Reactions in Egypt to the death of Mohamed Morsi, six years after his ouster as president, reflect ongoing social and political polarization, in Egypt in particular and the Middle East in general. While President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime has sought to downplay Morsi’s death, Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt labored in the social media to use the event to bolster their influence. Ultimately, the regime managed to contain this volatile event. At the same time, while the pro-Islamist discourse over social media did not...
With the apparent defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS), the approaching end to the civil war in Syria, and sovereignty returning to Iraq, the Middle East has appeared to settle into a relative, if tense, calm. Across North Africa, however, where the upheavals began eight years ago, recent weeks have witnessed a growing unrest reminiscent of the Arab Spring’s early days. Though ostensibly unrelated, the removal of longtime autocrats in Algeria and Sudan, and an emerging strongman’s bid for hegemony in Libya, collectively point to...
The INSS 12th annual international conference addressed the web of challenges and opportunities Israel faces at the start of 2019. As in previous years, we chose strategic issues from the different spheres – domestic, regional, and international – that make up Israel’s strategic reality, and examine these individually and in context of one another. Continuing a trend from our previous conferences, we approached Israel’s national security priorities critically from a variety of perspectives.
Until the outbreak of widespread protests in Algeria three weeks ago, the states of northwest Africa had appeared to settle into a relative stasis, despite the fact that the region’s endemic social, economic, and governance-related problems remained very much unresolved. The eruption of demonstrations across Algeria, the largest country in Africa, suggests that frustrated publics in the region may no longer feel deterred from mobilizing. For Israel, the prospect of instability across North Africa suggests that policymakers in...
In recent decades Egypt has suffered from a growing water shortage, and now it must tackle a host of challenges relating to a reliable water supply, the maintenance of water quality, and prevention of water loss from leaking pipes. Egypt’s openness to external assistance in dealing with its water problem, along with the pragmatic line led by President el-Sisi on this subject, creates an opportunity to extend normalization with Israel. Israeli knowhow in the fields of water management, recycling, and desalination technologies,...
The Red Sea, and particularly its southern section surrounding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, has in recent years become the site of competition and struggle among regional actors and superpowers alike. In addition to the states along the coast of the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, the US, China, Turkey, Iran – which is involved in the war in Yemen – and sub-state actors have a presence there. Thus far there have been no disruptions to Israeli shipping and flight paths, which connect Israel to the Indian Ocean, the Far East, and Africa....
The sixth issue of Over the Net reviews a number of trends that in recent months have been at the center of the discourse in the Arab world. It first addresses the “Marches of Return,” a series of events that took place adjacent to the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel over a period of approximately six weeks, between March 30 (Land Day) and May 15 (the Nakba). These events are examined here on three levels of the public discourse in Gaza: survival, ideology, and narrative. The second topic is the recent elections in...
Suicide attacks remain one of the most effective tools available to terrorist organizations to achieve their objectives. In 2017, 348 suicide attacks were carried out in 23 countries throughout the world by some 623 terrorists. This is the lowest number of suicide attacks since 2013. Approximately 4,310 people were killed and 6,700 people wounded in suicide attacks in 2017, and as in previous years, the Islamic State was the leading source of these attacks. Of those committing suicide attacks, 137 were women and girls – the highest...
