Author: M Barbu

The 2017 blockade of Qatar came out of nowhere on a summer day in June, when Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates decided to cut ties with the tiny oil-rich Gulf state. It isn’t until three years later that a definitive account of the incident, which realigned the Middle East, is provided in the form of Qatar and the Gulf Crisis, by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Hamas is using a secret base in Turkey to carry out cyber warfare and counter-intelligence operations to target its enemies, according to a report by The Times who spoke to several western intelligence sources.

The Times reported that the base is based in Istanbul and was set up two years ago separate from Hamas’ official offices in the Turkish city.

UAE media is speculating on Israel’s possible relationship with Sudan amid widespread rumors across the Middle East.

An Israeli delegation visited Khartoum on Wednesday to discuss signing a peace agreement between the two countries, “informed Sudanese sources” told Al Ain News, an online news portal based in the UAE.

The Albanian parliament has endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, making the country one of the first Muslim-majority countries to adopt the definition.
The IHRA, an intergovernmental organization with 34 member countries, established an international consensus on a working definition of antisemitism.

Regional analysts consider Cairo to be playing a blurry political and media game, and this disturbs some of its allies, especially the Gulf states.

Whenever Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi refers to Turkey in his speeches, he tends to do it implicitly, and he also deliberately refers to its transgressions indirectly.