THIS YEAR America’s economy did not get the freshest of starts. A government shutdown, a wobbly stockmarket and concerns that the Federal Reserve would tighten monetary policy too quickly made for a dim outlook for 2019. With the effects of fiscal stimulus fading, and momentum in the global economy ebbing, most expected America’s economic growth to decelerate. So GDP figures ...

Egyptian Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel Aal said on Tuesday that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did not interfere with the constitutional amendments. Abdel Aal’s remarks came during the first meeting of the Legislative Committee of the House of Representatives to discuss the community dialogue on the constitutional amendments. “The most important result of the dialogue is that it has changed some ...

President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi of Egypt was in Washington this week, and the headlines of Egyptian newspapers and media channels — and also those from the White House — are emphasizing cooperation and shared interests in the region. Predictably, up until the Trump-Sissi Oval Office meeting, there had been absolutely no mention of Sissi’s moves to consolidate power through constitutional amendments and Egypt’s democratic struggles. This ...

Whether or not the Ra’am-Balad party passes the threshold and makes it into Israel’s 21st Knesset, all the Arab parties, along with all those who claim to represent Arab society in Israel, need to do some soul-searching. For the 2015 election, the Arab parties merged to form the Joint List, and that united front reaped 13 seats in the 120-seat ...

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to tell Congress on Tuesday what the United States would do if the Israeli government tried to annex the West Bank, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently promised to do if re-elected. Mr. Pompeo’s silence on the issue is a break from the actions of previous administrations. Senior American officials have long and explicitly ...

Benjamin Netanyahu has once again emerged as the man destined to lead Israel into the near future, but he wasn’t the biggest winner as the votes for the 21st Knesset were counted overnight. One of the major criticisms leveled against Netanyahu going into Tuesday’s election was that he routinely acquiesced to too many demands from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in ...

BEIRUT — During a Middle East tour last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo focused primarily on Iran’s influence in the region, but on Mar. 20 in Jerusalem he also labeled Russia an adversary of US regional allies in addition to Iran and China when speaking about energy and security in the eastern Mediterranean. “Revisionist powers like Iran and Russia and China are all trying to ...

“Knowing I contribute to put food on the table and feed the children of other refugee families makes it worth the effort I put into my cooking,” says Syrian Khitam. Together with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), she provides meals for 300 families affected by the winter storms in Lebanon. Khitam is a 54-year-old woman from Syria and lives in ...

“Lebanon has once again shown its unrelenting stubbornness to overcome all these challenges,” says Wael El Zein, Chairman and General Manager of Lucid Investment Bank, talking about the Lebanese economy’s struggles, which include the negative effects of the outbreak of war in neighboring Syria since 2011, a slump in oil prices since 2014, as well as the country’s own governmental power ...

Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2), a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is a former State Department official who advised six previous secretaries of state 0n Middle East policy. He is the author of The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President. If there ever was a foreign policy decision made for ...