Word: damascus
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...return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, the Israeli government demands that Syria curtails its strategic alliance with Iran and its backing for Hizballah and for Palestinian militant groups. Still, since Syria and Israel revealed in May that they are negotiating via Turkish mediation, Damascus has paradoxically strengthened its military and economic alliance with Tehran...
...abandon their own taboo against dealing with Hamas and negotiate a cease-fire via Egypt. Those pragmatic imperatives will remain even after Olmert has left the scene, as will the ones that prompted Israel to begin negotiating with Syria via Turkey this past spring, in the hope that Damascus can be detached from Iran - something officials close to the Syrian leadership have told TIME will not happen. And the effort to press for action against Iran was never dependent on Olmert's own political standing...
...Syria isn't going to abandon Iran, according to figures close to the Assad regime here in Damascus. It's not just that the elite of Iran and Syria have a long history of cooperation going back to 1979, when Syria was the first country to recognize the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. It's also because Syria has no reason to switch sides just when its team is winning. From the fiasco of America's invasion of Iraq, to Hamas's victory in Gaza and Hizballah's victory in Lebanon, Iranian and Syrian power is on the rise...
...week in the Damas (Damascus) room was a lot more serene than any stay in the real Syrian capital, with a king-size canopy bed and a stone balcony shaded by a huge tree in which birds chirped all day. From the Maison's front gate you can see the near-completed Burj Dubai with its 166 stories - still the world's tallest tower. But that seems a universe away when you're indulging in Dubai's rarest luxury: peace and quiet. www.lamaisondhotesdubai.com
...richer countries are becoming increasingly vigilant about fending off migrants of all types from their own borders, the vast majority of refugees get no further than a neighboring country, which is often as impoverished as the one from which they fled. "Iraqi exiles are living in dire conditions in Damascus and Aleppo," says Guterres, whose organization has been encouraging the Iraqi government to pledge $125 million to help displaced citizens. "It's going to take a lot of work to allow them to return, but there is no Plan B: we have to promote national integrity so refugees...