Middle East

The first Arab-Israeli war of 1948 has been the seminal event in the modern history of the Palestinians. The impacts of the 1948 defeat – the Nakba (Arabic: Disaster) – for Palestinians have been profound, for they have shaped the contours of Palestine and Palestinian history in myriad ways.

Nicolas Pelham concludes, that an end to western, Palestinian and Israeli isolation of Gaza and an improvement in Gaza’s lot generally, is likely to empower groups with external connections, and impede rather than accelerate Gaza’s Islamisation. By contrast, the alternative - of maintaining the closure - is likely to hasten the application of Sharia norms.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict was born at the end of last century as a result of "incompatible national aspirations" between the indigenous population of Palestine (the Palestinians) and the Zionist movement over the land of Palestine.

The Palestinian schism is often referred to as a deep one that pits a secular nationalist movement (centered around Fatah) against a religious movement (centered around Hamas). In his paper, Nathan J. Brown suggests by contrast that the division is not as deep as is often assumed but it is exceedingly wide.

Refugees under occupation - nowhere else in the world are these three words combined to describe the living reality of nearly two million people. But for Palestine refugees in the occupied Palestinian territory, these words have for more than 40 years captured the essence of a doubly deprived existence caught in a political im-passe, denied basic human rights, and largely removed from the international agenda.

We have passed the 60-year mark since the Palestinian nakba, yet the question of Palestine refugees remains unsolved. More than 4.7 million registered refugees continue to live in conditions collectively characterised by uncertainty, injustice and insecurity.

The geographic and social fragmentation of the Palestinian people is essentially a result of the conflict in the Middle East. This topic represents the main focus of our two-day conference with international experts in March 2010. Our dossier provides further information about the conference and the invited experts.

The Heinrich Böll Foundation Turkey office decided to launch a foreign policy program with an initial series of meetings in Istanbul, Berlin and Brussels. The goal was to shape guiding questions and frame the foundations interests in its analysis and policy interventions in foreign policy debates between Turkey, the European Union, and the Middle East. A report from the first expert roundtable in Istanbul, on October 19 2009.

In May, President Obama submitted to Congress the full details of his first budget request, for Fiscal Year 2010. The President’s first annual budget demonstrates that the Obama administration does take seriously the role of the U.S. in supporting democracy, governance, and human rights in the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA).

Those who think that the events in the wake of Iran's 2009 presidential election will lead to radical change will be disappointed. The movement that led to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 was powerful and had a clear focus; today's protests are heterogenous and lack leadership.