The Emir of Qatar is visiting the White House tomorrow, one of a series of Middle East leaders who are coming to town (next is the King of Jordan).

I am willing to bet that a White House statement is released noting our close relationship, our friendship, Qatar’s hosting of al-Udeid air base, the World Cup, and Qatar’s helpful role in many regional crises. Read more »

The great risk in having a chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee move over to be Secretary of State is that he will think the two jobs are very much alike. That is, in the new job as in the old one you travel a lot, you give press conferences, you pontificate, and you strategize. Read more »

Last Saturday (March 30) Israel took a large step toward energy independence, as natural gas from the smaller of its newly discovered Mediterranean gas fields began to flow.

By the end of this decade Israel will not only be supplying its own needs fully, but exporting natural gas to the world market. It will be able to supply itself for at least 50 years and perhaps three times as long–reducing its energy costs, improving its environment, making the cost of production lower, and increasing prosperity and state revenues. This natural gas supply more than replaces what Israel used to receive from Egypt, but Egypt has become an unreliable supplier for Israel (and for Jordan as well). Read more »

Egypt’s situation is in many ways immensely complicated. But in others, it is simple: Egypt’s new government is restricting human rights in ways that no American should ever support. During the Mubarak years we often did support, or show indifference, to violations of the basic rights of citizens, and we should not repeat that error yet again. Read more »

The continuing, and worsening, crisis in Syria leaves some analysts confused and their writing not very useful. The best guide to what is happening, and what the United States should do, is the writing of Fred Hof of the Atlantic Council. Hof was until last year a key figure in the making of American policy toward Syria, though we can see from his analyses that all too often his excellent advice was rejected by the Obama Administration. Read more »

Foreign Policy reports that Secretary of Defense Panetta is in Europe: “The SecDef is wheels up from Lisbon this morning, headed for a day-stop in Madrid and then staying overnight in Rome. In Madrid, he will meet with the crown prince, the president, and the minister of defense, and he will hold his second press conference of the day, Situation Report is told. In Portugal, Panetta visited Air Base Lajes…. Panetta also visited Strike Force NATO, a U.S.-led command in Portugal that conducts maritime security operations.” Panetta is also scheduled to visit London. Read more »

Today’s news informs us that Al Gore and his partners have sold their “left-leaning Current TV” to al-Jazeera, which is to say to the government of Qatar. Although “The nation’s second-largest TV operator, Time Warner Cable Inc., dropped Current after the deal was confirmed Wednesday,” the arrangement still opens many more American homes to the pan-Arab channel. Read more »

The newest threat to peace in the Middle East is a college–at least according to the government of the United Kingdom.

The educational institution in question is Ariel College, now Ariel University, in the Israeli settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. Ariel was founded in 1978 and now has about 20,000 residents. Ariel College was founded in 1982 as a branch of Bar Ilan University, became independent in 2005, and now has a remarkable 14,000 students from all over Israel and even a branch in Tel Aviv. It also has the largest group of Ethiopian-born immigrant students of any university in Israel, and hundreds of Israeli Arab students. The university has five faculties as of now: architecture, natural science, engineering, health sciences, and humanities and social sciences, and plans to add more. In 2008 Ariel College applied for upgrading from college to university, and despite strong opposition in some parts of Israel’s educational establishment, that change was just approved. Read more »

Last Sunday the New York Times printed a summary correction of all the errors made in a December 2 article by its  Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren. Her Times story was about Israel’s announcement that it would proceed toward additional construction in Jerusalem and several settlements, including in the area known as E-1 that separates Jerusalem from the  city of Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank. Read more »

For understandable reasons governments in Europe and the Middle East have been focused on political developments in Egypt this week. For less defensible reasons, many governments have also been focused on Israel’s announcement that it plans to build more housing in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Read more »