Suez 1956: A European Intervention

This article does not analyse events in the Middle East. It is concerned with the structural background of the Suez Crisis. The Cold War bargain of 1949-50, and thus the Western bloc architecture, was challenged in 1956 and 1962-63. The Suez Crisis and the SKYBOLT Affair are classic examples of intra-bloc conflict. This article focuses on inter-allied conflict during the Suez Crisis. The crisis year 1956 witnessed a European challenge to the bipolar order of the Cold War. It is the hypothesis of this article that the mystique of the Suez Crisis unravels, if the events are interpreted as a clash of conflicting world views. The article attempts to enhance our understanding of the crisis by exploring the impact of the formation of a European core on the transatlantic pluralistic security community. The article will thus re-evaluate the architectural debate within the Western partial system. It is the aim to shed new light on the almost unexplored European foreign-policy co-operation within the Western European Union (WEU) in the crisis year 1956

Revolt and Revolution: the place of Islamism

The outbreak of revolt and revolution in the Middle East has given rise to a re-consideration of threat and security analyses as they pertain to the region and beyond. The resilience of some authoritarian regimes and the rapid collapse of others signal a significant transition within the region to which jihadi Islamist groups form one part of a powerful matrix. This article analyses the part and place of jihadi Islamism and Islamisms more generally in the revolts and revolutions. The article contends that events provide both opportunities and threats in strategies aimed at countering terrorism in the Middle East.

The Carnian Humid Episode of the late Triassic: A Review

From 1989 to 1994 a series of papers outlined evidence for a brief episode of climate change from arid to humid, and then back to arid, during the Carnian Stage of the late Triassic. This time of climate change was compared to marine and terrestrial biotic changes, mainly extinction and then radiation of flora and fauna. Subsequently termed, albeit incorrectly, the Carnian Pluvial Event (CPE) by successive authors, interest in this episode of climatic change has increased steadily, with new evidence being published as well as several challenges to the theory. The exact nature of this humid episode, whether reflecting widespread precipitation or more local effects, as well as its ultimate cause remains equivocal. Bed-by-bed sampling of the Carnian in the Southern Alps (Dolomites), shows the episode began with a negative carbon isotope excursion that lasted for only part of one ammonoid zone (A. austriacum). However, that the Carnian Humid Episode represents a significantly longer period, both environmentally and biotically, is irrefutable. The evidence is strongest in the European, Middle East, Himalayan, North American and Japanese successions, but not always so clear in South America, Antarctica and Australia. The eruption of the Wrangellia Large Igneous Province and global warming (causing increased evaporation in the Tethyan and Panthalassic oceans) are suggested as causes for the humid episode.

What’s behind Russia’s military build-up in Syria?

It seems unlikely that Moscow can hope for an outright victory in Syria’s civil war, so some kind of political compromise with the moderate opposition is in the offing. This, however, is at best a long shot given the hostility to Assad in the West and the intensity of the conflict in Syria.

Instead, the immediate priority seems to be to ensure a survival of the Syrian state and military institutions in the areas it can control, what one Russian observer called an “Alawite Israel” – a strip of land from the Mediterranean coast to Damascus, able to at least contain IS with some external support.

The Kremlin has consistently prioritised stability over revolutionary change and sovereign rights over humanitarian intervention. In fact, from the Russian point of view, the Western interventionist agenda of democratisation, which ignored local conditions, has made the situation in the Middle East worse – from Iraq to Libya and Syria.

Status and security: how Russian media is spinning airstrikes in Syria

Even before the Russian air force launched its first strikes over Syria, there was already a Russian presence on the battleground. These were not the spetsnaz, Kremlin’s special forces, but war correspondents from the leading Russian media outlets. This was as clear a sign as any that the Russia’s priority has shifted from Ukraine, where these reporters spent most of the past 18 months, to Syria.

There is, however, no unanimity on Russia’s latest escalation in Syria. As Russian state TV stations report successes of Russia’s high-precision weapons projecting an image of a high-tech Russian military equal to the US, doubts persist about the latest adventure in the Middle East.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People's War

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is one of the most enduring and complex in the modern world. But, why did the conflict break out? Who is demanding what, and why is peace so difficult to achieve?

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict tackles the subject and analyses the conflict from its historical roots in the late nineteenth century to the present attempts at conflict resolution in the twenty-first century.

Framing the debate and analysis around issues such as Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, international peace efforts, the refugees, state-building, democracy and religious opposition and highlighted by first hand quotes and sources of the conflict from its major participants, Beverley Milton-Edwards explores the deep impact of the conflict on regional politics in the Middle East and why the enmity between Palestinians and Israelis has become a number one global issue drawing in the world’s most important global actors.

An essential insight into the complexities of one of the world’s most enduring conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, this textbook is designed to make a complex subject accessible to all. Key features include a chronology of events and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is an ideal and authoritative introduction into aspects of politics in Israel, among the Palestinians – a vitally important issue for those studying the politics of the Middle East.

The Architecture of Home in Cairo: Socio-Spatial Practice of the Hawari's Everyday Life

The hawari of Cairo - narrow non-straight alleyways - are the basic urban units that have formed the medieval city since its foundation back in 969 AD. Until early in the C20th, they made up the primary urban divisions of the city and were residential in nature. Contemporary hawari, by contrast, are increasingly dominated by commercial and industrial activity. This medieval urban maze of extremely short, broken, zigzag streets and dead ends are defensible territories, powerful institutions, and important social systems. While the hawari have been studied as an exemplar for urban structure of medieval Islamic urbanism, and as individual building typologies, this book is the first to examine in detail the socio-spatial practice of the architecture of home in the city. It investigates how people live, communicate and relate to each other within their houses or shared spaces of the alleys, and in doing so, to uncover several new socio-spatial dimensions and meanings in this architectural form.

In an attempt to re-establish the link between architecture past and present, and to understand the changing social needs of communities, this book uncovers the notion of home as central to understand architecture in such a city with long history as Cairo. It firstly describes the historical development of the domestic spaces (indoor and outdoor), and provides an inclusive analysis of spaces of everyday activities in the hawari of old Cairo. It then broadens its analysis to other parts of the city, highlighting different customs and representations of home in the city at large. Cairo, in the context of this book, is represented as the most sophisticated urban centre in the Middle East with different and sometimes contrasting approaches to the architecture of home, as a practice and spatial system.

In order to analyse the complexity and interconnectedness of the components and elements of the hawari as a 'collective home', it layers its narratives of architectural and social developments as a domestic environment over the past two hundred years, and in doing so, explores the in-depth social meaning and performance of spaces, both private and public.