Pakistan

"At the moment, there is no serious threat of war over the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the West. Even if the European Union goes ahead with sanctions against Iranian oil, this would amount to only a 15-20 percent loss of the country's oil exports. It is very unlikely that Iran would block the strait since it would still be selling at least 80 percent of its oil. However, if the rest of Iran's oil customers start to follow the West then the situation would become very serious."

"Jews have lived for many centuries in the Muslim world. There they never experienced the terrible things committed in Europe by Christian anti-Semitism. Muslim-Jewish animosity started only a century ago, with the advent of Zionism, and for obvious reasons....When the Jews from Muslim countries started to arrive en masse in Israel, they were steeped in Arab culture. But here they were received by a society that held everything Arab in total contempt. Their Arab culture was “primitive”, while real culture was European. Furthermore, they were identified with the murderous Muslims. So the immigrants were required to shed their own culture and traditions, their accent, their memories, their music. In order to show how thoroughly Israeli they had become, they also had to hate Arabs."

"Just as Bush was boasting in 2008 of permanent US bases in Iraq, the recent Strategic Partnership agreement with the Afghan government to place permanent joint military bases in Afghanistan beyond 2024 is not a serious proposition."

"Recent experience has led many analysts and politicians to conclude that engaging Hamas and involving it collectively in social responsibilities have a moderating effect on the movement. Engaging Hamas empowers its moderates and encourages healthy debate within the group. Isolating it, on the other hand, plays into the hands of the movement's most extreme elements....For these purposes, Palestinians are having difficulty understanding Israel's anxiety about the reconciliation process. They are suspicious that Israel's hostility to reconciliation arises because Israel is actually hostile to an independent, unified, and contiguous Palestinian state as part of the two-state solution."

"It is no wonder that peace talks have been stuck on the issue of settlements. International envoys (mostly the Quartet) have tried to circumvent this obstacle by demanding that Palestinians and Israelis submit their plans for borders and security by January 26, 2012. Palestinians submitted their plans, the Israelis are holding back."

"If Israel is receptive to the idea, reconciliation could provide an opening for a possibly productive dialogue with Hamas. The US and the Quartet, too, have to recognize that after 18 years the Oslo process has ceased being relevant and should be replaced with a model that focuses on the kind of territorial agreement Hamas could conceivably live with."

"We eagerly await the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict’s “correction” of this piece. It wouldn’t be the first time that Ackerman’s “independent, non-profit educational foundation” took issue with something this writer has written about the ICNC’s “educational” work. Hopefully, they won’t again resort to smearing my work (based on a calculated misrepresentation of one tangentially related article) in a transparent attempt to deflect attention from a critique of their own."

"In the face of the legislative assault, Israel's Supreme Court has grown ever more complicit. Last week, it sullied its reputation by upholding a law that tears apart families by denying tens of thousands of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship the right to live with their Palestinian spouse in Israel - "ethnic cleansing" by other means, as leading Israeli commentator Gideon Levy noted."