Word: regions
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
McGirk, who has been based in Jerusalem since 2006, says he felt a sense of déjà vu as the Gaza conflict unfolded: his arrival in the region coincided with the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants, Israel's bombardment of Gaza and the subsequent war against Hizballah in southern Lebanon. "My lament, shared by everybody around here, is that even with this latest bloodletting, it doesn't appear that Israelis and Palestinians are coming closer to an understanding, not even one based on sheer exhaustion," McGirk says...
Should that happen, a Sarkozy mission that had borne all the signs of failure might yet prove pivotal to bringing an end to the current violence in Gaza. But as is often the case with such clashes in the region, a final resolution may turn out to be the fruit of a particularly chilling horror. The upbeat response to the Franco-Egyptian proposal came just hours after an Israeli mortar strike hit a U.N. school in Gaza, killing 39 Palestinians, many of them children. "I don't think you can say that one terrible event will change everything itself...
...Turkey is playing a far more proactive role in the region; we recognize that," says a Western diplomat based in Ankara. "A country that is Muslim but secular, with close links to the West and Israel but also good relations with Arab countries, is obviously very helpful in terms of mediation and promoting regional solutions to regional problems...
...Turkey is the only country in the region with strong military and economic ties to Israel, which supplies Ankara with defense equipment estimated at $100 million annually. The two countries also have a long-established relationship of intelligence cooperation. So, though Erdogan lambasted Israel's Gaza attacks as a "crime against humanity," he also affirmed that long-term relations between the two countries would not suffer...
...others see such relations as key to a mediation role. "There can be no peace without Hamas," says political commentator Sahin Alpay. "So it's now clear that Turkey's decision to talk to all sides in the region, including Hamas, will have a positive payoff. By building itself up as a regional powerhouse who can talk to all parties, Turkey is actually enhancing its credibility in the eyes of the E.U. and U.S. It's making itself more indispensable...