The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

International sports boycotts of Israel are a question of if rather than when, with mounting pressure and ever more targeted boycotts and sanctions against Israel and widespread public anger at the Jewish state’s conduct of the Gaza war. Next week’s United Nations General Assembly proceedings in New York, where Gaza is certain to take centre stage, are likely to make it increasingly difficult for international and national sports associations to remain on the sidelines under the fictional assertion that sports and politics are separate, and that sports build bridges.

James M. Dorsey discusses on TRT World the impact of the Gaza war on Israeli soldiers, with hundreds reportedly taken their own and many more suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

What steps will the Doha emergency summit take following Israel’s attack_TRT 16092025 by James M. Dorsey

US Secretary Marco Rubio’s first engagement after arriving in Israel this weekend to discuss the Gaza war and the fallout of Israel’s strike in Qatar sent a dangerous signal. By visiting Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a Jewish place of prayer and pilgrimage together with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the United States’ Christian Zionist ambassador to the Jewish state, Mike Huckabee, Mr. Rubio was implicitly framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a religious and civilisational rather than a national dispute.

Is Qatar the straw that breaks the camel’s back by James M. Dorsey

Israel is playing a high-stakes game of bluff poker. The problem is that the stakes are high not only for Israel but also for its foremost supporters, the United States and Europe, as well as Gulf states with which it enjoyed close relations despite differences over Gaza, Palestine, and Iran. How the US, Europe, and the Gulf respond to Israel's targeting of Hamas's leadership in exile in Qatar, one of three mediators alongside the United States and Egypt in the Gaza war, is likely to determine whether Israel's gamble pays off. The fact that Israel failed to kill any of the senior Hamas leaders gathered to discuss an Israeli-endorsed US proposal to end the war and initial responses to the attack don't bode well for Israel.

Israel’s risky strike against Qatar was neither an unmitigated success in Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s terms nor a complete failure, even if it’s too early for a definitive cost-benefit analysis of what could prove to be a watershed.

With the United States and Israel discussing a follow-up to a US$38 billion ten-year Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries, which is set to expire in 2028, Israeli officials are warming to the notion of a paradigm shift in US-Israeli military relations.

Nearly two years into Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, ceasefire negotiations remain stalled, the humanitarian toll continues to mount, and international divisions are deepening. Despite mounting global pressure, Israel has resisted calls for a permanent ceasefire, insisting on unfeasible conditions. During this week’s Middle East Report, James M. Dorsey analysed the faltering ceasefire efforts. Dorsey outlined the core of the impasse: a mounting divergence between Israeli and much of the international community, and Hamas’s demands on the other. In August, Hamas accepted an Israeli-endorsed US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire. Yet, Israel and US envoy Steve Witkoff shifted the narrative, insisting any truce be permanent and linked to full hostage release—effectively changing the negotiated goalposts. Dorsey warned that this tactical shift by Israel and the United States amounts to deliberate undermining of ceasefire momentum. “So, in effect, what Israel is doing is sabotaging a ceasefire,” Dorsey said. The Trump administration has enacted sweeping punitive measures against Palestinians: preventing Palestinian officials—including President Mahmoud Abbas—from attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York; barring Palestinian passport holders from US entry; and sanctioning Palestinian human rights groups supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Dorsey observed that diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel remains insufficient—yet potentially poised to escalate. “Private sector and limited government sanctions are troubling Israelis, but not enough to push Prime Minister Netanyahu to reconsider his policies,” Dorsey said. At the same time, civil society in Europe and elsewhere are campaigning for sanctions against Israel. “If and when sanctions start to kick in by the Europeans, serious sanctions that start to hit where it hurts, that’s something that Israel is going to have to take account of,” Dorsey said. Dorsey also spotlighted the latest flotilla of 50 ships from 44 countries—including activists from Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar—that has set sail to break the siege of Gaza. He flagged the unprecedented involvement of Gulf nationals as “remarkable,” given the suppression of pro-Palestinian expression of support in much of the Middle East. Finally, Dorsey touched on Lebanon’s entanglement: the Lebanese government, under US pressure, has committed to disarming Hezbollah, though the group has refused to comply. On paper, this move is framed as a step toward consolidating state sovereignty by ensuring the monopoly of arms rests with the state. But in practice, it places Beirut in an impossible bind. Hezbollah, still reeling but not broken from its latest confrontation with Israel, has declared it will not give up its weapons as long as Israeli forces occupy Lebanese land. This creates a standoff between Hezbollah, which commands loyalty across significant sections of Lebanese society, and the fragile Lebanese state. For ordinary Lebanese, this uncertainty compounds daily struggles. The country is still reeling from years of financial crisis, the 2020 Beirut port explosion, and one of the world’s worst currency devaluations. Analysts warn that pressure to confront Hezbollah militarily could trigger fresh conflict in a society exhausted by instability. At the same time, Washington insists that Lebanon must show it can rein in armed groups operating independently of the state. As Dorsey put it, this leaves Lebanon “between a rock and a hard place,” trying to navigate American demands without igniting a civil confrontation that could spiral into another round of violence.

Israelis are enjoying their mangoes this summer at sharply reduced prices at the expense of food-deprived Gazan Palestinians. The sharp drop in mango prices is as much a result of Israel's throttling of the flow of food into Gaza and its economic blockade of the Strip as it is a byproduct of increasing consumer boycotts of Israeli products and US President Donald Trump's tariffs on Brazilian and Mexican imports of the fruit. As a result, Israel is witnessing a mango glut, with the Gaza market shut down because of the almost two-year-long war, and Latin American producers are grabbing European market share from Israel with pricing that undercuts Israeli produce. Mangos are the exception to the rule. Most private sector and primarily limited government sanctions and boycotts of Israel are causing Israelis discomfort, but not yet the kind of pain that could persuade Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to rethink his warmongering and morally, legally, and politically questionable policies. However, the pain is likely to increase, all the more so as Israel and the Trump administration proceed with plans to make Gaza even more uninhabitable than it already is, so that Palestinians decide they have no option but to emigrate.

The UAE’s long-standing no holds barred campaign to persuade Western and other nations to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood as the source of all Islamist evil, is producing results. The question is whether crackdowns on freedoms of expression and assembly, leaving Muslims and others with few, if any, release valves, coupled with anger at Western and Arab restrictions on expression of support for the Palestinians and a Western refusal to sanction Israel for its Gaza war conduct, creates a feeding ground for a next generation of Islamist militants.

James discusses on Radio Islam the dim prospects for ending the Gaza war and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Pursuing diametrically opposed objectives, Gaza's ceasefire mediators are working at cross purposes. The divide among the mediators, the United States, Qatar, and Egypt, significantly diminishes the chances of the ceasefire talks succeeding and, if they do, reaching a deal that would lead to an end of the war. Hamas’s renewed acceptance by Hamas of a months-old Israeli-endorsed US proposal for a 60-day-ceasefire was as much a product of the mediators working at cross purposes as it was a Qatar-Egyptian attempt to get the talks back on track. It was also an effort to re-engage US President Donald Trump, who, faced with mounting criticism of Israel’s Gaza starvation policy from segments of his support base, has gone silent on the ceasefire talks. Finally, Qatar and Egypt hope the revived talks will keep open the door to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The prospects for a Palestinian two-state solution appear increasingly bleak as Israel presses ahead with its military campaign to seize control of Gaza City while advancing a major settlement project that would sever the West Bank from East Jerusalem. On BFM 89.9, James weighs in on how international powers are responding and what could halt this devastating war. Separately, James talks to AzNews about the equally bleak prospects

Netanyahu has long used ultranationalist threats to collapse his government as a justification for his refusal to end the Gaza war, while, in fact, the far-right ministers in his Cabinet provide him a needed fig leaf to pursue policies designed to advance their shared notion of Greater Israel at the expense of Palestinian aspirations.

A Palestinian businessman is lobbying to become the post-war governor of Gaza amid a reported shifting of gears in the Trump administration’s strategy in Gaza ceasefire talks.

Dow Jones has a stellar record of standing by its reporting. As a former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent, I know that firsthand.

A recent opinion poll in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority state and democracy, throws a damper on Israeli and US hopes that Middle Eastern and Muslim states may recognise the Jewish state without a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Even more concerning, the poll suggests that public opinion is turning against a compromise two-state solution that would see the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as advocated by an overwhelming majority of the international community, including Arab and Muslim states. The poll indicates that Israeli plans for a ground occupation of Gaza, Israel's US-backed devastation of Gaza to create an environment conducive to depopulation of the Strip, and its repressive West Bank settlement policy are driving the hardening of public attitudes.

With Saudi recognition of Israel off the table, pro-Israeli and Israeli pundits and far-right and conservative pro-Israel groups in the United States are pushing the kingdom to become an aggressive regional player in Israel's mould. The pundits and groups want Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to abandon his de-escalation policy, including the kingdom's fragile freezing of its differences with Iran, and to reignite his ill-fated 2015 military campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen that sparked one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Proponents of a Saudi Arabia, that like Israel would impose its will with military force, believe that a more assertive kingdom would allow Israel to outsource its fight with the Houthis, revive the notion of an Israeli-Gulf anti-Iran and anti-Turkey alliance, help Saudi Arabia resolve differences with the United Arab Emirates, Israel's best Arab friend, and potentially give the possibility of Saudi recognition of Israel and a key role in post-war Gaza a new lease on life. To garner support among US administration hawks and President Donald J. Trump's isolationist Make America Great Again (MAGA) support base, the pundits and conservative think tanks argue that Saudi Arabia's de-escalation policy and informal ceasefire with the Houthis have enabled rebel missile attacks against Israel and US naval vessels and commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

In a reversal of repeatedly stated policy that Israel would not re-occupy Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is signalling that he is mulling Israel’s re-occupation of the Strip. Mr. Netanyahu suggested as much in a Hebrew-language statement issued by his office. Israel’s Security Cabinet this week discussed the proposition with the full Cabinet scheduled to debate it in the coming days. The statement announced that Mr. Netanyahu had decided to "occupy all of the Gaza Strip, including areas where hostages may be held." Even so, it remains unclear whether Mr. Netanyahu wants to re-occupy Gaza or is hoping that the threat will persuade Hamas to bow to Israeli demands in stalled ceasefire negotiations.