The latest crisis in Lebanon has put the spotlight once again on Israeli-Lebanese relations and the stalled “Roadmap to Peace.” The Autumn 2006 issue of The Middle East Journal features articles on the psychology behind Israeli foreign policy decisions and on the longstanding territorial conflicts in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories.

Charles D. Freilich, former Deputy Israeli National Security Advisor, offers an insightful look into Israeli policy in “National Security Decision-Making in Israel: Processes Pathologies, and Strengths.” Writing as a practitioner, he illustrates several problems in current Israeli national security decision-making, including the domination of short-term perspectives and the predominance of defense/security considerations. In “Between Palestine and Lebanon: Seven Shi‘i Villages as a Case Study of Boundaries, Identities, and Conflict in the Middle East,” Asher Kaufman of Notre Dame examines the struggle over identity in seven Shi‘i villages within Mandatory Palestine and the history behind Hizbullah’s claim of Lebanese sovereignty over them.

The struggle for democratization in the region is the focus of two other MEJ articles. Professor Iliya Harik of Indiana University addresses the question of Arab exceptionalism in “Democracy, ‘Arab Exceptionalism,’ and Social Science.” Comparing the oft-quoted Freedom House assessments of Arab states to African states, he exposes serious discrepancies between the two in the application of Freedom House’s democracy standards. In “What do Egypt’s Islamists Want? Moderate Islam and the Rise of Islamic Constitutionalism,” Bruce Rutherford of Colgate University draws from the writings of prominent Egyptian Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood’s 2005 campaign platform to examine a distinctly Islamic concept of constitutionalism.

Qatar’s innovative campaigns of self-promotion are the focus of J. E. Peterson’s “Qatar and the World: Branding for a Micro-State.” Peterson argues that, as a microstate, Qatar has responded to challenges with a unique branding strategy that helps secure its economic and political survival. The Book Review Essay commemorates the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with Jeffery Bale’s review of several books on terrorism and Islamism.