egypt

Expect a lot of discussion about what’s realistic for the moribund Arab-Israeli peace process. Also, if Laura Rozen didn’t break this story at the Cable, then she was thinking it, anyway.

By 1916, the allies had opened up the Arabian Peninsula as a front in the First World War by convincing the Arabian tribes that Britain and France supported their independence from the Ottoman Empire. From deep behind Ottoman lines, the revolt kindled by legendary British officer T.E. Lawrence disrupted Ottoman supply lines and forced the [...]

What did the human-rights-promotion community think about the Cairo speech? According to vanguard organization Human Rights Watch’s official statement, emailed to me at 4:14 p.m. yesterday, not such great things. This release was titled “U.S./Egypt: Obama Dodged Rights Issue: Generalities Failed to Send Tough Message on Mideast Repression.”
President Barack Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 [...]

President Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the first leg of of his outreach to what-we-maybe-shouldn’t-call-the Muslim world and, unsurprisingly, Osama bin Laden has released his latest mixtape screed against Obama and the United States more broadly. This time, to blunt the message of reconciliation and respect that Obama intends to send in his [...]

The news that was circulating through the Arabic-language press yesterday has now been confirmed by Human Rights Watch, The Washington Post reports. According to a release the group put out last night, a researcher talked to Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi — the al-Qaeda non-link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden — barely two weeks ago:
Human [...]

On the heels of President Obama’s first meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, InsideDefense’s Sebastian Sprenger finds that the U.S. military command responsible for North America views Harper’s country as an entry point for terrorists. The piece is behind a lamentable now outside a subscriber firewall, but:
Military officials believe Canadian immigration policies are creating [...]

There may or may not be a ceasefire coming soon to Gaza. If there is, the Wall Street Journal reports, it’ll emerge from Cairo:
Despite a flurry of other negotiating tracks, including talks pursued by Turkey, Cairo has become the hub of diplomacy over the Gaza war in the past few days. Egypt has served as [...]

Naturally, it’s beneath stuff about 11 people dying in a Mosul suicide bombing, but still: Egypt is due to reopen its embassy in Baghdad, closed since insurgents murdered Egypt’s ambassador in 2005.
The Los Angeles Times reports: