By Barry Rubin

In a rare glimpse behind the curtain, a Palestinian scandal sheds a lot of light on the Palestinian Authority, Arab politics, and Western illusions. Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Labor Ahmed Majdalani was being interviewed by a radio station when, not realizing that his microphone was on, he referred to Palestinian workers as “brothers of whores.” Hundreds of callers complained. Majdalani’s answer? He claimed he was talking about Israelis, not Palestinians!

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A briefing by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman*

Bruce Maddy-Weitzman is Principal Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, and an expert on the Maghreb. He is a frequent contributor to the Middle East Quarterly and has authored three books, the most recent of which is The Return to History: Berber Identity and the Challenge to North African States (2011). Mr. Maddy-Weitzman addressed the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia on November 3, on the implications of the North African upheavals for U.S. and Western national interests.

Mr. Maddy-Weitzman began by describing 2011 as a transformative year but cautioned that the Arab uprisings had produced mixed results, with a final verdict still pending.

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by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat*

According to Egypt’s elections committee, the Muslim Brotherhood won 37 percent of the vote of the first round of voting in Egypt; and the Salafis, who promote a yet more extreme Islamist program, won 24 percent, giving them together a jaw-dropping 61 percent of the vote.

This stunning result prompts two questions: Is this a legitimate or rigged outcome? Are Islamists about to dominate Egypt?

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By Fern Sidman

“A two state solution in the Middle East is already in place and that constitutes Israel and Jordan,” declared GOP congressional candidate Karen Harrington. Delivering her remarks on Saturday evening December 3rd, at the New York Hall of Science Museum on the occasion of the 23rd annual Hebron Fund dinner, Ms. Harrington told the audience of over 500 stalwart supporters of a continued Jewish presence in the holy city of Hebron that, “President Obama is placing Israel at risk and his reckless foreign policy change concerning Israel retreating to 1967 borders must be adamantly rejected.”

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By Gary Gerofsky

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta: Get back to your damn office and do some serious homework! You and your administration have now become the enablers of the worst ideologies that the Middle East has to offer and you are abusing your only reliable ally in the region and throwing Israel under the bus to ingratiate your administration to a dangerous new group of dictators along with the existing miserable bunch.

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By Barry Rubin

Since last February I have predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood would win elections in Egypt. People have thought me very pessimistic. Now the votes are starting to come in and … it’s much worse than I thought. But my prediction that the Brotherhood and the other Islamists would gain a slight majority seems to have been fulfilled and then some. According to most reports the Brotherhood is scoring at just below 40 percent all by itself.

Why worse? For two reasons:

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By Barry Rubin

Assuming that the Muslim Brotherhood and smaller Islamist groups do very well in Egypt’s parliamentary election today, what does it tell us about the modern history and political future of that country? The main cause for the political upheaval in Egypt was the long-term failure of the Arab nationalist regime that governed there, and in much of the Arab world, for well over half a century.

Rulers’ inability to keep promises about what they were going to achieve — pan-Arab union, rapid social and economic progress, genocide against Israel, driving out Western influences — has long been clear. Their corruption, the lack of freedom they offered and the economic hardships they brought have also long been clear.

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by Cinnamon Stillwell*

When Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced last month that Walid Phares — a Lebanese-American Christian, adjunct professor of jihadist global strategies at the National Defense University, and former Middle East studies professor at Florida Atlantic University — would be a special adviser on the Middle East and North Africa, it elicited howls of fury from the usual suspects. Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding case and the chief Islamist organ in the U.S. — sent a letter to the Romney campaign stating CAIR’s predictable objections, while publications such as the Daily Beast, Salon.com, and Mother Jones followed suit with error-filled hit pieces.

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By Barry Rubin

The New York Times has run an op-ed entitled, ‘The Overblown Islamist Threat.’ Big surprise: There’s no Islamist threat! They’re all moderates! Just like in 1979 Iran or in Turkey more recently. Do you think we might see an oped in The New York Times entitled, ‘The Islamist Threat is Very Real?’ Of course not.

But the real surprise is the author’s identity. It’s former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher. Huh? Jordan’s policy on Islamism has been based precisely on the idea that letting them take power would be the end of the regime and a disaster for the country.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

As the U.S. troop presence in Iraq continues to diminish, it is worth examining what sort of political system has been left behind. Is Iraq really a democracy as many officials in the Bush administration hoped it would be? Sadly, the answer to this question cannot be in the affirmative.

It is of course true that in March 2010, Iraq conducted elections recognized as free and fair by the UN. However, as Osama al-Nujayfi, the Sunni speaker for the Iraqi parliament, astutely observed, democracy is more than just about holding elections. In many of the other essential aspects of a truly democratic society, Iraq’s status is far from satisfactory.

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By Barry Rubin

What does theocracy look like? This is what theocracy looks like! *

Many people find it hard to comprehend what the Obama Administration thinks it’s doing in the Middle East. But it’s really very simple if you know the history of the arguments, read carefully administration speeches and documents, watch their actions, and talk to some of those involved.

Leaving aside a number of points I’ve made in a previous article (which would be good to read in conjunction with this one), I want to focus here on one concept: the idea that the U.S. government has outsmarted the Islamists.

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by Damla Aras*

The referendum held on January 9, 2011, was a milestone for Sudan. With an overwhelming majority of 98.3 percent, southerners decided to secede from the north and to create Africa’s youngest state — the Republic of South Sudan. While this momentous development was expected to end Khartoum’s decades-long struggle with the southern Sudanese rebels, it has set off a number of ticking time bombs and exacerbated existing conflicts. On top of Sudan’s financial problems and the wider impact of the Arab upheavals, President Omar Bashir’s government is now facing a number of pressing issues in the post-referendum era. With the rise of new disputes and the escalation of protracted conflicts, is Bashir’s Sudan on the verge of further instability?

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Tunisia, where the 2011 Arab uprisings began, remains an ominous model for where these uprisings will end.

The nation’s first round of elections are in, and, as expected, the Islamist party, al-Nahda, won by a landslide, gaining over 40% of the seats in the national constituent assembly. As usual, the mainstream media, interpreting events exclusively through a Western paradigm, portrayed this largely as a positive development.

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by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi*

Since Nouri al-Maliki first became prime minister of Iraq in April 2006, a recurring talking point about his time in office has been that his days are numbered. Indeed, in a paper I wrote for the Middle East Review of International Affairs quarterly journal in the summer of this year, I cast severe doubt on whether the Iraqi premier would remain in power until the expiry of his second term in 2014.

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With Jewish Support, GOP Retakes Seat Held by Democrats for Nearly a Century

By Daniel Perez, with additional reporting by Fern Sidman

In an historic special election, Brooklyn and Queens voters have chosen a Republican to represent New York’s 9th Congressional District, a district that has rested securely in the hands of the Democratic Party since 1923 (and in fact, has only elected two Republicans since 1874). Some see the election of a GOP candidate in what has long been a liberal stronghold as local citizens’ way of rejecting certain policies of President Barack Obama’s administration, in particular the administration’s approach towards Israel.

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