Shlomo Avineri
Shlomo Avineri, Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry in the first cabinet of Yitzhak Rabin, is Professor of Political Science at Hebrew University.
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2011-10-21
| Turkey could be a bridge between the West and the East, between Islam and modernity, and between Israel and the Arabs. But it runs the danger of succumbing to the arrogance of power, which has corrupted and sidelined many strong states in the past.... read |
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2011-05-04
| What is now happening in the Arab world is without historical precedent: for the first time, Arab authoritarian regimes have been toppled, and others are threatened, by mass demonstrations calling for freedom and democracy. But knocking down an oppressive regime is easier than building and consolidating democracy.... read |
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2010-08-26
| The imminent resumption in Washington of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks is good news. But whether these talks will lead to an agreement, let alone within one year, as US President Barack Obama hopes, is another matter.... read |
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2010-07-05
| Turkey claims to be pursuing a “zero conflict” policy that aims to minimize regional tensions and enhance stability. But, thanks to its alliance with Iran and support for Hamas, Turkey now finds itself rushing headlong into a series of conflicts – with Europe, the US, Israel, and moderate Arab regimes.... read |
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2010-06-09
| Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's proposal to declare independence unilaterally sometime in 2011 if negotiations with Israel fail should be eagerly welcomed. Such a move would not resolve the conflict, but it would certainly mean a paradigm shift for a conflict in which everyone has been treading water for almost two decades.... read |
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2009-05-09
| While both the Palestinians and Israel can easily and rightly be blamed for the failure of the Oslo peace process, the fundamental problem was that effort's insistence on creating a Palestinian state from the top down. The effort should shift to building a Palestinian state from the bottom up, for which there are encouraging signs.... read |
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2008-05-19
| America's inability to broker an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals an important truth about the limits of US power: while America can act as a fire brigade that prevents conflicts from spilling over into wider wars, or as a midwife to peace agreements, it cannot initiate anything in the absence of political will on the part of clashing national movements.... read |
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2007-07-16
| It is easy to blame the current Palestinian crisis on individuals – be it Arafat or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – and even easier to blame the Israeli occupation or American policies. But the Palestinians must overcome their own tragic heritage of repeated failures to create a coherent body politic.... read |
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2007-05-01
| Despite the Winograd Commission's devastating criticism of the prosecution of last summer's war with Hezbollah, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government may survive, owing to widespread fear of a comeback by the right-wing leader Binyamin Netanyahu. But a weak and discredited Israeli government will be in no position to revive meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians.... read |
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Victors’ Justice, Iraqi-Style
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Shlomo Avineri 
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Saddam Hussein is dead, but not all Iraqis are celebrating. On the contrary, the way in which the various religious and ethnic groups in Iraq responded to his execution is emblematic of the difficulty of holding Iraq together as a coherent entity. ... read
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2006-01-26
| The victory of the fundamentalist Hamas in the Palestinian elections will have far-reaching consequences for the region, some totally unexpected. Two aspects, however, are already visible.... read |
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2004-08-05
| One reason Greek Cypriots rejected last April UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan for the reunification of Cyprus was that an overwhelming majority of them felt it did not do justice to the claims of refugees displaced during the 1974 Turkish invasion. This was also one of the few occasions when international public opinion became aware that there was a refugee problem on the island, because few people knew that refugees from that war still exist. ... read |
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2005-01-17
| The euphoria that has, for over a week, greeted Mahmoud Abbas's election as President of the Palestinian Authority was perhaps justified. But now it is time for a clear-eyed assessment of what lies before Palestinians, Israelis, and, perhaps more importantly, for the wider Arab world. ... read |
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2006-07-17
| Today’s crisis in Lebanon is a crisis of the Lebanese state. It is this structural crisis that must be addressed if the violence is to stop. ... read |
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2005-10-12
| Iraq’s draft constitution will probably be approved in the referendum to be held on October 15. But whether it is ratified or not ultimately does not matter, as the constitution – and the whole constitution-making process – is totally out of touch with the realities of a country that no longer exists as a coherent body politic. ... read |
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2010-07-05
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| Turkey claims to be pursuing a “zero conflict” policy that aims to minimize regional tensions and enhance stability. But, thanks to its alliance with Iran and support for Hamas, Turkey now finds itself rushing headlong into a series of conflicts – with Europe, the US, Israel, and moderate Arab regimes.... read |
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2005-08-16
| In the next three weeks, the Israeli army will do something unprecedented: instead of defending the country against external enemies or terrorism, it will evacuate – by force if necessary – 9,000 Israelis from their homes.... read |
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2004-05-17
| The assassination of the President of Iraq's Governing Council makes it crystal clear that the US is failing to create the minimal law-and-order needed for any sort of orderly transfer of power to take place by June 30th. Barely two months ago, the signing of a constitutional document by a US-appointed group of un-elected Iraqi officials was heralded as if it were the re-enactment of America's constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787. ... read |
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2007-07-16
| It is easy to blame the current Palestinian crisis on individuals – be it Arafat or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – and even easier to blame the Israeli occupation or American policies. But the Palestinians must overcome their own tragic heritage of repeated failures to create a coherent body politic.... read |
