The increasingly intractable Israel-Palestinian conflict owes much of its current impasse to the doomed Oslo peace process of the 1990s.

Several global and regional trends are contributing to increased instability in the Middle East. This report explores what’s driving the conflict and where the next fault lines will emerge.

Despite the shock of recent events, it’s not the Middle East that has changed. It’s US foreign policy.

Examining recent efforts by France to carve out its own geopolitical niche in the Middle East.

Though the dust has yet to settle from airstrikes in Syria last week, Israel’s “neither conform no deny” posture has forced pundits to speculate on the intended target and whether or not the embattled Assad regime will retaliate.

There  are some lessons to be learned from the most recent round in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Qatar’s rise from a sleepy Gulf state to a Middle East power-broker has taken many by surprise. It’s not the conventional considerations of land, military, or economic power that are driving Qatar’s foreign policy successes.

Though the list of countries being swept up in a wave of popular uprisings is long and getting longer, pro-democracy activists the world over would be wise to hold off their own celebrations.  The wave of ‘people power’ spreading through the Middle East and Africa could just as easily end up hindering international democracy as it could helping it.

August 4th, 2010 (Geopoliticalmonitor.com) - An exchange of fire along the Israel-Lebanon border has killed five people, raising fears of a repeat of Israel’s 2006 campaign against Hezbollah.