AboutArticles by Michael Jansen

Firsthand recollections

28 Oct 2021

Tanzanian-born Abdulrazak Gurnah is the second Muslim of Arab stock to be awarded the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature. The first was Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz who became a laureate...

Ruling the nation of Afghanistan is a challenging task

24 Oct 2021

The Taliban is all too clearly not yet up to ruling Afghanistan. Over the past two decades, that country and its citizens have joined the 21st century but the Taliban...

Taking a stance

21 Oct 2021

Award winning Irish author Sally Rooney has caused a stir in the literary world by refusing a bid by a leading Israeli publisher to translate her best-selling novel. “Beautiful World,...

Lebanon, A tough judge faces open defiance

17 Oct 2021

Sunday, April 13th, 1975, was a fateful day for Lebanon. I remember it well. My husband, 5-year old daughter, and I were returning home from a lunch party at the...

Highest honour

14 Oct 2021

The Nobel Prize Committee has challenged our era of “fake news” propagated by radical-right radio and television channels and social media by awarding this year’s coveted Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and...

Israel could adopt a more humane stance towards Gaza

10 Oct 2021

Following Israel’s 11-day May blitz on besieged and blockaded Gaza, Egypt and Qatar each pledged to invest $500m in the reconstruction of the strip and have separately received at least...

Call to action

07 Oct 2021

Iraqis are set to go to the polls on Sunday to elect representatives for the 329-member national assembly. The election was initially scheduled for June but postponed at the request of...

Doha Agreement, a deeply flawed document

03 Oct 2021

The Doha Agreement, reached by the Trump administration and the Taliban, led to the collapse of both the Afghan government and the Afghan army and security forces. It is significant...

Failure to impress

01 Oct 2021

US President Joe Biden’s job approval rating has fallen dramatically in two months. According to a Pew research poll only 44 per cent of adults approve of his performance while...

Reconciliation, not rivalry, marks region’s politics

26 Sep 2021

The gradual US disengagement from this region in favour of a pivot toward Asia has launched a process of reconciliation among countries which have been estranged by competition and rivalries....

Michael Jansen

The author, a well-respected observer of Middle East affairs, has three books on the Arab-Israeli conflict.