PDF Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa: Development, Democracy, and Dictatorship 9th edition Sean Yom

If Ankara significantly hardens its rhetoric against Israel, it would find itself in opposition to the U.S. administration, which has which has essentially given Israel wide latitude to respond. As a result, Türkiye’s relationship with its major strategic ally is very likely to come under further stress. The result is a set of actors now mixing impulsiveness with inertia and treating that as policy. Hamas has decided that it can’t be both a resistance movement and act as a governing body presiding over someone else’s foreign occupation.

After exposing abuses against migrant workers in Qatar, the former employee of the World Cup organising committee was given a prison sentence for alleged bribery and misuse of funds. While his sentence was reduced to three years, his family raised allegations of torture in late 2022. Many of the countries comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a political and economic union including the UAE (67), Qatar (58), Saudi Arabia (51), Bahrain (44), Oman (44) and Kuwait (42) are also declining on this year’s CPI. After the Arab Spring, the Gulf states have turned to hyper-nationalism and further repressions of civic space. Without channels for civic participation and easy access to information, the public is left out of decision-making and without avenues to drive social change. MENASource follows movements across the region and provides news and analysis on current events, including a platform for Middle Eastern perspectives, among others, on major issues—economic, political, security, cultural—that are at stake in the post-Arab Spring era.

The Israel-Hamas War: Live Q&A with Amb. David Satterfield

The Atlantic Council’s work on social, economic and human development issues in the Middle East honors the legacy of Rafik Hariri and his life’s mission to unlock the human and economic potential of the Arab world. The Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project injects fresh thinking into how governments and practitioners can apply legal tools to advance human rights and accountability around the world. EmpowerME at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East is shaping solutions to empower entrepreneurs, women, and youth and building coalitions of public and private partnerships to drive regional economic integration, prosperity, and job creation. The Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs are leading the way in providing a forum for informing and galvanizing the transatlantic community to shape a stable and prosperous Middle East and North Africa. We have been at the vanguard of promoting peace and security and unlocking the region’s economic and human potential through the ideas we publish, the solutions we generate, and the communities we influence.

It assessed that Crambus was involved in gaining initial access and exfiltrating data from impacted networks. Our reports feature policy-relevant analysis that focuses on transatlantic priorities while centering the concerns of citizens in the Middle East. Our online publications feature thoughtful reflections and opinions on current events in the Middle East & North Africa. The North Africa region holds strategic and political importance for the United States and Europe because of its geographical location in a critically strategic position at the crossroads between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Government

Also, due to widespread immigration of French Jews to Israel, it is the native language of approximately 200,000 Jews of Israel. The third-most widely spoken language, Turkish, is largely confined to Turkey, which is also one of the region’s largest and most populous countries, but it is present in areas in neighboring countries. Arabic, with all its dialects, is the most widely spoken language in the Middle East, with Literary Arabic being official in all North African and in most West Asian countries. Arabic dialects are also spoken in some adjacent areas in neighbouring Middle Eastern non-Arab countries. Several Modern South Arabian languages such as Mehri and Soqotri are also spoken Yemen and Oman. Another Semitic language such as Aramaic and its dialects are spoken mainly by Assyrians and Mandaeans.

Individual strongmen rule the majority of governments with near-absolute power, quashing civil liberties, free and fair elections, and any other perceived check to their power. In countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, monarchs including kings and sheikhs rule for decades, often passing along power from father to son. In fact, the Middle East is home to eight of the world’s ten remaining absolute monarchies. And in countries like Egypt and Syria, generals and strongmen use the military and repressive security https://www.metadialog.com/government/ services to maintain their authoritarian regimes. Despite region-wide calls for social and political reform during the 2011 Arab uprising protests, few liberal, democratic institutions—such as free speech and freedom of the press—exist in the Middle East today outside Israel and, more recently, Tunisia. The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN) (TI’s chapter in Palestine) is of the view that Palestine would not be in a better position than countries in the region if it were listed on the CPI.

A BCG study showed that there is a high level of satisfaction (86%) in terms of the usage of digital government services in Qatar. Notably, 58% of Qatari respondents revealed that they use e-government services at least once per week. By 2025, more than 40% of all ICT investments in the Middle East will be intended to fulfill ambitious digital transformation initiatives. Within the GCC alone, digital technologies are advancing, and governments are set to revolutionize both the scope and quality of their service offerings.

Christian communities have played a vital role in the Middle East,[44] and they represent 40.5% of Lebanon, where the Lebanese president, half of the cabinet, and half of the parliament follow one of the various Lebanese Christian rites. There are also important minority religions like the Baháʼí Faith, Yarsanism, Yazidism,[45] Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, Druze,[46] and Shabakism, and in ancient times the region was home to Mesopotamian religions, Canaanite religions, Manichaeism, Mithraism and various monotheist gnostic sects. Various concepts are often being paralleled to the Middle East, most notably the Near East, Fertile Crescent, and Levant. The Near East, Fertile Crescent, and Levant are geographical concepts, which refer to large sections of the modern-day Middle East, with the Near East being the closest to the Middle East in its geographical meaning. Due to it primarily being Arabic speaking, the Maghreb region of North Africa is sometimes included.

State employees siphon money from procurement processes intended to rebuild, while other officials avoid accountability on many counts, even for the port explosion for which there is evidence suggesting they knew of the risks. A 2020 anti-corruption law took important steps to correct some of these issues, but it’s still insufficient. Gaps remain in transparency in appointments for the anti-corruption commission and the subsequent public procurement law passed in 2021. The command is used to set up a port forwarding tunnel from the compromised machine as a means to access the remote server’s RDP service as if it was running locally. At the same time, an unknown batch file was executed, which redirected output to a text file in the %USERPROFILE%\public directory.

They started when Mahsa Amini was executed by the state, and has seen solidarity across some Islamic countries as well as professional Irianian footballers in the 2022 world cup, where they refused to sing their national anthem to draw attention to the protests. As Arab spring protests failed to establish democratic states, civil wars have erupted between various armed groups. This is particularly the case when Hamas and other Islamist factions are at the forefront of the picture. Hamas’s political Islamist ideology, ties to Iran, Western designation as a foreign terrorist organization, and former leader’s call on Muslims to join the fight against Israel challenge Saudi Arabia’s national security, policy of disengagement from pan-Islamism, and animosity toward political Islam.

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The MEI Art Gallery is open to the public weekdays from 10am to 5pm (closed for federal holidays). Visitors are encouraged to register for a timed visit at the link below, but walk-ins are also welcome. The Sea of Life features the works of fourteen artists spanning different art forms and generations, exploring their connection to their natural and built environment and the symbolism of water in their lives. The title plays on the concept of ‘The Tree of Life,’ a widespread symbol of life among some cultures and religions. Both the sea and the island’s fresh water springs are linked to its prosperity and regarded as a precious commodity to cherish and preserve, creating a powerful connection between the people of Bahrain and their natural environment.

However, some elections in Iran, as the election of city councils satisfies free and democratic election criteria to some extent. In other countries, the ideology (usually out of power) has fostered both pro-democratic and anti-democratic sentiments. The Justice and Development Party is a moderate democratic Islamist party that has come to power in traditionally secular Turkey. The United Iraqi Alliance, the winner of the recent elections in Iraq, is a coalition including many religious parties. In the book “Islam and Democracy – A Historical Overview”, the author Bernard Lewis draws the comparison of increased democratisation and draws attention to the country embracing liberal democracy values. This has been seen recently with the 2022 protests in Iran, sometimes referred to as the Mahsa Amini protests which have come about after opposition to extreme Islamic law in the country, limited freedom of expression and violation of women’s rights.

Corruption

The intention with this balanced messaging was to maintain a nonconfrontational stance in foreign policy, so as to lower political tensions with regional partners and Western allies at a time when the Turkish economy is in dire need of inflows of international capital. The political leadership had been on a charm offensive to the Gulf countries to get commitments to aid Türkiye’s ailing economy, and officials have made a clear effort toward a more positive engagement with Europe and the United States. Beyond news analysis, researchers can access organizations and journals that provide deeper takes. For instance, Insight Turkey is a journal focusing upon Turkish foreign policy and relations.

Several other authoritarian countries, such as Egypt, Iran, and Syria, offer the veneer of democracy while in reality often keep their elections carefully—or clumsily—orchestrated. In Egypt’s 2018 presidential election, the incumbent General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi imprisoned, intimidated, or barred every legitimate political opponent from running against him. That left just one handpicked opposition candidate who, in fact, endorsed General Sisi for the presidency.