Shifting Tides

On this episode Elif Zaim and Michael Arnold talk with Tarek Megerisi, a senior policy fellow with the North Africa and Middle East programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations about Libya's election prospects. They discuss the effectiveness of Libyan Dialogue Forum, dynamics behind the calls for a delay, the current legal framework  governing the elections, the potential military build-up,  regional and international support for the presidential candidates and the possible outcomes.  

On this episode of Shifting Tides, Elif Zaim and Michael Arnold talk with Christophe-Abi Nassif, the acting Lebanon program director at the Middle East Institute about the race to rebuild the port of Beirut. They discuss the importance of the ports in the Eastern Mediterranean both with regards to regional and international geopolitical competition, the current situation of the port of Beirut, who stands to gain domestically from various reconstruction proposals, the issue of accountability in the country, and what lays over the horizon in terms of possible successful bids.

In our first episode of Shifting Tides, Elif Zaim and Michael Arnold talk with Dr. Alaa Tartir, Program Advisor to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network about the political economy of aid to Palestine. They discuss the Oslo Accords, why aid has failed the Palestinian people and the aid development paradox, how aid sustains the Israeli economy and subsidizes the financing of the occupation, how Arab aid factors into this equation, and whether a new paradigm can be established as an answer to the current challenges and predicaments.