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Begin New Search Topic Security Content Type Policy Brief Publishing Institution Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

41. Russian Policy Toward the Middle East Under Yeltsin and Putin

Author:
Robert O. Freedman
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main successor state, Russia, emerged in a greatly weakened geopolitical position. Complicating Russia's problems was a politically weak and often physically sick President Boris Yeltsin. Concerned about its "soft underbelly" in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, regions that were threatened by radical Islam, Moscow focused its Middle East efforts on Turkey and Iran, both of which had a considerable amount of influence in the two regions. Moscow sold nuclear reactors and sophisticated military equipment to Iran, as the two countries developed a tactical alliance. Russia had a more mixed relationship with Turkey, alternating between confrontation and cooperation. Russia also sought to get the sanctions lifted against Iraq, a development that would strengthen the greatly troubled Russian economy as well as help Russia politically. In the case of Israel, Moscow developed very close cultural, economic, and military ties, although there were a number of ups and downs in diplomatic relations. Under Putin, there was a more centralized control over Russian foreign policy as the new Russian leader sought to have a more assertive foreign policy for his country, and became much more active than Yeltsin had been in promoting Russian interests in the Middle East.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Russia, Iran, Turkey, Middle East, and Arabia

42. Journalistic License: Professional Standards in the Print Media's Coverage Media's Coverage of Israel

Author:
Jeff Helmreich
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
On May 15, 2001, the Associated Press circulated an article covering Arafat's Al-Naqba speech, marking the day Palestinians recall the "catastrophe" of the creation of the State of Israel. The article boasted direct quotations of the Palestinian leader's statements. They had been spoken in Cairo, broadcast on Palestinian radio stations, and blared out from loudspeakers into the streets of Nablus and Ramallah and all across Gaza. But something happened to the speech on the way to AP's wire report. By the time it reached the newspapers, entire sentences and clauses had been excluded; moderating words had been added; fiery attacks — like a slur about the United States — had been cleaned out; statements had been condensed, enhanced, or otherwise altered. In short, AP's purported "excerpts" of Arafat's remarks were at best edited, at worst fabricated. Moreover, they served to distort (and significantly soften) the message that passed through Arafat's lips.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Arabia, and Gaza

43. Why Israel Rejects "Observers"

Author:
Saul Singer
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
In the midst of an already crumbling cease-fire, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell dropped what to Israeli ears was a bombshell. Standing next to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat after their June 2001 meeting in Ramallah, Powell said, "I think as we get into the confidence-building phase there will be a need for monitors and observers to...make an independent observation of what has happened." Within hours, Powell punctured his own trial balloon by ruling out any mechanism opposed by Israel. Less than one month later, the observer issue was once again thrust to the fore when the G-8 foreign ministers unanimously called for dispatching "third-party monitors" to the region, as long as they were acceptable to both sides. Why should the seemingly innocuous matter of observers top the Palestinian agenda and be such an anathema to Israel?
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Arabia

44. Srebrenica: The Dutch Dabra and Shatilla

Author:
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
In the UN safe area of Srebrenica, 6-8,000 Bosnian Moslems were murdered in July 1995 by the Bosnian Serbs, making it the largest civilian massacre in Europe since the Holocaust. The United Nations leaders, those of their peace-keeping forces, and the Dutch government had known for some time that the enclave was not defensible and had not taken adequate protective measures. Although aware that Serbs were executing Bosnian Moslems, the Dutch UN forces fled the area. Before that, Dutch soldiers helped separate the Bosnian men from the women. No UN or Dutch political or military leaders have ever been held accountable for their failure to prevent these crimes.
Topic:
Security, Religion, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Bosnia and Eastern Europe

45. Israel Looks Over the Horizon: Responding to the Threats of Weapons Proliferation

Author:
Gerald M. Steinberg
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
The wave of Palestinian violence and terrorism that began at the end of September 2000 led to a widespread tendency to focus exclusively on Israeli-Palestinian political and security relationships. This narrow concentration of attention is potentially misleading and obscures the fundamental security threats that Israel is facing at the beginning of the twenty-first century. These threats come primarily from the wider Middle Eastern environment, extending from Libya and Egypt (and to a lesser degree, North Africa) to Iraq and Iran. Indeed, the Palestinian strategy is based, to a large degree, on widening the circle of conflict through escalation and regionalizing the confrontation. As a result, the importance of strategic deterrence, in response to revived coalitions and new military capabilities that threaten Israeli security, should be a basic factor in Israeli planning.
Topic:
Security, Environment, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Libya, Arabia, and Egypt

46. "Aid for Peace" — An Exhausted Paradigm?

Author:
Saul Singer
Publication Date:
06-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
At present, there are no substantive Arab-Israeli peace negotiations underway. Israel has had to contend with the ongoing armed offensive launched by the Palestinians in late September 2000 after the failure of the Camp David summit. Meanwhile, Israel and the Palestinians will only return to the negotiating table after a ceasefire, a meaningful cooling-off period, and confidence-building measures, in accordance with the Mitchell Committee Report. Syria, under Bashar Assad, has given evidence of assuming a harder line, making an early resumption of Syrian-Israeli negotiations unlikely.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Syria

47. Anti-Semitism Revived: The Impact of the Intifada on Muslim Immigrant Groups in Western Democracies

Author:
Raphael Israeli
Publication Date:
06-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Since the Al-Aqsa Intifada erupted in the Middle East in late September 2000, an almost simultaneous wave of violent anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment has accompanied it in the Western democracies, initiated and executed mainly by locally nationalized Arab or Muslim immigrants, long established or recent arrivals, legal or illegal. Due to the ubiquity in space, synchronicity in time, and similarity in style and content of these events, one wonders whether they were all triggered and managed centrally, or spread by emulation from one part of the globe to another.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Arabia

48. Untenable Linkages: Tying a Cessation of Palestinian Violence to an Israeli Settlement Freeze

Author:
Dore Gold
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Israel has been increasingly facing new diplomatic initiatives that, in effect, call for a freeze in Israeli settlement activity in exchange for a cessation of the eight-month-old, low-scale warfare on the part of the PLO, which the Palestinians call the Al-Aqsa Intifada. This new linkage has arisen in two distinct forms. First, according to early versions of the Egyptian-Jordanian Initiative of April 2001, the Palestinians are called upon to end incitement to violence and guarantee security cooperation, but Israel is expected, inter alia, to freeze new settlement activity.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Arabia, and Egypt

49. The Sovereign Self: Jewish Identity in Post-Modern America

Author:
Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Molly is a physician in her forties who lives in suburban Boston: thoughtful, soft-spoken, and extremely articulate—reason enough to take careful note of what she has to say about the formative experiences which led to her current commitments as a Jew. There is another reason as well: because the key words in this passage from our conversation, "I remember," are repeated no less than three times. What Molly and the other Jews we interviewed remember of their Jewish journeys, and—more importantly— how they remember it, provide the clues to a new sort of Jewish self emerging in the United States in recent decades.
Topic:
Security, Religion, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
America, Middle East, and Arabia

50. Jewish Life in Ukraine at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Part Two

Author:
Betsy Gidwitz
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Local Jewish volunteer leadership in Ukraine is most likely to emerge in the federated community organizations established and nurtured by a small number of community rabbis, such as Rabbi Kaminezki in Dnipropetrovsk (Philanthropic Fund of the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Community) or Rabbi Bleich in Kyiv (Kyiv Municipal Jewish Community), who endorse multiple Jewish community institutions. (Rabbi Vishedski of Donetsk supports a similar effort.) Federated Jewish organizations in Ukraine resemble North American Jewish federations in that they are associations engaged in community planning, fundraising, and budgeting for Jewish welfare, educational, and identity-building needs. Among their most important differences from North American federations is that, to date, each is closely associated with one particular rabbi and his synagogue. As noted, Rabbi Kaminezki has thwarted the activation of other Jewish religious and educational organizations in Dnipropetrovsk. In Kyiv, Rabbi Bleich is more welcoming to other Jewish religious groups, at least in theory; in practice, other Kyiv Jewish religious institutions are so weak (e.g., the Progressive and Masorti movements) or so confrontational (e.g., the Chabad congregation associated with Rabbi Asman) that significant collaboration is impractical.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Ukraine, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North America

51. Jewish Life in Ukraine at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Part One

Author:
Betsy Gidwitz
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Ukraine is a country in transition between a Soviet past and an uncertain future. Since declaring independence in 1991 at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has provided cause for both hope and despair. On the positive side, it has disarmed its nuclear capacity and is ethnically stable. Its large minority Russian population, 23 percent of Ukraine's total of 49.5 million inhabitants and concentrated in the eastern part of the country adjacent to a long border with Russia, remains calm. Although both Ukrainian and Russian extremists express various grievances, and other ethnic groups, most notably Jews, encounter episodic bigotry that is ignored by the state, the Ukrainian government itself has refrained from inciting ethnic chauvinism.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Ukraine, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Arabia

52. Failure of Perception and Self-Deception: Israel's Quest for Peace in the Context of Related Historical Cases

Author:
Joel S. Fishman
Publication Date:
03-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
An examination of the historical record reveals many examples of failures of perception, and of leaders and governments refusing to integrate compelling information of existential importance. Taking account of new information and responding to changing circumstances is vital to man's relationship with his environment. When a dysfunction in the process of absorbing important new knowledge and correcting mistakes occurs, the faculty of rational judgment may be fatefully impaired. While, collectively, the attitude of a society is the sum of those of individuals, occasionally, the perception of a single individual in an influential position may be sufficient to determine a government's policy.
Topic:
Security, Environment, Government, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Arabia

53. Apocalyptic Fears Now; Unforeseen Risks Tomorrow: Israel's Poorly Predicted Future

Author:
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Publication Date:
03-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
After seven years of the peace process, catastrophic remarks about the end of the State of Israel are much more frequent than they were before the Oslo agreements. Judaism has a long tradition of religious apocalyptic thought; in the secular end-of-days fantasies of the last few months, however, no salvation is offered the community.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Arabia

54. The Conflict Between Israel and the Palestinians: A Rational Analysis

Author:
Yakir Plessner
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Recently, Israel Television asked Shimon Peres, the architect of the Oslo process, whether he still believed in the efficacy of that process, to which he replied that the question should be put to Yasser Arafat. This answer appears to be symptomatic of a widespread refusal by Israel's political leadership to think about the current situation in a systematic, analytical fashion, giving rise to a suspicion that Israeli society, as a collective, has a basic difficulty with thinking about our relationship with the Palestinian Authority, in general, and about the recent violent confrontations with it, in particular. We appear to be bewildered by it all. The director general of the Foreign Ministry, Alon Liel, stated more than once in a recent television interview that he was baffled by Arafat's behavior, saying that Arafat appeared to have made an inexplicable U-turn. He had assumed that Arafat had resolved to make peace, and he could make no sense of Arafat's recent behavior. In addition, Shimon Peres has stated several times in recent weeks that we must make Arafat understand that his policy is detrimental to the true interests of his own people. This notion was echoed by Ha'aretz columnist Joel Marcus, quoting former Foreign Minister Abba Eban who said years ago that Arafat never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg also stated that he found it impossible to decipher Arafat's conduct.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel

55. Jerusalem in International Diplomacy: The 2000 Camp David Summit, the Clinton Plan, and Their Aftermath

Author:
Dore Gold
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Since its independence in 1948, and indeed even in prior times, Israel's rights to sovereignty in Jerusalem have been firmly grounded in history and international law. The aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War only reinforced the strength of Israel's claims. Seven years after the implementation of the 1993 Oslo Agreements, Prime Minister Ehud Barak became the first Israeli prime minister to consider re-dividing Jerusalem in response to an American proposal at the July 2000 Camp David Summit. The December 2000 Clinton Plan attempted to codify Barak's possible concessions on Jerusalem. Yet they proved to be insufficient for PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, leading to a breakdown in the peace process and an outburst of Palestinian violence with regional implications. At least the failed Clinton Plan did not bind future Israeli governments or U.S. administrations, leaving open the possibility of new diplomatic alternatives. Only by avoiding premature negotiation over an unbridgeable issue such as Jerusalem can the U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians stabilize the volatile situation that has emerged and restore hope that a political process can be resumed in the future.
Topic:
Security, Government, International Law, Religion, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
United States, America, Middle East, and Israel

56. The Israel Swing Factor: How the American Jewish Vote Influences U.S. Elections

Author:
Jeffrey S. Helmreich
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
There are two clashing myths on the political power of American Jewry. One claims that the community is too small to affect national elections; Jews make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population. A contrasting view holds that U.S. Jews play a disproportionately large role in national politics thanks to their campaign donations and media influence.
Topic:
Security, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Middle East

57. "The Poor in Your Own City Shall Have Precedence": A Neo-Zionist Critique of the Katzir-Qaadan Decision

Author:
Gerald M. Steinberg
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
As events that accompanied the establishment of the State of Israel receded into the history books, the extraordinary accomplishments of the Zionist movement also began to fade. For many Israelis growing up after 1948, Zionism became a negative term, satirized and trivialized, and the details of its achievements were rarely taught in the Israeli schools.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel

58. American Evenhandedness in the Mideast Peace Process: Lessons From Camp David II and the Al-Aqsa Intifada

Author:
Saul Singer
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Ask Israelis or Arabs to characterize the U.S.-Israel relationship and most, particularly on the Arab side, will argue that the picture is one of unwavering support for the Jewish state. Indeed, the outgoing Clinton administration has been widely perceived and labeled as the closest to Israel in the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Though the ties between the U.S. and Israel are indeed close, deep, and institutionalized, a closer examination reveals a constant tension between support for Israel and "evenhandedness" between Israel and the Arab world.
Topic:
Security and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, America, Middle East, Israel, and Arabia

59. Israel's Major Economic Challenge: Closing the Gap in the Field of Business Economics

Author:
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
Why is it that Israel's per capita GNP still lags substantially behind that of the leading countries of the world? Why is it likely to take decades for the Israeli economy to catch up? This is while the Israeli papers are full of news about very promising high-tech start-ups, and we even hear occasionally about payments of billions of dollars by major foreign firms to acquire Israeli businesses which were founded a few years ago and have at most several hundred employees.
Topic:
Security, Economics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel

60. Factors Impeding the Implementation of Privatization

Author:
Yaakov Ne'eman
Publication Date:
11-2000
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
A number of factors are impeding the implementation of privatization in the Israeli economy. Here I will review those factors based on my own experience, both as someone who has represented investors who purchased government companies through privatization processes, and (from the other side of the fence) in my positions in the Ministry of Finance, when I had an opportunity to observe the governmental process from the inside.
Topic:
Security, Government, Privatization, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel