Yossi Alpher recommends the US and the international community should opt for alternatives to stalled Israeli-Palestinian final status talks: Israel-Syria negotiations, a reassessment of strategies for Gaza, and more dynamic support for Palestinian statebuilding.

This newsletter is a joint effort of NOREF and NUPI collecting new resources on Sudan. A bimonthly selection of Arab and non Arab official, journalistic and academic sources in English is compiled to get an overview of the main events, opinions and documents from the perspective of the Arab world.

The seemingly neutral category of “failed states,” as applied to Yemen, constructs the country as a place in need of intervention. In obscuring more than it reveals about local realities, outside interference runs the risk of being counterproductive.

Yemen’s problems are endemic and deeply rooted in the nature of society and its complex power relations. Ahmed Saif argues that state-building and rule of law is the only way to combat terrorism and prevent failure of the state.

Calls for increased Western military support to Yemen to prevent the spread of terrorism are alarming. The cause of Yemen’s political crisis is not the rise of al-Qaeda, but a gradual erosion of state authority. Kjetil Selvik warns that propping up President Saleh’s repressive regime could deepen the country’s crisis.

The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank seems to have finally locked in the permanence of Israel’s colonial project. Outside intervention may offer the last hope for a reversal of the settlement enterprise and the achievement of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, writes Henry Siegman. Since the US is no longer the likely agent of that intervention, it is up to the Europeans and to the Palestinians themselves to fashion the path to self-determination in the occupied territories.

Darfur Bimonthly - a selection of perspectives from and on the Arab world.

This newsletter is a joint effort by NOREF and NUPI bringing together new resources on the conflict in Darfur. It contains a selection of perspectives from and on the Arab world; the data are collected in the period September-October and published by Noref in November.

It is regional politics, not purely military concerns, or ‘proliferation’, that explain Iran’s nuclear policy, and within this set of regional issues, Afghanistan, and, of equal importance, the rivalry with Pakistan, play a central role.

Further building in occupied East Jerusalem has raised doubts about the critical third stage of negotiations in the peace process. The US and European countries should put pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories and further the two-state solution.

Darfur Bimonthly - a selection of perspectives from and on the Arab world.

There are some Arab-Israeli minefields that can still be traversed with a pragmatic compass, for example the fate of the 5m Palestinian refugees.

Why are Arabs indifferent to the Darfur crisis, and what strategies may be employed to engage the Arab world on this issue?

Darfur Bimonthly - a selection of perspectives from and on the Arab world

Darfur Bimonthly - A selection of perspectives from and on the Arab world