On Tuesday, the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and the National Security Network (NSN) hosted a panel discussion with Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, Geneive Abdo, fellow at the Century Foundation and the National Security Network, and Ted Piccone, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The event was moderated by Heather Hurlburt, executive director at NSN, with a welcome by Stephen McInerney, executive director ...

Israeli Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said on Sunday that the current social protests in Israel may force the government to hold early elections. Elections are scheduled to take place in November 2013. He noted the current social protests over housing and cost of living increases have the potential to develop into a political crisis within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government.

On Tuesday, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a panel titled “An Israeli-Palestinian Agreement? What’s Possible and What Isn’t.” Haleh Esfandiari, the director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, introduced the panel, which was moderated by Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl. Panelists included Brandeis University professor Shai Feldman, author and Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar Aaron David Miller, and Hussein Ibish, a ...

Robert Malley, from the International Crisis Group, gave a lengthy interview on NPR's Fresh Air program about the Arab Spring and the situation in Israel/Palestine. Malley believes the Arab Spring movements in the MENA region could be a "game changer" for Israel and the United States.  He discusses the Palestinian movement for U.N. recognition in September, the Fatah/Hamas unity government, and how the Arab Spring has affected the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.  

Last week, following President Barack Obama's address on the Middle East, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) delivered the Dean Acheson Lecture at the United States Institute of Peace where he discussed the Arab Spring.  McCain opened by noting that the uprisings  in the Middle East represent a repudiation of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and stated that Arab Spring should be "a clarifying event for the United States" which presents an ...

Moisés Naím, writing for the Carnegie Endowment, discusses why the United States and Europe are attacking Libya with bombs and Syria with words. He first dismisses arguments that the justification for war in Libya is oil, arguing that it would be easier for U.S. oil companies to have security under Gadhafi rather than under the chaos that has ensued.  He states that there are five reasons why the same response ...

Writing in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi discuss the regional uprisings affect on the regional power-balance.  The others note Saudi Arabia and Israel's disapproval of the Arab Spring given the strategic and political implications for their own countries.  Parsi and Marashi state that while Saudi leaders understood there was little they could do to prevent U.S. supported revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, they moved ...

  In remarks with Jordanian King Abdullah before their meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that the king "is a strong and steady voice in the incredible changes that are going on around the world."   King Abdullah noted that the discussion will include the challenges facing the Middle East as a result of the Arab Spring and stated that "the role of the United States is going to be ...