Foreign Affairs is making available the full text of a selection of new and previously published articles on the interests, goals, and political dynamics on all sides, as well as the history of the two parties' recent interactions and American involvement in the region.

The Last Negotiation, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley (May/June 2002)

Conventional wisdom says the best approach to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict is to strive for a ceasefire followed by a return to painstaking step-by-step negotiations. In fact, the incremental approach is doomed to failure, and peace will only come through outside intervention based on a clear plan to end the conflict once and for all.

The Last of the Patriarchs, Aluf Benn (May/June 2002)

What does Ariel Sharon want? Not to make peace or push the Palestinians out of the territories, but rather to freeze the status quo and put off final-status negotiations for years.

Palestinians Divided, Khalil Shikaki (January/February 2002)

Yasir Arafat will be able to fend off internal leadership challenges only if he can deliver a substantial settlement with the Israelis or give his own people better and more open government. Neither is likely, and what follows Arafat may be even worse.

Back to the Bazaar, Martin Indyk (January/February 2002)

After its victory in Afghanistan, the United States has an opportunity to strike a new bargain with its major Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It should indeed press for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also challenge authoritarianism, anti-Americanism, and the lack of Arab support for Middle East peace.

The Sentry's Solitude, Fouad Ajami (November/December 2001)

Arafat wants the "Arab street" to rise up in rebellion and force the United States to accept his claims. Better the fire of an insurrection, he reasons, than the risks of reconciling his people to a peace he has not prepared them for.

Middle East Peace Through Partition, David Makovsky, (March/April 2001)

Why did the peace process begun at Oslo fall apart? Because of what the Palestinians and Israelis failed to do, because of what the Palestinian Authority became, and because there was no clear strategy for an endgame. Now disengagement is the only route to stability.

Israel After Heroism, Eliot A. Cohen, (November/December 1998)

Doughnuts may not be quite as American as, say, apple pie, but they come close enough to make Samir Nasier, a Saudi fast-food king, nervous.

In this incisive, insightful work Mark Buchanan presents the fundamental principles of the emerging field of "small worlds" theory -- the idea that a hidden pattern is the key to how networks interact and exchange information, whether that network is the information highway or the firing of neurons in the brain. Mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, and social scientists are working to decipher this complex organizational system, for it may yield a blueprint of dynamic interactions within our physical as well as social worlds. Highlighting groundbreaking research behind network theory, Buchanan documents mounting support for the small-worlds idea and demonstrates its multiple applications to diverse problems.

An exciting introduction to the hidden geometry that weaves our lives so inextricably together.

Something radically new is in the air: new ways of understanding physical systems, new ways of thinking about thinking that call into question many of our basic assumptions. A realistic biology of the mind, advances in physics, electricity, genetics, neurobiology, engineering, the chemistry of materials -- all are challenging basic assumptions of who and what we are, of what it means to be human. The arts and the sciences are again joining together as one culture, the third culture. Those involved in this effort -- scientists, science-based humanities scholars, writers -- are at the center of today's intellectual action.

They are the new humanists.

To mark the occasion of the 100th edition of Edge, I am taking my turn. ...

A Great Intellectual Hunger
One Intellectual Whole
Cultural Pessimism
The Double Optimism of Science
Scientists As Both Creators and Critics
The Horizon Grows
Scientia
One Culture, the Third Culture

...

Like all epochal inventions that revolutionize society and define an era, the Internet has both short-term effects and long-term consequences. ...

"The dot-com bubble was about lots of experiments to figure out what kinds of business models would work. It was totally overfunded, but it had nothing to do with the real transformation. The real transformation is going to take place over the next decade or two. It will totally change the economics of doing business across the entire world -- and it will have a huge impact on governments and individuals."

The Internet's explosion into the public consciousness in the 1990s was marked by a heady rhetoric about its uniqueness.

As the Internet has matured, however, traditional governments and private actors have increasingly sought to assert control over conduct and content in cyberspace.

How will -- and how should -- governance in cyberspace evolve now that the utopian vision of the Net as a perfectly self-governing realm has been dispelled?

The focus: Where we are now; Guiding principles for good governance; Proper roles for different actors; Specific governance challenges.

... the fundamental commitment of our democracy to secure "the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources." ...

Today, as the Internet and the digitally networked environment present us with a new set of regulatory choices, it is important to set our eyes on the right prize. That prize is not the Great Shopping Mall in Cyberspace. That prize is the Great Agora -- the unmediated conversation of the many with the many.