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2. Arab Peace Initiative II: How Arab Leadership Could Design a Peace Plan in Israel and Palestine
- Author:
- Amr Hamzawy and Nathan J. Brown
- Publication Date:
- 11-2023
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Past peace processes in Israel and Palestine failed to offer long-term solutions to the conflict, but they showed what makes negotiations work. In the latest round of hostilities in Gaza, key Arab governments are uniquely positioned to leverage relationships with all parties to lay out the conditions that could broker a lasting peace. An Arab Peace Initiative II, with multilateral oversight, would have to offer real benefits for all parties. But for any lasting framework to take hold, these important conditions need to be met. Palestinian and Jewish national identities should be recognized as legitimate and in need of institutional expression. Individual human rights in both communities need to be protected. Antisemitic, Islamophobic, and racist rhetoric and actions must be explicitly and unconditionally repudiated by all actors. Any targeting of civilians should not be merely rejected but actively combated by all actors. Settlement activities in the Palestinian territories and forced displacement of Palestinians to Egypt, Jordan, or anywhere else should be considered outlawed actions that all actors commit to fight against. Full diplomatic, political, and economic relations among participating states should be an outcome of the negotiation process. No stateless people should be left behind at the conclusion of any set of agreements.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Politics, Treaties and Agreements, Reform, and Occupation
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Israel, Palestine, North Africa, and Egypt
3. Egypt’s Consolidated Authoritarianism
- Author:
- Amr Hamzawy
- Publication Date:
- 09-2019
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Brown Journal of World Affairs
- Abstract:
- The current Egyptian political scene reveals an important paradox: since its ascendancy to power in 2013, the military-led authoritarian government has not faced significant challenges from civil society despite systematic hu- man rights abuses and continuous societal crises. Apart from limited protests by labor activists, student movements, and members of syndicates, Egyptians have mostly refrained from protesting, instead hoping that the government will improve their living conditions despite a rising poverty rate of 33 percent, an inflation rate between 11 and 12 percent, and unemployment at eight percent. This popular reluctance to challenge the authoritarian government has continued to shape Egypt’s reality since the collapse of the short-lived democratization process from 2011–2013.
- Topic:
- Authoritarianism, Democracy, Rule of Law, Protests, and Dictatorship
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Middle East, North Africa, and Egypt
4. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Islamist Participation in a Closing Political Environment
- Author:
- Nathan J. Brown and Amr Hamzawy
- Publication Date:
- 03-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- The Muslim Brotherhood, the dynamic Islamist movement that has tried to navigate Egypt's semi-authoritarian system for over six decades, is facing a shrinking political space. For most of the past decade, the Brotherhood has expanded its political role, increasing from 17 to 88 members of Egypt's 620-member People's Assembly. Its success has brought increasing repression from the government. A range of measures have limited the Brotherhood's effective-ness in the People's Assembly, preventing it from forming a political party. This environment has led the movement to prioritize internal solidarity over parliamentary activities and refocus efforts on its traditional educational, religious, and social agenda. While the Brotherhood is unlikely to renounce politics altogether, the movement's center of gravity is shifting toward those who regard it as distracting, divisive, and even self-defeating.
- Topic:
- Islam and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Egypt
5. From Violence to Moderation: Al-Jama'a al-Islamiya and al-Jihad
- Author:
- Sarah Grebowski and Amr Hamzawy
- Publication Date:
- 04-2010
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Recognition by Egypt's leading Jihadists that violence has failed to achieve political change and in fact has been counterproductive has led them to a remarkable change of course.
- Topic:
- Political Violence, Islam, Religion, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Egypt
6. Between Government and Opposition: The Case of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform
- Author:
- Amr Hamzawy
- Publication Date:
- 11-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Like Islamist parties across the Arab world, Yemen's Islamist Congregation for Reform (Islah) has a religious ideology and platform. Islah participates in legal politics in hopes of accomplishing constitutional and socioeconomic reforms, and over time it has committed itself to upholding democratic procedures internally as well as externally.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Islam, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Yemen, and Arabia
7. President Obama and Middle East Expectations
- Author:
- Marina Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy
- Publication Date:
- 01-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- The Carnegie Endowment has monitored closely the Arab media's coverage of the long U.S. election campaign and the reactions to Barack Obama's victory. Recently, the Carnegie Middle East Center commissioned a series of commentaries from Arab writers and analysts.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- United States, Middle East, and Arab Countries
8. The Draft Party Platform of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Foray Into Political Integration or Retreat Into Old Positions?
- Author:
- Amr Hamzawy and Nathan J. Brown
- Publication Date:
- 01-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- In the late summer 2007, amid great anticipation from Egypt's ruling elite and opposition movements, the Muslim Brotherhood distributed the first draft of a party platform to a group of intellectuals and analysts. The platform was not to serve as a document for an existing political party or even one about to be founded: the Brotherhood remains without legal recognition in Egypt and Egypt's rulers and the laws they have enacted make the prospect of legal recognition for a Brotherhood-founded party seem distant. But the Brotherhood's leadership clearly wished to signal what sort of party they would found if allowed to do so.
- Topic:
- Democratization
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Arabia, and Egypt
9. Islamists in Politics: The Dynamics of Participation
- Author:
- Marina Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy
- Publication Date:
- 11-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- Islamist parties and movements in Arab countries that have strategically chosen to participate in the legal political process, acknowledging the legitimacy of the existing constitutional framework, have gained great political importance. Their participation raises two major questions: are they truly committed to democracy? And will participation have a positive, moderating influence on their positions, pushing them to focus on public policy platforms rather than ideological debates?
- Topic:
- Democratization, Islam, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Arabia, and North Africa
10. The New Middle East
- Author:
- Marina Ottaway, Paul Salem, Amr Hamzawy, Nathan J. Brown, and Karim Sadjadpour
- Publication Date:
- 02-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Abstract:
- After September 11, 2001, the Bush administration launched an ambitious policy to forge a new Middle East, with intervention in Iraq as the driver of the transformation. "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution," declared President Bush on November 7, 2003. In speech after speech, Bush administration officials made it abundantly clear that they would not pursue a policy directed at managing and containing existing crises, intending instead to leapfrog over them by creating a new region of democracy and peace in which old disputes would become irrelevant. The idea was summarized in a statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the war between Lebanon and Israel in the summer of 2006. Pushing Israel to accept a cease- fire, she argued, would not help, because it would simply re-establish the status quo ante, not help create a new Middle East. The new Middle East was to be a region of mostly democratic countries allied with the United States. Regimes that did not cooperate would be subjected to a combination of sanctions and support for democratic movements, such as the so-called Cedar Revolution of 2005 in that forced Syrian troops out of the country. In extreme cases, they might be forced from power.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy and Diplomacy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Lebanon