve into a new Dark Ages.
- Dr. Asaf Romirowsky
- Paper No. 1734
History and historiography matter. As Winston Churchill astutely said, “Everyone can recognize history when it happens. Everyone can recognize history after it has happened; but only the wise man knows at the moment what is vital and permanent, what is lasting and memorable.” Today, such sensitivity to the value of history is evaporating from the public consciousness. The willful blindness to the instructional value of the past is manifesting itself in attempts to erase history rather than reckon with it responsibly.
- Dr. Alex Joffe
- Paper No. 1733
With the US Presidential election rapidly approaching, an assessment of US foreign policy is in order. The Trump administration has undertaken conceptual shifts that see China as an adversary and Russia as a fading power, and it has deprioritized the Middle East and Europe. Without robust diplomatic and military engagement, these new policies risk ceding those regions to Chinese domination. In contrast, evidence suggests a Biden administration would largely return to the policies of the Obama era that accommodated Chinese imperialism.
- Dr. Hanan Shai
- Paper No. 1732
Unlike other Western democracies, Israel has had to face the coronavirus crisis at a time when its social cohesion and governability have been weakened by a chain of processes and events over recent decades that were propelled by the values of progressive liberalism. The coronavirus crisis offers an opportunity, which must not be missed, to put Israel’s existence and security back on the footing of the country’s original liberal values.
- Dr. Edy Cohen
- Paper No. 1731
Decades after the achievement of a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, the peace remains cold. Egypt continues to be institutionally hostile to Israel. Egyptian citizens who reside in Israel, be they students or small business owners or simply spouses of Israeli Arabs, face discrimination and suspicion at home.
- Dr. James M. Dorsey
- Paper No. 1730
China and Saudi Arabia are engaged in a complex game of shadow boxing to shape a future security framework for the Gulf designed to contain regional conflicts. In a bid to ensure plausible deniability, the boxers are intellectuals and journalists rather than officials, at least for the time being.