We would like to take this opportunity to thank Moran Banai, former Middle East Progress (MEP) policy director, for her guidance and leadership provided since 2007. Moran played a critical role in MEP’s early stages and has been a key part of the project’s development over the years. With her departure the MEP team will miss a strong analyst, leader and friend.
We launched Middle East Progress (MEP) in 2007 to promote and highlight practical approaches to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict and improving U.S., Israeli and regional security. At the time, there were no peace negotiations, and soon to come were conflicts in both Lebanon and Gaza.
Since then, the Middle East Bulletin has become a critical tool for understanding events in a region spanning from Turkey to Pakistan and the options available to policy makers to tackle these challenges. Current and former policymakers, analysts and luminaries—including President William Jefferson Clinton, President of Israel Shimon Peres, Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell, Foreign Minister of Jordan Nasser Judeh and many others—have used it as a venue to share their thoughts about issues ranging from Middle East peace efforts to U.S. policy in Iraq.
As part of our belief that top-down negotiation efforts must be met with bottom-up institution-building in the quest for comprehensive Middle East peace, we have also committed significant time and resources to our Palestinian Political Risk Insurance (PPRI) project, which seeks to help exporters mitigate risks due to trade disruption and political violence in the Palestinian territories. With our partners, the Middle East Investment Initiative, U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation and Ramallah-based National Insurance Company, we hope to launch a pilot phase of PPRI in early 2011.
During this time, the region has seen many changes, as well: some encouraging, like the Palestinian Authority-led efforts to build the institutions of the future Palestinian state, and some more worrying, like the Iranian government’s continued intransigence in the face of the international community and its own people.
With the ever-changing situation in the region, we are always looking for ways to most readily meet the needs of our readers. You should, therefore, expect that MEP may seek new approaches to keeping you informed in the future.
Thank you for your continued readership and engagement.
Sincerely,
The Middle East Progress team
