Middle East Policy最新文献

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.

This article argues protest and violence between 2013 and 2019 both strengthened Turkey's competitive authoritarian regime in the short term and significantly weakened it over time. Crises in liberal democracy create opportunities for illiberal populists to build tightly bounded, vertical networks of supporters, but public disruptions can reconfigure such informal structures and allow new opposition networks to emerge. Using process tracing, the study shows how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's attempts at building a dominant, religious-nationalist community failed in the face of the 2013 protests in Istanbul and the violence around the 2015 national elections. These, in turn, altered the ruling party's vertical network. In Istanbul, the opposition took advantage of these changes to create a more pluralistic network and win the 2019 mayoral vote. After a narrow loss in the 2023 presidential contest, the opposition parties ran separately in the 2024 local elections and triumphed, pointing toward a post-Erdoğan party system. Attention to both government and opposition networks and how they change helps illustrate the dynamics of illiberal populist regimes.

Hamas's al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israel's brutal response, and the regional escalation of the conflict, including Iran's and Israel's unprecedented strikes on each other's territory, mark a critical juncture for the Middle East. These events have brought a renewed focus on the Levant as a key area of Iranian geopolitical interest and rivalry with Israel. Syria and the broader subregion are viewed by Tehran as vital for its national security and that of its alliance network, the Axis of Resistance, and for the survival of the regime. This article explores Iran's policy toward the Levant, focusing on Syria as the crucible of Iran's engagement with the region over the last decade. The study highlights how Iran's approach is defined by its continued desire to maintain its projection of strategic depth, thus ensuring its own security and that of the Axis of Resistance. Israel looms large over this calculus as the Islamic Republic looks to strengthen its allies’ positions against its enduring rival.

Some observers expected that the 2023 general elections in Turkey would end the long rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while others anticipated his narrow victory. But it takes more than results at the ballot box for Turkish democracy to flourish in the medium term. Instead, we must focus on the underlying political structure, especially the constitution and its making. This study examines the social and political forces that have shaped Turkey's constitutions, from the Ottoman Empire through today. The analysis shows that top-down constitutional processes only create advantages for the incumbent power, and they are symptomatic of weak democratic traditions. The most common use of constitutional revisions has been to serve the needs of the political elite at the time, without any long-term objectives or broadly based political discourse among governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Therefore, Turkey has not been able to break the cycle of authoritarianism, even through seemingly democratic constitutional revisions. The study concludes that the future of the constitution is not bright. Given Erdoğan's narrow victory in the 2023 elections and setbacks in the recent municipal voting, revisions in the near term will seek to shore up the power of the ruling Justice and Development Party.