Digest of Middle East Studies最新文献

In the course of the Syrian Civil War, prominent former Syrian Regime politicians, human rights observers, and foreign observers have accused the Syrian Regime of committing genocide against the country's Sunni majority. This article views these accusations as part of a wider politicization of genocide, and instead progresses beyond them to outline the case for an alternative “framing” of large-scale atrocities committed against civilians. It accordingly proposes strategic displacement, or the deliberate large-scale uprooting and dispersal of established communities for tactical and strategic purposes, as a preferable and more sustainable framework of engagement and analysis, and seeks to more clearly distinguish it from “ethnic cleansing” with the aim of demonstrating and underlining its unique contribution to the analysis and understanding of violent conflict. This has two benefits—first, it provides a different basis for conceptual and theoretical engagement that makes it possible to view mass atrocity as a tactical innovation in response to conflict exigencies; and second, it draws attention to internal displacement, an aspect of the conflict that has been repeatedly overlooked by international observers.

This article looks at Hamas's war against Israel through the lens of the poetry written by leading members of Hamas during the period 1987–1996 (from the founding of the organization through the early stages of the implementation of the Oslo Accords). Poetry is one of the means employed by Hamas to convey its political, social, and religious messages and ideology, which links its Islamic outlook with Palestinian nationalism. During the years covered by the article, dozens of the organization's senior members expressed themselves in this genre. The article looks at ten poets who were affiliated with Hamas leadership circles and were intensively engaged in writing poetry in those years. It describes the background to this activity, extracts the main messages and motifs presented in their verse, and examines the goals served by this lyrical composition in the organization's war against Israel.

Political leaders of pariah authoritarian states communicate their political discourse unilaterally, in a closed environment without free and open media access or the space for public scrutiny or debate. They use their speeches for various aims such as to respond to external shocks, justify hardship, appeal to domestic and international sympathy, assert autonomy and power, and influence policy and governance. This research uses Iran as a case study and offers an in-depth analysis of 10 years of speeches by the country's Supreme Leader. In a case study of unilateral political communication method in an authoritarian environment, it sheds light on various aspects of the discourse generated by the country's Supreme Leader over a decade. It also analyzes the Leader's effort to influence policymaking and governance structure through practical official guidelines. Building upon existing theories of populism, the study seeks to unpack an understudied approach in populist politics that is based on a political discourse by the leadership which defines the populist dichotomy of people versus elite at the global level.

The turbulent security environment of the Middle East has been the most crucial factor influencing the behavior of governments in this region. Saudi Arabia, as one of the most important countries in the area, has embarked on a nontransparent effort to develop its missile program in recent decades, raising significant concerns about the security of the Middle East. This article adopts the regional deterrence approach and strategically examines the various dimensions of Saudi Arabia's missile program to explain the driving factors behind its development. The research argues that the regional deterrence concept has been the primary impetus pushing Saudi Arabia to invest in its missile program, aiming to counter strategic challenges at the regional level. The findings indicate several key drivers motivating Riyadh, including the development of missile programs by Iran and Turkey, the balance of power concerning Israel, responses to transformational discourses, offering alternatives to expansionist approaches in the region, addressing Iran's nuclear program, and the desire to reinforce regional deterrence capabilities. Understanding these factors sheds light on Saudi Arabia's trajectory towards strengthening its missile program and its strategic outlook in the Middle East.

The Middle East and the Horn of Africa are distinct but interdependent Regional Security Complexes (RSCs) whose security interaction and beyond has increased over the last two decades. Recent interactions between the two RSCs, particularly the increased involvement of Middle Eastern and Gulf states, have raised concerns about the Horn of Africa's peace and security. This paper examines the impact of the Middle East and Gulf States' involvement on peace and security in the Horn of Africa using RSC Theory (RSCT). The findings indicate that the Middle East and Gulf States' involvement, rooted in rivalry and competition, has become a source of instability and conflict in the Horn of Africa. These extra-regional powers have played a critical role in escalating conflicts and instilling insecurity in the region by focusing solely on their national security, geopolitical, and economic interests. Their destabilizing impact is particularly visible in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan.

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is generally referred as a territorial conflict, but it is also a conflict over the preservation of identity. This study analyzes the relations of Jews and Palestinians in Israel from an identity security perspective. It sheds light on how the communities perceive actions, discourses, and symbols as a mutual threat to their own identity. Adapting the concept of societal security dilemma (SSD), this study seeks to reveal the patterns of feeling insecure between the groups and to put forth the measures and countermeasures taken to secure identity. This approach contends that the measures and countermeasures taken to reduce the perception of threat do not lead to a feeling of security; on the contrary, it creates a cycle of constant threat perception, making the groups feel more insecure in terms of identity. I argue that this is the case for the Jews and Palestinians in Israel. The analytical dimensions of SSD are applied to the case via process tracing and historical analysis. However, I identify a gap unaddressed by these dimensions of the concept. The present study proposes an additional dimension—confrontation—to fill this gap.

The reformist-moderate and the conservative discourses have co-existed and contended for primacy in the Iranian foreign policy since the 1979 revolution. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, has been at the core of this discursive contest in recent years. This article investigates how Iranian conservative tweeters delegitimized the JCPOA and President Rouhani's nuclear diplomacy. We use Van Leeuwen's discursive construction of legitimacy (2008) to analyze three popular conservative Twitter accounts. Findings show that the Iranian conservatives used the strategies of authorization, moral evaluation, and rationalization for legal and political criticism of the JCPOA, offending Rouhani's administration and allies, and questioning their political competence. This research partly reveals the conservatives' anti-negotiation and anti-West logic and their refusal to offer a diplomatic alternative to the JCPOA.