Monumental balls:
UNITED NATIONS, June 29 — The U.N. Security Council voted 14 to 0 Friday to immediately shut down the U.N. weapons-inspection unit for Iraq, drawing to a close 16 years of international scrutiny of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
The action ended more than four years of political deadlock between the United States [...]

Ashraf Marwan, maybe the most colorful person of London’s Arab community, has died under unclear circumstances. Some believe him to be ‘The Source’ which tipped off Mossad prior to the 1973 war – others say he acted as a double agent misleading the Israelis.
From The Times:

Mr Marwan’s death will send shockwaves across the Middle East [...]

A little over a month ago, With/Without: Spatial products, Practices and Politics in the Middle East, a collection of essays about contemporary Arab urban issues, was released at the Dubai International Design Forum. Published by Middle Eastern cultural magazine Bidoun and the Forum’s organizer, Moutamarat, it has contributions from writers across the Arab world, including [...]

Bush Plans Envoy To Islamic Nations:
President Bush announced plans yesterday to appoint an envoy to an organization of Islamic nations with the intention of improving the battered image of the United States in the Muslim world.
Speaking at the rededication of the half-century-old Islamic Center in Washington, Bush said the new U.S. representative to the 57-nation [...]

If any reader would have the time and kindness to scan and send me (issandr -AT – arabist.net) Christopher Hitchens’ essay on Tunisia in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, I would be eternally grateful. The column was discussed briefly here:
Hitchens makes a case for the Tunisian dictatorship. The country is, after all, a relatively [...]

It’s nearly confirmed:
Tony Blair has landed a major diplomatic job as the international Middle East peace envoy, responsible for preparing the Palestinians for negotiations with Israel. His role, to be announced today, will be largely to work with the Palestinians over security, economy and governance.
Working from an office in Jerusalem, and possibly another in the [...]

How dare they?
Amine Azaoui outrages Egypt
on Monday, June 25 @ 13:40:53 CDT
The head of the National library , M Amine Zaoui sparked a wave of controversy after his statement to one the Egyptian daily newspapers “Al Watani al yaoum” in which he reconsidered the idea of “Egypt, mother of the world” and the wagon of [...]

Two essential pieces on Lebanon appeared in the last few weeks. The first, a review piece by Max Rodenbeck in the NYRB, looks at the last two-three years and draws a convincing portrait of what happened. Considering how confusing Lebanon’s politics are, that’s quite a feat. Plus Max gets the way I react to Lebanese [...]

Negar Azimi has a long piece on US democracy promotion efforts in Iran called Hard Realities of Soft Power. It includes reference to US policymaking, the misguided attacks on VOA Persian (widely considered to be an excellent service, both as a radio station and a program that increases esteem for the US in Iranian eyes) [...]

Some interesting discussions of the “Fatah never thought” theory, in preparation for a later post:
Conflict Blotter:
Fatah never fought. Gaza was essentially handed over to Hamas. Soldier after soldier said they felt betrayed and abandoned by their leadership. There was a seemingly willful lack of decision making by the senior most political leadership. Up and down [...]

I haven’t had time lately to look into the arrests of several members of a “Quranist” group — people who reject the hadith and present a reformist practice of Islam based entirely on the Quran — but as well as being a blatant violation of freedom of belief, there seems to be several other overlapping [...]

Persian Ghosts: Chris Toensing reviews books about the “Shia revival” and finds some wishful thinking.

The Zionist Organization of America did not get the memo:
ZOA says Abbas is not a moderate, and wants his Fatah Party to reform its charter to remove what ZOA says are articles calling for Israel’s destruction. The Palestine Liberation Organization, where Fatah predominates, has already had such articles removed from its charter.
Earlier this week, a [...]

The Sinai peninsula–sight of Egypt’s booming Red sea tourism, of presidential palaces and international conferences, of disenfranchised Bedouin tribes, arms and drugs smuggling, and several terrorist bombings–is a weird place. (Scott Anderson pointed this out in an excellent article in Vanity Fair a while back.)
Driving to a beach in Sinai last weekend, I ran [...]

The WaPo reports:
The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency’s worst illegal abuses — the so-called “family jewels” documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.
The documents, [...]

Egypt Passes National Anti-Smoking Law:
Smoking will now be prohibited in health and educational organizations, youth centers, legislative associations and all governmental authorities and clubs. A fine between 1,000 EGP ($175 USD) and 50,000 EGP ($9,000 USD) was also added to the new law for violations of the new tobacco law.
According to a report by the [...]

Great — a Bush lapdog with a long track record of anti-Palestinian policy-making sent to negotiate peace: Blair May Become Special Mideast Envoy – washingtonpost.com

The rabidly Zionist, MEMRI outlet, New York Sun has an interesting piece by Eli Lake, a reporter formerly based in Cairo who knows the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, about how the State Dept. and other US agencies are considering engaging with the MB. Robert Leiken, who recently wrote a Foreign Affairs piece advocating engagement (see posts [...]

Al Hayat’s Muhammad Salah on Congress’ threat to withhold military funding from Egypt:
Strikingly, there are many objections raised by Egyptian opposition forces against the use of aid as a pressure card on the Egyptian government. Moreover, Egyptian political parties and opposition forces vied for opposing the US president’s statements and then the decision of the [...]

This is a nicely written story about the role of public bakeries in traditional Moroccan life — it made my mouth water at the thought of the tasty bread I grew up with. But it was slightly ruined for me towards the end with the author’s dinner at Mohammed Benaissa, the hapless and reportedly quite [...]

Naomo Klein on Israel’s military-industrial complex:
Israel’s economy isn’t booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-90s, when the country was in the vanguard of the information revolution – the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dotcom bubble burst in [...]

Click on the logo above to learn more about a campaign to get the White House to do more to help Iraqi refugees, the fastest growing refugee crisis worldwide. Refugees International is asking people to call the White House to ask them to increase the aid to Iraqi refugees to $290 million. Remember that, as [...]

Some readers have written to ask why I am not writing about the recent events in Palestine. The main reason, aside from not having internet access over the last few days, is that I am not there and do not follow events there very closely. For fresh analysis and reporting, you could do no better [...]

The Brookings Institution put out a report last week that describes in detail the situation of the 1 to 1.5 million Iraqi refugees currently living in Syria (there are an estimated 2 million in the region, in addition to 2 million internally displaced).
The report discusses the reasons refugees are leaving Iraq: getting caught in [...]

Most of the Gulf countries have made it onto the Tier 3 list (those countries with the worst record in human trafficking, according to the report) of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2007: Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. UAE is on the Tier 2 watch list.
So is Egypt. From the report:
Egypt [...]

Below, a clipping from a French-langauge Moroccan paper showing an article on the annual Hajj lottery next to an ad for vodka. Details at Laila Lalami’s blog.

You really can’t make this stuff up:
Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsequently rejected, building the so-called “Gay Bomb.”
. . .
As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if [...]

Potentially a major development in US-Egypt relations, if it holds up:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives on Tuesday advanced legislation aimed at pressuring Egypt to improve its human rights record by withholding some military aid until progress is made.
The House Appropriations Committee approved a wide-ranging foreign aid bill for next year that would hold [...]

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a few years will remember Charles Levinson, who in 2004-2005 was a regular contributor. Charles left Egypt a couple of years ago and after a stint in Iraq ended up in Jerusalem, where he currently works for the Sunday Telegraph. Over the last week he’s set up [...]

I don’t really have anything to add to what Richard Silverstein has written on the subject. It’s sad for Finkelstein, sad for DePaul University, and sad for academia generally speaking, especially as it is generally recognized that Finkelstein is an accomplished scholar and it appears he was denied tenure essentially because of his personality. Finkelstein [...]

Finally, here’s (part of) the story behind the news: The authors Christopher Parker and Pete W. Moore in the latest MERIP issue analyze Iraq’s war economy and see much of the motives behind the insurgency against the US-led occupation in decades-old gray economic structures that are challenged by the new guys in power.
Throughout the 1990s, [...]

The great Ali Abunimah has another excellent reflection on the debate around 1967 that cuts through the bullshit:
“Forty years ago today was the last day the citizens of Israel were a free people in their own land,” wrote Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar on June 4. “It was the last day we lived here without living [...]

More fine reporting by Stephen Grey, who literally wrote the book on rendition, about the upcoming Council of Europe findings on the CIA flights in Europe:
Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council’s report, seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also [...]

Without wanting to get into the recent decision by the British Academics’ Union to pass a motion encouraging a boycott of Israeli universities and academics (I fully support this show of solidarity which remains, after all, optional and provides a course of action for selective boycott of academics who are in bed with the Israeli [...]

Tony Blair on the recent allegations that Saudi Prince Bandar pocketed a $2 billion commission on an arms deal with BAe:
“This investigation, if it had it gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations in investigations being made into the Saudi royal family,” Blair said at a meeting of the Group of Eight nations [...]

For those of you who live in Cairo, the French Cultural Center in Heliopolis is hosting a baladi dance show with live music on its rooftop on 12 June. See details after the jump.

MERIP has a roundtable of Israeli and Palestinian views on 1967. I thought this point by Samera Esmeir was particularly worth highlighting:
1967 was a year of setback for the Palestinians not only because Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also because the new occupation effectively set the older one of 1948 [...]

Interesting interview from the BBC of a former Egyptian pilot remember his dogfight with Israeli jets on 6 June 1967. Note that in terms of the technology used, it was basically Egyptians flying slower Soviet MiGs against Israelis in French Mystere and the newer Mirage jets. What comes across in this as in so many [...]

Between some of the most preposterously neo-liberal economic laws anywhere in the world and attempts to give oil companies some of the most generous formulas for production sharing, Iraq has suffered plenty at the hands of US-led efforts to remodel its economy. Now it’s the Maliki government that’s threatening to come down “with an iron [...]

After the jump is a story from the FT about pressure being brought on the mutawwa (religious police) in Saudi Arabia — worth reading.