Middle East Articles

Since December 2010, the eyes of the world have been drawn to the dramatic developments in North Africa and the Middle East, as popular revolutions have toppled autocratic regimes throughout the region. The American people’s egalitarian instincts have sided with the democratic political aspirations of these revolutions. However, our obsessive focus on free and fair elections has caused us to overlook another critical element in the construction of flourishing societies in Arab Spring countries. The framers of the new constitutions in these countries, and the people themselves, will need to construct impartial, fair, independent, and transparent judicial systems, and a culture of confidence in their courts in order to foster a robust civil society. Only then will citizens feel secure that they will be justly treated if they are subjected to overreach by popular majorities or executive entities. The development of impartial and independent courts is a prerequisite to the rule of law.

In the beginning of 2012, the Supreme Court of Israel upheld a law prohibiting Palestinians who marry Israelis from thereby obtaining Israeli citizenship. The Citizenship and Entry Law, as it is known, applies the same ban to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Although it passed the Knesset as an emergency national security provision during the Second Intifada in 2003, the law has become a permanent feature of the Israeli naturalization landscape,

The image of hundreds of Syrian women, carrying white cloths and olive branches in a protest against the government’s mass arrests of the men of their village in April, was indeed powerful. There, in the town of Baida, the women had seemed to be political equals of their men in the way they stood up, side by side, for their cause. Yet such seeming equality proves only to be an illusion for most Syrian women in their domestic lives. In fact, gender discrimination in Syrian law serves to institutionalize the social and cultural stigmas associated with sexual abuse, honor crimes, and divorce.

As Egypt moves from the euphoria of revolution to the less heady questions of timetables, candidates, and elections, the Arab world’s oldest and dominant Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, is again stepping into the Egyptian political and global media limelight. The country’s military rulers have just announced that voting for the People’s Assembly will begin on November 28 of this year, marking the first parliamentary elections since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak. Amid fears that the vote would divide Islamist parties and youth secular groups, however, the Muslim Brotherhood appears confident in its role in the transition process from military to civilian rule.