Middle East Policy最新文献

Right-wing politics has increased its potency around the world, especially in Turkey, which has experienced a two-decade reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). One of the most important instruments the AKP has used to gain and maintain power is the discourse of resentment. This emotional language features an appeal to a populist sense of the nation's rising above dangers posed by the elite and the bureaucracy. This article examines Turkey's right-wing politics, showing how and why leaders have created and deployed the resentment discourse. Analyzing the historical-social context of this instrument of power will help us understand the rise of the right. Even though Erdoğan's party suffered a setback in the spring 2024 municipal elections, the politics of resentment is still effective and allows the party to extend its success in national contests.

China's interests have expanded rapidly in the Middle East since the turn of the century, and it is now the leading trade partner for many states in the region. The unrest sparked by the war between Israel and Hamas, including the Red Sea shipping crisis that imperils global trade, threatens those interests. The perceived absence of deep Chinese participation in trying to resolve these emergencies contrasts with previous peacekeeping efforts and raises questions about Beijing's willingness to take part in global-security initiatives. This article analyzes variations in Chinese decision making on the use of force and diplomacy in the Middle East. Based on publicly available data, an examination of sources in English and Chinese, and interviews previously conducted in China, we develop a three-pronged typology that explains Chinese strategic behavior in the region: military engagement, perceived free riding, and diplomacy. The article contributes to the literatures of security studies, Chinese foreign and military policy, and the security of the Middle East.

There have been protracted negotiations in Vienna to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or nuclear deal, that Iran signed in 2015 but was suspended by the withdrawal of the United States four years later. This article argues that two factors account for the failure to renew the JCPOA. One is the 2021 change of presidency in Iran from the reformist Hassan Rouhani to the conservative Ebrahim Raisi. The other is the transformed international environment that provided Iran with opportunities to align with China and Russia. While it suited Iran to continue the nuclear talks to minimize the risk of more punitive actions, Tehran has recalculated its interests and taken a hard line on a potential new deal. The process has grown more complicated with Israel's war in Gaza, the conflict's possible expansion across the region, and the election of a new Iranian president. The analysis concludes that Iran is unlikely to return to the JCPOA.

For nearly 20 years, nongovernmental organizations backing the Palestinian cause have promoted both “differentiation” and the better-known strategy of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). Differentiation is the practice of distinguishing between Israel and the occupied territories, terminating contracts with actors—irrespective of nationality—that contribute to and benefit from occupation-related activities, and seeking to promote Palestinian investments and exports. This strategy is fundamentally different from BDS, which targets not just the occupation but the Israeli state and its national entities. However, this article finds that laws and proposed legislation in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel do not delineate between Israel and Israeli-controlled territory, blurring the line between differentiation and BDS as tools to support Palestine. The evidence shows that courts have mostly ruled against differentiation practices, thus allowing harsh campaigns that impose heavy burdens on NGOs. These costs are both direct, through legal proceedings, and indirect in that they restrict the space for humanitarian action and delegitimize groups that employ differentiation. The study considers whether this constitutes lawfare, defined by experts as the exploitation “of the law of armed conflict to achieve tactical and strategic goals.”

This study examines Israel's failure to prevent Black October, the Hamas invasion that killed more than 1,100 people and sparked the Gaza war. The article synthesizes literatures of security and intelligence to advance three levels at which we must analyze Israel's missteps. The first is the intelligence level, where the state assessed threats. The second is operational, where officials devised military and security solutions, such as relying on technology to police the border with the Gaza Strip. The third level is political-diplomatic, where the government pursued regional normalization agreements without focusing on solutions to the Palestinian file. Failures at all three levels were intertwined. The examination of these cascading mistakes opens a window into the interactions within and across these levels among military and civilian decision makers, and it suggests how they should be addressed going forward.

The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas marks the end of the long decade after the Arab uprisings. In this paper, we explore how the conflict has altered the regional political landscape in the Middle East, which bears similarities to the pre-2011 dynamics but includes new elements. On the one hand, the war has taken the region “forward to the past” by revitalizing “Palestine” as a central issue, accentuating the so-called Axis of Resistance, and increasing the prominence of the regimes-people divide in Middle Eastern countries. On the other, the war has generated novel repercussions. “Palestine” today has broader global resonance than previous Arab and Islamic framings. And the regional alliance structure has been altered, with the “moderate Arab camp” fading and new actors, such as the Houthis in Yemen, rising and joining the resistance axis. As we demonstrate, the Gaza war is a critical juncture whose ramifications for both regional and domestic politics in the Middle East will reverberate for years to come.

In February 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a plan for the “postwar” Gaza Strip that envisions Israel's military as unilaterally and indefinitely patrolling the enclave while an unnamed third party runs the local government. While even allies like the United States criticized this scheme, Palestine has never enjoyed autonomy as a state, and the institutions and practices of Israel's far-right government—and even of the Palestinian elite—are rooted in the settler colonialism facilitated by the British mandate, 1922–1948. This period was the first and last time in modern history that Palestinian Arabs and Jews were administered as a single polity, albeit on radically unequal terms. This article examines how international law was used to suppress the Palestinians and privilege the creation of a Jewish state of Israel. The legacy of this regime can be seen in the present-day thwarting of Palestinian self-determination through Israel's use of the military for civil administration, digital surveillance, and the right-wing agenda for annexation of the West Bank and perpetual war in Gaza.