Middle East Studies

This work reflects on how the representation of the Arab world has evolved in three fictional works that have emerged in the second decade of the 21st century: Homeland (Showtime Networks, 2011-2020), Tyrant (FX Network-Fox, 2014-2016), and Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime Video, 2018-). The goal is to determine whether the main socio-political milestones that occurred during this period (the Arab Spring, Syrian Civil War, appearance of ISIS, etc.) have transformed the already classic theories of authors such as Edward Said, Jack Shaheen, or Evelyn Alsultany, among others. A viewing and analysis of the first season of each show demonstrates that the panorama has not improved in terms of discourse, topics, and stereotypes. It is clear, therefore, that the lens of 9/11 is still very present in the Hollywood mindset regarding Arabs, Muslims, and Islam.

In 37 bijdragen schetsen de auteurs een caleidoscopisch
beeld van de stand van zaken op gebied van beeldvorming,
geschiedenis, rituelen en feesten, moraal, politiek, islam als
levensstijl, kunst en cultuur.
De bijdragen zijn van Joseph Alagha, Edien Bartels, Carmen
Becker, Maurits Berger, Nicolet Boekhoff-van der Voort,
Gert Borg, Marjo Buitelaar, Henk Driessen, Dick Douwes,
Annemarie van Geel, Martijn de Koning, Khadija
Kadrouch-Outmany, Christian Lange, Nina ter Laan, Roel Meijer, Karin van Nieuwkerk, Thijl Sunier, Rachida Talal-Azimi, Claudia Venhorst en Joas Wagemakers. 
Deel 2 in de gelijknamige serie Islam in verandering behandelt een breed scala aan onderwerpen en maakt ingewikkelde
thema’s begrijpelijk voor wie zich in de publieke discussie
wil mengen.

[PL]
Zdecydowana większość systemów politycznych na Bliskim Wschodzie jest sklasyfikowana jako autorytaryzmy lub reżimy hybrydowe, tj. łączące elementy demokratyczne i autorytarne. Jak dotychczas klasyczne teorie demokratyzacji nie były w stanie w pełni wyjaśnić zjawiska trwałości autorytaryzmu w tym regionie, co doprowadziło do wykształcenia się tzw. nurtu post-demokratyzacji. Niniejszy artykuł pokrótce wyjaśnia przyczyny deficytu demokracji na Bliskim Wschodzie oraz wskazuje jak model analityczny Hinnebuscha (2010, 2014), traktujący o procesach państwotwórczych z perspektywy socjologii historycznej, może przyczynić się do lepszego zrozumienia problemu. Artykuł konkluduje, że demokratyzacja lub jej brak jest reakcją decydentów politycznych na impulsy (możliwości, ograniczenia i zagrożenia) krajowe oraz międzynarodowe. Demokratyzacja jest tylko jedną z opcji, jaką dany reżim może obrać w procesie państwotwórczym, który z kolei opiera się na trzech filarach: procesie narodotwórczym, rozwoju gospodarczym oraz procesie budowania władzy.

[ENG]
The vast majority of political systems in the Middle East is classified as authoritarian or hybrid, i.e. entailing both democratic and authoritarian features. So far the classical democratisation theories have failed to explain the problem of authoritarian resistance in the region which resulted in the emergence of so-called post-democratisa-tion. This article briefly explains the democracy deficit in the Middle East and indicates how the analytical model of historical sociology of state formation, as advanced by Hinnebusch (2010, 2014), can contribute to our understanding of the problem. The analysis concludes that democratisation, or lack of thereof, is a reaction of decision-makers to impulses reaching them from both national and international environments: possibilities , constraints, and threats. Democratisation is only one of the multiple options available , which the regime can select in the state-formation process, which in and of itself is based on three pillars: nation-building, economic development, and authority-building.

While the canonical literature on oil wealth suggests that hydrocarbon windfalls encourage repressive despotism, Kuwait provides a case of an oil-rich autocracy governing instead through popular rentierism-that is, through a broad coalition of social forces, one that furnishes enduring loyalty from below while constraining abuses of state power from above. This paper provides a theoretically guided explanation for this exceptional outcome. I argue that the Kuwaiti regime's coalitional bargains originated in the pre-oil era, when domestic opposition and geopolitical constrictions compelled it to forge new social alliances at the dawn of modern statehood. This inclusionary strategy mediated the subsequent effect of oil rents, which the regime used to institutionalize its mass base with costly material and symbolic side payments. Such popular incorporation bound large constituent classes to the regime's survival, precluding the need for widespread repression. After 50 years, these coalitional bargains have also proven remarkably resilient, as social actors have continued to endorse the autocratic leadership despite economic crisis and wartime defeat.

Short of the war, the destruction, and the massive loss of life, Ukraine is in many ways similar to the Gulf crisis in which the UAE, together with Saudi Arabia, led a 3.5-year-long economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar that, like the Russian invasion, was designed to hollow out the sovereignty of a neighbouring state.

The nature of the relationship between the Assyrian state and the Syro-Hittite states is often represented in the writings of archaeologists and ancient historians under the rubric of imperialism, Assyrian sovereignty, and the Syro-Hittite resistance, an unchanging formula largely based on center-periphery models. This structuralist model of fixed relationships is thus characterized as a firmly-set trajectory of power relations and a teleological narrative of conquest, ending without exception with the eventual and complete submission and subjugation of Syro-Hittite states to Assyrian military power. While Syro-Hittite states are represented as vulnerable and politically weak entities, the Assyrian state is referred as an “expansionistic imperial power” or “superior invading force”. Had they escaped direct Assyrian sovereignty, these peripheral communities were at least deemed “Assyrianizing” in their material culture. This a priori qualification of Syro-Hittite-Assyrian relationships as an imbalanced power distribution is an outcome of the preponderance of studies of Assyrian sovereignty with an obsession with the (cosmic) image of the sovereign in his visual and verbal manifestations. Secondly it is often assumed that the study of Assyrian imperialism has always operated through coercion and military violence. Alternative forms of engagement between the Neo-Assyrian state and the Syro-Hittite kingdoms such as diplomacy, political negotiation, trade, exchange of ideas, politics of settlement, land management, taxation or traveling craftsmen and circulation of technology and knowledge are much more rarely discussed. In this paper, I suggest that historical perspectives on the unchallenged Assyrian imperialism are often driven by the alluring, yet biased perspectives offered by the sumptuous, if not excessive corpus of Assyrian annalistic accounts, state sponsored texts, and imperial monuments. Therefore such perspectives prioritize short-term political histories of conquest and domination over other longer term and more horizontally distributed aspects of the past such as cultural practices, ecological histories, political landscapes, socialization, or material worlds. The historicist accounts of the Near Eastern past can be challenged and perhaps balanced by evidence offered by archaeological, material, and environmental research, which present alternative and often contrasting perspectives on these particular histories. Prioritizing textual evidence often leaves out the material flows, delicate negotiations of power, dynamics of trade and exchange and the politics of resource extraction. Attending to other forms of evidence allows us to reflect on the complexity of the relationships between Assyria and the Syro-Hittite states. In this article, I pay particular attention to such interactions and encounters that are other than military in nature, and give priority to material evidence that challenge standard imperialist narratives of Assyrian textual accounts.

Almost a century before the “mass emigration” of Jews from Morocco during the mid-twentieth century, to Israel and to destinations in the West, Moroccan Jews had been engaging in long-distance emigrations, typically from the Spanish-dominated northern part of that country to Latin America. This article surveys the state of research pertaining to this long-lasting migratory episode. I point at the conspicuous lack of interest among MENA-and Israel-Studies scholars in the topic, and conclude by suggesting that this migration episode has potential contribution to the aforementioned areas of study.

ملخص: الهجرة اليهودية المغربية إلى أمريکا اللاتينية: أوضاع البحوث
والاتجاهات الجديدة
قرابة قرن قبل ”الهجرة الجماعية“ لليهود من المغرب خلال منتصف القرن
العشرين إلى إسرائيل وجهات أخرى في الغرب، انخرط اليهود المغاربة في الهجرة
لمسافات طويلة، ومعظمهم من الجزء الشمالي من البلاد الذي كان يهيمن عليه
الإسبان إلى أمريکا اللاتينية. وترک هؤلاء الرواد الأوائل بصمات على الثقافات
اليهودية المغربية الدائمة في هذا المحتوى، حتى في الأيام الحالية. وتفحص هذه
المقالة وضع البحوث المتعلقة بهذه الهجرة طويلة الأمد. وهنا أود الإشارة إلى
الاهتمام الکبير بين الباحثين الناطقين بالإسبانية والبرتغالية من حقول الدراسات
الأمريکية والايبيرية اللاتينية، من جهة؛ وإلى غياب واضح لهذه الدراسات في
العالم العربي وإسرائيل من جهة أخرى، وهذا فضلا عن الباحثين الذين ير زون ک
على الهجرة المغربية المعاصرة. ما أن تاريخ الهجرة المحلي لديه إسهامات محتملة ک
في مجالات الاهتمام المذ ورة أعلاه، وأنه يمکن أن تعمل على تفکيک الروايات ک
الشائعة عن رحيل اليهود الموجه سياسيا من الأراضي المسلمة العربية.

We invite applications for our panel "Figuring It Out: Crises and Resistance in Graphic Novels, Comics, and Cartoons" at the XV Conference of the Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies (SeSaMO). The conference will be held in presence at L’Orientale University of Naples (Naples, Italy) on June 22-24, 2022.

Con questa preziosa analisi Carlo Pallard tratteggia un vivace e puntuale disegno della storia più recente di questo complesso Paese, del suo tormentato percorso verso la modernità. Un cammino segnato da colpi di stato riusciti e da altri falliti, da processi riformatori e da regressioni autoritarie. Da aperture laiche e da chiusure tradizionaliste dell'ideologia islamica. Chiarisce quello che è stato il ruolo reale del potere militare nella vicenda storica della Turchia. Ruolo che spesso in Occidente è stato equivocato e addirittura mitizzato. Getta una luce sui passaggi cruciali della storia repubblicana della Turchia la cui corretta conoscenza è di fondamentale importanza per interpretare con fedeltà, senza distorsioni, anche questa fase politica transitoria dalle prospettive incerte per il futuro del paese. La Turchia, da quello che appare nei media è un paese di cui si parla molto, ma di cui si conosce molto poco... e si scrive altrettanto poco, in particolare in Italia. Ragion per cui il lettore in questo saggio troverà una utile e fedele chiave interpretativa dell'evoluzione del complesso quadro politico della Turchia dal 1960 ad oggi, utile soprattutto per comprendere quella che sembra essere la parabola discendente dell'era di Erdoğan e del suo partito.

(Dalla prefazione di Mariano Giustino)

La France et l'Iran : entre attirance stratégique et rupture idéologique

Du point de vue des révolutionnaires khomeynistes iraniens, la France est un pays de type « petit Satan » (sheytân koutchik), une catégorie à mettre en perspective avec le statut de « grand Satan » (sheytân bozorg) réservé aux Etats-Unis ; pour les élites politiques de la République islamique, ce statut se justifie avant tout par le non-respect par la France de l’accord Eurodif et par le soutien de Paris à Saddam Hussein pendant la guerre Iran-Irak (1980-1988). Cette vision caricaturale de ce que représente la France et de son comportement sur la scène internationale s’inscrit en contrepoint de la perception réductrice qu’ont les néoconservateurs français de l’Iran. Selon eux, l’agressivité et l’intransigeance sont les éléments indispensables à la mise en œuvre d’une diplomatie iranienne lucide et efficace. Cette posture politique est étayée par des experts français qui réduisent l’ensemble de la politique iranienne de la France à une stratégie d’endiguement (containment) nucléaire. 

Allant encore plus loin, François Heisbourg estime que « la paix et la guerre nucléaires dans le monde dépendent de l’avenir des ambitions nucléaires iraniennes ». Ce prisme nucléaire réduit à néant toute autre proposition de définition de l’intérêt national français s’agissant des relations avec Téhéran. Les impératifs économiques, géopolitiques (stabilisation de l’Irak et de l’Afghanistan) ou de sécurité énergétique (notamment concernant le secteur gazier) ne sont donc plus des critères permettant de définir, de manière équilibrée, avec le dossier nucléaire, la stratégie française vis-à-vis de l’Iran. Il s’agit au contraire de lutter idéologiquement contre ce que Bruno Tertrais appelle « le double révisionnisme » iranien qui concernerait la Shoah et l’utilisation de la bombe nucléaire (Hiroshima). 

Cette perception réductrice des enjeux iraniens s’est plus particulièrement imposée parmi les élites politiques en France au lendemain de l’accession de Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005) et de Nicolas Sarkozy (2007) à la présidence de leur pays respectif.

The Middle East played a critical role in the development of photography as a new technology and an art form. Likewise, photography was instrumental in cultivating and maintaining Europe’s distinctively Orientalist vision of the Middle East. As new advances enhanced the versatility of the medium, nineteenth-century photographers were able to mass-produce images to incite and satisfy the demands of the region’s burgeoning tourist industry and the appetites of armchair travelers in Europe. In this way, the evolution of modern photography fueled an interest in visual contact with the rest of the world.

Photography’s Orientalism offers the first in-depth cultural study of the works of European and non-European photographers active in the Middle East and India, focusing on the relationship between photographic, literary, and historical representations of this region and beyond. The essays explore the relationship between art and politics by considering the connection between the European presence there and aesthetic representations produced by traveling and resident photographers, thereby contributing to how the history of photography is understood.

‘Based on exhaustive work in numerous archives and in several languages, Lorenzo Kamel has produced what I think is one of the most definitive works on the transition from empire to nation-state. It is impressively ambitious and does what many major historians have been promising to do: to show how hard, Western conceptions of identity shaped and formed the thinking and decisions of statesmen and other political elites in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It also deals with the penetration of hard national categories among the various peoples of the empire. It is an authoritative book and will be very widely consulted.’
NICHOLAS DOUMANIS
Author of Before the Nation and Professor, School of Humanities and Languages, The University of New South Wales – Sydney
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‘This book will make an important mark on the field. From Empire to Sealed Identities shows the ways in which ethnic and other divisions were historically constructed in the Middle East under the influence of imperial powers. The work combines meticulous archival research in multiple languages with careful analysis of broader trends to map the transition from empire to homogenized nation-states. This ability to document with rich detail and at the same time be able to present the larger picture with great clarity is rare. The author pulls off the feat with great erudition.’
BETH BARON
Distinguished Professor of History, The Graduate Center and City College, CUNY
Past President, Middle East Studies Association (MESA)
Director, Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center
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‘In this engaging revisionary study, Lorenzo Kamel shows how modern Western-ist intellectual prejudices have distorted our understanding of identity and conflict in the modern Middle East. Based on original archival research and an exhaustive survey of secondary literature, the author reveals a world that can only be characterized as “medieval” if one misunderstands the Middle Ages. Focussing on the long nineteenth century, the book provides a chronological continuation of much of the most interesting work being done in pre-modern Mediterranean Studies.’
BRIAN A. CATLOS
Author of Muslims of Latin Christendom and Professor, Faculty of Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
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‘Lorenzo Kamel is a dedicated and meticulous scholar, extremely experienced and internationally recognized for his research methodology. His extensive archival work, which forms the basis of many of his most important publications, is impressive by any academic standard. His archival research, informed by exemplary linguistic skills, has, without question, created new understandings of the complex dynamics shaping our inquiry into modern European empires, and the history of the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Middle East from Empire to Sealed Identities will continue this outstanding trend.’
SARA ROY
Senior Research Scholar, Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)

Dear Colleagues,‎

We are proud to bring to you the latest edition of the FORTNIGHTLY, a review of Middle East ‎business, developments and news, for the period ending 2 October 2019.‎

Some highlights of this issue include the following:‎

‎2.3  Cox Automotive Begins Israel Auto-Tech Operations

‎3.3  Dubai's Retail Sector Undergoing a Major Transformation Due to e-Commerce

‎8.3  Strauss Group Reduces Sugar in Its Milk Chocolate by 30% with No Artificial Substitutes

‎9.8  US Defense Innovation Unit Selects D-Fend Solutions' Counter Drone System

‎10.1  Israel Ranked 38th in the World for Economic Freedom

‎11.4  EGYPT:  Israel to Start Exporting Natural Gas to Egypt as Last Obstacle Is Removed

In addition, if you would like to bring to our attention any relevant Middle Eastern regional ‎development of interest, please notify me at: seth.vogelman@atid-edi.com.‎

Baha’u’llah’s Bishārāt (Glad-Tidings):
A Proclamation to Scholars and Statesmen
Christopher Buck and Youli A. Ioannesyan
Baha’i Studies Review 16 (2010): 3–28.

This article is a historical and textual study of the one of the major writings of Baha’u’llah: the Lawḥ-i Bishārāt (‘Tablet of Glad-Tidings’), revealed circa 1891, and advances new theories as to its provenance and purpose. The ‘Tablet of Glad-Tidings’ is a selective compendium of Baha’u’llah’s laws and principles, sequentially presented in a series of fifteen ‘Glad-Tidings.’ As the Arabic term, bishārāt, suggests, these ‘Glad-Tidings’ were a public announcement of some of the essential teachings of the new Baha’i religion. The ‘Glad-Tidings’ is the most extensive of several ‘Tablets’ by Baha’u’llah that present key teachings in a numbered structure. The Glad-Tidings may, in part, be regarded as serially articulated ‘world reforms’ intermixed with religious reforms emanating from Baha’u’llah in his professed role as ‘World Reformer.’ The ‘Glad-Tidings’ also functioned analogously (albeit anachronistically) to a press release, serving not only as a public proclamation, but to rectify the inaccuracies and gross misrepresentations that had previously circulated in print. Intended for widespread translation and publication, the Glad-Tidings was sent to scholars — notably Russian orientalist, Baron Viktor Rosen (1849–1908) and Cambridge Orientalist, Edward Granville Browne (1862–1926) — and possibly pre-revolutionary Russian statesmen as well. As a ‘Proclamatory Aqdas,’ the Tablet of Glad-Tidings was part of a much broader proclamation by Baha’u’llah, who proclaimed his mission to the political and religious leaders of the world. This study will argue that the Baha’u’llah may have revealed the Tablet of Glad-Tidings for E.G. Browne — or rather through him, since Baha’u’llah evidently intended that Browne should translate and publish the Bishārāt in order to make the nature of the Baha'i teachings more widely known. This would then correct the distortions that had previously been published regarding Baha’u’llah's purpose and the nature of the religion that he founded, thereby, promoting a public awareness that a new world religion was on the horizon of modernity.

The First of the Modern Ottomans blends biography with intellectual history. On the one hand, it is the story of an Ottoman life – the life of the scribe, ambassador, and prolific historian Ahmed Vâsıf (ca. 1735-1806), a man who improbably rose from obscurity in Baghdad to travel the empire, fight its wars, advise its sultans, and, in time, write its history. As a full-scale biography, the book is a rarity for the field of Ottoman history and reconstructs Vâsıf’s life, career, and opinions through meticulous research in both Ottoman and European sources. On the other hand, The First of the Modern Ottomans is also one of the first detailed intellectual studies of the early modern Ottoman Empire. Weaving together Vâsıf’s life and thought with the larger intellectual currents of the day – especially at the court of Sultan Selim III in Istanbul – it explores central debates among the Ottoman ruling elite over Europe, political reform, war and peace, justice, and the empire’s renewal. Vâsıf’s life reveals a vital response to the empire’s challenges at the turn of the nineteenth century – one that was novel and deeply enmeshed in Islamic philosophy, ethics, and statecraft.

KESER, Ulvi, Mustafa Durmuş Sönmez “Stratejik Güvenlik Bağlamında Ortadoğu’da Dinleme ve Espiyonaj Faaliyetleri”, Casus Belli; Kıbrıs, Yayına Hazırlayan Ulvi Keser ve Serdal Akgün, Kıbrıs- Akdeniz Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi Yay., Lefkoşa, 2015, s. 134-148

This book aims to analyze the local meaning and practices of food sovereignty in Egypt. The study based on fieldwork in two villages in Upper Egypt. Using agrarian political economy and sociological approaches, we analyze How do local food systems diverge and intersect with the global food system? The results of the study deepening our understanding of food sovereignty at the local level and it may help in building an alternative food system based on food sovereignty principles.
The book contains six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion. The first chapter deals with theoretical concepts, methodology, and description of the study villages, while the second chapter analyzes the history of urban-rural relations and agrarian transformations in Egypt. The third and fourth deals with the food sovereignty challenge at the local level and the integration of small farmers in the global market, while the fifth chapter deals with the small farmer's strategies to secure minimum food sovereignty for their families, and the sixth chapter discuss women in local food sovereignty strategies.

This dissertation investigates the social world of contemporary filmmakers in the Middle East and the way they use visual media to re-imagine existent forms of identity, envision new modes of social agency, and transform public culture in the face of dramatic instability. In the wake of the Lebanese civil war and through the tenuous postwar period, video art and experimental documentary have critiqued the politics of representation and negotiated the theoretical and structural difficulties in representing the war. These artists have activated intersections where experimental media has generated a vibrant visual culture by both building on local notions of cosmopolitanism and by participating in transnational sites of postcolonial representation. Methodologically, I employ ethnography to grapple with the public culture of Beirut as a site of avant-garde experimentation, but also to examine the city as a contested site affected by periods of rapid growth, intense violence, and urban reconstruction. To explain this cultural phenomenon, I advance the idea of ‘post-orientalist aesthetic’ to describe a mode of intellectual critique and artistic style that goes beyond Edward Said’s critique to give greater attention to self-representation in the post-911 period. This aesthetic interrogates western representational practices and also develops a localized critical analysis of Middle Eastern visual culture. This aesthetic informs a better understanding of postwar subjectivity, particularly in the way memory and lived experience becomes mediated through the materiality of objects, images, and architecture affectively inscribed with destruction and violence. The notion of the archive or the personal collection becomes of particular interest here; especially in the way these artifacts embody personalized narratives and testimonials that push back from abstracted notions of a monolithic historical narrative. Drawing on visual anthropology, media ethnography, and nonwestern film theory, this text examines the way these artists challenge realist modes of representation by utilizing both ethnographic and artistic approaches to grapple with the experience of everyday violence. In order to explore methodologies for conducting visual research in conflict zones, I conclude with an experimental auto-ethnography that appropriates these aesthetics in an effort to interrogate my positionality as an American researcher in the Middle East.

Abstract:
Dissertation Submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Award of the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY.

The root causes of the GCC's employment problems are interlocked – a system of national education that has largely not been competitive or well aligned with the needs of modern industry, a culture of citizens conditioned to a protective government, a public sector that is overstaffed and inefficient, and counterproductive policies in areas such as immigration and social welfare. It is also reflected in the highly distorted labour market in the region, founded on a socio-ethnic duality. In some respects the labour market is rigid, with pronounced differences in the wages for non-nationals and nationals. In other aspects it is flexible as current laws make it very easy to import or deport foreigners based on hiring/firing. This is also why“unemployment” is a national issue, for if and when a foreigner‟s work visa is terminated, he or she is obliged to return to the home country.
In the final analysis  –
• At the GCC level, the dissertation research disproves the hypothesis that growing numbers of GCC nationals have entered the private sector due to workforce nationalisation programmes, replacing foreign labour.
• The second hypothesis has been validated in that the growing mismatch between available local labour and the labour market requirements has undermined the success of Emiratisation.
• Finally, the failure of Emiratisation has been concluded while validating the hypothesis that Indian labour migration to the UAE has been vigorous despite Emiratisation.

Á  e theory of regional security complexes developed by B. Buzan and O.“Weaver
describes the Middle Eastern regional security complex as a“standard one, with
a“polarity determined by regional powers. It is also considered to be a“typical
con´ ict formation in terms of amity and enmity, where the politics of security is
shaped mainly by interrelations between the regional powers1. At the same time,
because of its global importance as a“world leading oil and gas supplier as well as
its geostrategic location, Middle East constantly draws great attention from main
international actors including all of the global and great powers. Á  e security of
the region is also characterized by much greater, than in most other regions, dy-
namics and variability of the main issues of con´ ict.
Á  is is clearly seen when one looks at the main sources of instability in the
region and reasons for con´ icts in the Middle Eastern states during last few de-
cades. Since the end of the Second World War and during an era of decoloni-
zation the Israeli-Arab con´ ict rose as a“central security issue. In the following
years, it has to a“certain degree absorbed and overshadowed all the other secu-
rity issues. Since the decade of 1970. it became, however, less intense and impor-
tant. Á  e Israeli-Arab con´ ict has been substituted by the Israeli-Palestinian one,
which has a“completely diÄ erent character and its actual position in the hierarchy
of regional security issues is incomparably lower. Much greater importance shall
now be paid to such problems and threats as the Islamic fundamentalism and
extremism as well as a“growing activity of armed and terrorist groups that base
those ideologies. Other central issues include sectarian and ethnic violence, in-
stability of political regimes and weakness of state structures, internal economic
and social problems in numerous countries, the regional arms race, or growing
con´ icts for resources and raw materials.