Omphalos takes an interdisciplinary look at the contemporary Middle East, and is published jointly with two key partners: Academic Exchange, an educational non-profit that seeks to deepen understanding of Israel in the international academic community, and the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy and its blog, Markaz. Turmoil in today's Middle East today implicates a wide array of legal questions, bears huge costs for civilian populations, and poses diverse challenges to policymakers, activists, lawyers, and reformers. For the issues that Lawfare treats, the Middle East is a kind of omphalos.
The ICC prosecutor’s determination of jurisdiction relies on a controversial and legally problematic recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The Omani ruler's role in regional politics will be difficult to fill.
The American drone strike last night that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, is a seismic event in U.S.-Iranian relations—and for the broader Middle East. We put together an emergency podcast, drawing on the resources of both Lawfare and the Brookings Institution and reflecting the depth of the remarkable collaboration between the two.
In Iraq, the Trump administration’s military response to a fatal attack on U.S. personnel has triggered a new political crisis. The U.S.-Iraq relationship may not escape unscathed.
Two judgments handed down just days apart—one by the Israeli Supreme Court and the other by the European Court of Justice—serve to highlight a growing jurisprudential divide between Israeli and international courts on the status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank
For the past month, the country of Lebanon has witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented political movement driven forward by widespread popular protests.
On Oct. 29, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa and International Terrorism will hold a hearing titled “Examining the Administration’s Policy Objectives for a Turbulent Middle East.” The hearing will feature testimony from David Schenker, the assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, and Michael Harvey, the assistant administrator for the Middle East at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
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