Yossi Alpher
By Yossi Alpher
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Opinion From Beirut (and Baghdad, and Tehran) to Jerusalem
It has become, it seems, the new paradigm for dealing with the Middle East: Just solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or at least start moving in that direction. Then it will be much easier for the United States to deal with Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Al Qaeda, democratization and all the other problems of the Arab…
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Opinion Ehud Olmert’s Amateur Defense
One can’t entirely blame Ehud Olmert for feeling smug these days. He expanded his governing coalition, guaranteed that the 2007 budget will pass in the Knesset and stabilized his government after the tribulations of this summer’s war in Lebanon and in anticipation of the findings of the Winograd Commission investigating that war. And he did…
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Opinion Preconditions for a Problematic Partner
In early February 2006, just days after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, the Olmert government successfully negotiated with the Quartet (the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia) a framework for dealing with the Islamist movement. Any Hamas-led Palestinian government would have to fulfill three conditions before Israel and the international community would deal…
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Opinion Radical Visions of A New Middle East
President Bush was not the first to introduce the term “new Middle East.” Shimon Peres preceded the American president by a decade. But Bush’s vision for a new Middle East — that aspiration to Arab reform and democracy that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was presumably referring to when, visiting Beirut at the height of…
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Opinion International Force Can Keep Peace Only When Both Sides Are Committed
Of the more than 50 international peacekeeping forces established or authorized by the United Nations since its inception, half a dozen have patrolled Israel’s borders with its Arab neighbors. Before another international force comes into existence and is deployed in southern Lebanon, it might be helpful to inquire what has made for the handful of…
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Opinion Pushing Israel’s Right To Exist Is The Wrong Strategy
Neither Israel nor the United States needs an “Israel’s right to exist” certificate from Hamas in order to have dealings with that movement. To insist on this precondition for contact not only places an unnecessary obstacle on the road to dealing with the Hamas-led government in the Palestinian Authority. It also sends a subtle and…
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Opinion Time To Hang Up My Track (II) Shoes
Israelis and Palestinians have been conducting informal talks about resolving their conflict for several decades now. The first such contacts between Israeli intellectuals and Palestine Liberation Organization stalwarts took place some 30 years ago. These meetings picked up steam in the late 1980s, after the PLO officially accepted the principle of a two-state solution. Since…
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Opinion Can Peretz Conquer General Skepticism?
How symbolic that Amir Peretz’s first act as Israeli defense minister was to approve an air strike that killed five Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. The dovish former labor union leader, turned instant hawk. His second act, though, was to begin lifting the most recent closure strangling the West Bank. More than any other job in…
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