The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

By James M. Dorsey I hope you enjoy today’s column and podcast. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers help me cover the cost of contributing fact-based analysis and understanding to a debate that has become increasingly polarised and weaponised. To become a paid subscriber, please click on the subscription button at http://www.jamesmdorsey.substack.com and choose one of the subscription options. Thank you. To watch a video version of this story or listen to a n audio podcast click here . US President Joe Biden doesn’t fit the mould of a high-risk gambler. Yet, gambling is the crux of his velvet glove dealings with Israel. With one eye on Israeli politics and the other on presidential elections in the United States in six months, Mr. Biden is walking a tightrope. The stakes and the costs couldn’t be higher. At its core, despite the administration’s escalating verbal criticism of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the suspension of an arms shipment to Israel, M

  By James M. Dorsey Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers help me cover the cost of contributing fact-based analysis and understanding to a debate that has become increasingly polarised and weaponised. To become a paid subscriber, please click on the subscription button at http://www.jamesmdorsey.substack.com and choose one of the subscription options. Thank you. To watch a video version of this story or listen to a n audio podcast click here . The Greater Middle East is a ticking time bomb. The region’s most apparent powder keg – the risk of a regional conflagration between Israel and Iran that could draw the United States and regional countries like Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, and Gulf states into the conflict – is foremost on policy and opinion makers’ minds. So is the war in Gaza with its devastating humanitarian fallout. Yet, simmering at the surface in Gaza and across much of the Middle East and North Africa is social, economic, and politic

By James M. Dorsey I hope you enjoy today’s column and podcast. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers help me cover the cost of contributing fact-based analysis and understanding to a debate that has become increasingly polarised and weaponised. To become a paid subscriber, please click on the subscription button at http://www.jamesmdorsey.substack.com and choose one of the subscription options. Thank you. To watch a video version of this story or listen to a n audio podcast click here . Diaspora Jews, Palestinian Israelis, and Turkish Kurds have more in common than meets the eye. The similarities in how the three minority communities define themselves offer insights into what will make either a one- or two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict viable. To be sure, it’s hard to see, amid the Gaza carnage and Israel’s blinded and traumatised view of future relations with the Palestinians, how the two communities could live with each other or side b

  By James M. Dorsey I hope you enjoy today’s column and podcast. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers help me cover the cost of contributing fact-based analysis and understanding to a debate that has become increasingly polarised and weaponised. To become a paid subscriber, please click on the subscription button at http://www.jamesmdorsey.substack.com and choose one of the subscription options. Thank you. To watch a video version of this story or listen to a n audio podcast click here . Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has fractured a long-standing pillar of Israeli foreign policy that dictated it always needed to ensure the backing of the United States. Fixing the pillar may prove easier said than done. US President Joe Biden’s insistence that US support for Israel is “ironclad,” despite the conditioning of arms sales , is rooted as much in the president’s deep-seated commitment to Israel as it is a reminder of the risk to Israel of surrendering

  By James M. Dorsey I hope you enjoy today’s column and podcast. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers help me cover the cost of contributing fact-based analysis and understanding to a debate that has become increasingly polarised and weaponised. To become a paid subscriber, please click on the subscription button at http://www.jamesmdorsey.substack.com and choose one of the subscription options. Thank you. To watch a video version of this story or listen to a n audio podcast click here . This week’s Gazan short-lived celebration of a ceasefire that was not to be, highlights what is at stake in the seven-month-old war and Israel’s refusal to end the carnage. Thousands poured into Gazan streets within minutes of Hamas advising it had accepted a Qatar and Egyptian ceasefire proposal . Gaza celebrates Hamas’ ceasefire acceptance. Source: Global News “We have shown the world that we survived this war as Palestinians. We stood our ground on our land. We