Of all the things the governments of Israel and Gaza have against each other, the fate of a water treatment plant would seem like the least of the problem. A little-noted UN report released in August argued the opposite: that the rockets flying between the two sides may be less destructive than long-standing wrangles over water. Gaza in 2020 is sober reading even as government resource reports go. Being a desert, sources of water are few, straining an aquifer that feeds the tiny strip as well as parts of Israel and Egypt. According to the U.N. Environment Program, only ten percent of the ... Read More
Watching Bashar al-Assad Give a Speech Is Exactly As Creepy As You’d Figure
August 14, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H28TTkKEZX8 The most challenging Ramadan since 1980 comes to an end this weekend, and not a day too soon. Based on a lunar calendar, the holiday comes eleven days earlier each Gregorian year. This year the Muslim holy month coincided, painfully, with the longest days of one of history's hottest summers. For observant people in the northern hemisphere, that meant as much as 15 hours of daylight in which nothing passed their lips after a pre-dawn meal, and until the sundown fast-breaking. That also means 15 hours without water. In some warm places. The ... Read More
Women Win Big in Tunisia Vote
November 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
With Tunisia’s ballot boxes closed but not stuffed, the real political winners in the country’s first free election are women. This election — for an assembly that will write the country’s new constitution — will likely result in the largest percentage of women in any assembly across the Arab world. When the dust settles, about a third of the 217 members of Tunisia’s constituent assembly will be women, twice as many women serving as currently serve in the U.S. Congress. Working as an official observer for the National Democratic Institute last week, I was struck both by how ... Read More
Post-Gadhafi: What’s Next for Libya’s Government?
October 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Moammar Gadhafi, the former Libyan dictator whose regime was toppled in August amid the Arab Spring, was killed on October 20 in his hometown of Surt. Writer Marc Herman was in Libya recently and reported for Miller-McCune.com on how the best the Libyan government can transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. This is his full report, as it appears in the latest issue of Miller-McCune magazine. For much of this summer, few knew where Moammar Gadhafi had fled, but it was a good bet he wasn’t in Nalut. A town of 30,000 residents in Libya’s Western mountains, Nalut was among the first ... Read More
Trading Protests for Sustainable Energy in Middle East
October 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
We were traveling by car to Palestinian Susya, deep in the dry, patchy terrain of the South Hebron hills, to observe low-tech sustainable energy projects to help villagers meet their basic needs. The road petered out — we’d gone too far — so we turned back toward another Susya, an Israeli settlement of about 100 families. Israeli Susya — established in 1983 about 40 road miles south of Jerusalem — has paved roads, tall pines and two-story homes with skylights and red roofs, running water, and phone and electric lines. Just off the road we saw a car and a scattering of tents ... Read More
Six Months after Arab Spring, Uncertainty Rules in Egypt
July 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Beginning last December and January, the Middle East and North Africa exploded in protests. From Morocco to Yemen, huge numbers of people spontaneously rose up to demonstrate against their corrupt and incompetent governments. But the center of this Arab Spring was Egypt. There, after 18 days of demonstrations that drew millions of people into the streets, President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year grip on power came to an abrupt end. When Mubarak left, so did the television cameras. And while headlines have moved on, there is still news from Egypt. In the podcast, historian Nancy Gallagher talks ... Read More
China Overreacting to Fears of Arab-Spring Style Uprising
June 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Editor's Note: Outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was released from jail late Wednesday after being detained for 80 days in Beijing. Here's a Miller-McCune.com report published on April 5 that highlighted China's efforts to avoid its own Arab Spring, and how the reactions were overblown. The People Republic of China's apparently prophylactic response to the popular uprisings in the Arab world seems to have claimed its highest profile figure so far, provocative and idiosyncratic artist Ai Weiwei. The hirsute 53-year-old was acclaimed variously as the son of beloved poet Ai Qing, for his ... Read More
The Arabic Education of Israel’s Jewish Students
June 17, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
They call her the witch — because she bewitches her students. As 27-year-old Mayada Beem walks into the classroom, her long waves of black hair trailing her every step, the room full of sixth-graders grows quiet for a second. "Marhaba!" she announces, greeting them with "Hello!" in Arabic. The blonde, blue-eyed girl jumps into her seat. The boy with dark skin and curly black hair swivels his chair around from his friend behind him and looks straight ahead. Then, on cue from a girl in the front row, everyone breaks out in the birthday song. "Hayom yom huledet l'Mayada!" they serenade ... Read More
Predicting How China Will React To Protests
April 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Could China experience a Jasmine Revolution of the sort that has brought change to Egypt and Tunisia — or does its booming economy make this very unlikely? Why have the Chinese authorities been so spooked by Internet calls in dozens of cities for "strolls" of protest — even though few people have turned out for them? What has made Beijing, which has tolerated some demonstrations in recent years, show zero tolerance toward the current "shadow revolution" that so far has not generated a single mass gathering? I was asked questions like these a lot during a recent nine-day trip that took ... Read More
How Moammar Gadhafi Lashes Out At Western Governments to Distract Libyans At Home
March 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In the film The Wizard of Oz, the title character puts on quite a spectacle to provide a little "shock and awe" to Dorothy and her cohort while they're in the Emerald City. It turns out that it's all just a show, as the little man commands the four to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," after Dorothy's dog Toto reveals the charade by pulling aside the drape. This story bears a strange resemblance to the wars in the Middle East today, where leaders attempt to distract their public from domestic strife at home by pointing at imaginary threats from abroad. What is happening? It's ... Read More
