Jordan unveiled a package of constitutional amendments last Sunday which offered the most drastic overhaul of the 1952 constitution ever proposed. King Abdullah promised these revisions on June 12 in a surprising televised speech. The new push came in response to five months of increasingly strident protests and criticism, and seemed designed to emulate the constitutional reform gambit of Morocco's King Mohammed VI.

Many Jordanians were stunned by the explicit promise in June of a future system that would draw governing cabinets from the elected parliament rather than appointment by palace fiat. The idea of constitutional monarchy, which entails divesting absolute royal power to the legislature alongside other sweeping institutional changes, captivated the political salons, business magazines, and civic debates of Amman through July. Many intellectuals compared the excitement in the air to 1989, when King Hussein began to end decades of authoritarian closure through unprecedented political reforms.

The revisions unveiled on Sunday made some serious changes, but fell far short of that promise of elected governments. Unlike in Morocco, there will be no popular referendum. The reforms do not curb the king's core powers or move toward a constitutional monarchy in which he would reign but not rule. The election and parties law, unchecked security services, and rife corruption go untouched. Economic development outside Amman remains laggard. Will such a limited reform gambit be enough to blunt popular pressure on the embattled king?

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If you were watching Iraq's government-sponsored satellite channel Al-Iraqiyah Sports yesterday between 9 p.m. and 12 a.m. Baghdad time you would not have known that the whole country had just endured its bloodiest day in over a year. Earlier in the day, spectacular attacks killed and injured over 300 people. But as soon as Ramadan's daily fast was broken, over 50,000 spectators packed into Baghdad's most prominent stadium, Al-Sha'ab, to watch the Baghdad-based Al-Zawraa club (dubbed the White Seagulls because of their white jerseys) take on the Arbil-based Arbil Club (known as the yellow Citadel given the colors of their jerseys and the presence of the historical citadel in downtown Arbil) in the championship game of a long soccer season.

The most obvious conclusion one might come to at the end of the evening is that Iraqis are resilient and attacks are not going to deter them from carrying on with their daily lives. That is apparent in the actions of the soccer federation that did not cancel the game despite the attraction it could provide to insurgents as a target and the fans who were, ironically, bothered by the heavy security presence at the stadium. However, in a more subtle manner, it was evident how the game mirrored the country's political and social situation -- divided, hotly contested, and with deeply unclear significance.

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Tunisia's saving grace since Ben Ali left in January has been the inclusiveness and consensual nature of its transition process. In recent months, however, polarization between the Islamist el-Nahda Party and secular forces has become the primary topic of debate among political elites. I certainly saw deep differences in a trip to Tunisia at the end of July. Rashid al-Ghannushi, the leader of the largest Islamist movement, talks almost bitterly and in deeply populist terms of the desires of the country's elite (by which he means leftists, liberals, and secularists) to cling to power; leftists and liberals see the Islamists as preparing a grab for power.  

This is especially troubling less than three months before scheduled elections for a constituent assembly tasked with writing a new constitution. If there is one rule about political transitions, it is that it goes more smoothly when all significant political forces get a seat at a table where basic decisions are openly and consensually made. That is what Tunisia has tried to do. But with polarization growing and with nerves fraying, will an inclusive and consensual process work when the country tries to write a new constitution after polarizing elections?

In fact, the focus on polarization is blinding Tunisians to the extent to which this is already happening. Tunisians are suspicious of each other's intentions for a collection of good and bad reasons. But they may find the task of crafting a constitution a bit less contentious than they fear.

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"All Americans think I'm a terrorist," 34-year-old Salafi political organizer Mohammed Tolba exhales with his trademark belly laugh. He grips his gearshift and accelerates to 115 miles per hour down a winding overpass in Cairo. "But I only terrorize the highways."  Since the fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, Tolba has constantly been on the go. "The media says we all wear galabeyas (long Islamic dress), put our women in niqabs (a face veil), and will cut off people's hands," Tolba says, dramatically feigning a yawn. "We're the new boogey-man, but people need to know we're normal -- that we drink lattes and laugh." 

To this end, the silver-tongued IT consultant shuttles regularly from the modish offices of popular television personality Bassem Youssef (he's starring in a segment on the "Egyptian Jon Stewart's" highly anticipated new show) to the considerably less shiny quarters of Cairo's foremost Salafist centers. He's been conducting leadership and media-training workshops for Salafis. "These guys don't know how to talk to the public," says Tolba, rubbing his eyes in exhaustion. "Once they open their mouths and face a camera, man, they ruin everything."

The same might be said for their debut on Egypt's main stage last Friday, as hundreds of thousands of Salafis joined other Islamist groups in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Droves of people from governorates across Egypt got off buses near Tahrir Square, chanting "Islamic, Islamic, we don't want secular." One Salafi, Hisham al-Ashry, beamed with pride as he walked back from the square to his tailor shop downtown. "Today is a turning point, we finally showed our strength." Meanwhile, "the liberals and the leftists are freaking out. God protect the nation and revolution," noted popular blogger Zeinobia.

Who are the faces and voices of an oft-deemed bearded and veiled monolith that packed the square? And what exactly do they want?

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Qatar has been a notable exception to the wave of popular political mobilization that has struck Arab countries since January 2011. This is particularly so given the prominent role of its state-owned television station Al Jazeera in supporting many -- though not all -- of the uprisings. Why has Qatar been seemingly immune to the protest wave? Its wealth matters, of course, but other wealthy countries like Libya and Bahrain have experienced turmoil. Some new insights into this question can be found in the Qatar World Values Survey (QWVS), an important survey of Qatari public opinion administered in December 2010 on the eve of the Arab revolts. 

For decades, democracy promotion efforts have tended to focus on strengthening civil society and stimulating civic engagement as methods of encouraging the emergence of a democratic political culture. This is nowhere more present than in the Arab world. Between 1991 and 2001, some $150 million -- more than half of all U.S. funding for democracy-promotion in the Middle East -- went toward this goal. Yet the QWVS revealed that, in fact, civic participation in Qatar is actually associated not only with reduced support for democracy itself, but also with a disproportionate lack of the values and behaviors thought to be essential to it, including confidence in government institutions and social tolerance. In Qatar, the QWVS showed that civic participation cannot lead individuals toward a greater appreciation for democracy, for it is precisely those who least value democracy that tend to be most actively engaged.

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CAIRO — Since June 12, half of the 18,000 workers who operate and service the Suez Canal have been on strike. They are employed in maritime services by seven subsidiary companies of the Suez Canal Authority in Suez, Isma‘iliyya, and Port Said. In contrast, those employed directly by the canal authority have always received higher wages and better benefits. Long before January 25, 2011 subsidiary company workers raised the demand for parity, effectively a 40 percent wage increase.

Management of the subsidiary companies accepted this demand in April, an expression of the new possibilities of the post-January 25 era. But the interim government has maintained that wages and working conditions of public service workers are established by parliamentary legislation, and therefore, no changes can be made while the parliament is dissolved. The strike expresses workers' rejection of this logic.

Egyptian workers have achieved increased strength and self-confidence in the course of the revolutionary movement. This is expressed by the capacity to sustain a five-week-long strike in an industrial sector linked to the economically and strategically critical Suez Canal and by insisting that economic demands be met despite the absence of the legal framework established by the old regime. Labor unions continue to rebuff myriad accusations in the press and by some of the "revolutionary youth" that workers' economic demands are narrow "special interests" rather than "national interests." In this respect, workers share the achievement of all Egyptians who heeded the revolutionary call, "Lift your head high. You are an Egyptian" -- the recovery of their human dignity.

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After six months of ongoing peaceful protests, a fracturing of the armed forces, and ongoing violence in numerous parts of the country, Yemenis face increasingly dire conditions each day. And yet they keep showing up. While non-democratic (nay, anti-democratic) neighbors fitfully engage in mediation efforts while also giving refuge to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the U.S. continues to interpret the crisis through the lens of counterterrorism. Concerned about the risk of an emboldened al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the U.S. has offered tepid support for the aspirations of the country's majority, pinned its hopes on an atavistic autocrat, and opted to increase controversial drone attacks in some of the most unstable parts of the country. 

This strategy is mistaken. It presupposes a narrow understanding of U.S. interests centered on counterterrorism, which I and others have argued against elsewhere. But it also assumes that working against the revolutionary aspirations of millions of Yemenis is, in fact, the best way to counter the threat of AQAP. Supporting the development of a democratically-constituted Yemen and offering support to its leaders as they build legitimate state institutions makes more sense. This Friday, the Organizing Committee of the Revolution, which is advocating for Saleh's immediate transfer of powers and the formation of a transitional council, has issued a call for a march in pursuit of a "Civil State." Yemenis from across ideological, occupational, generational, and class lines will gather around the country to demand a state accountable to its rights-bearing citizens. It will be the twenty-fifth Friday on which they have done so, camped out in the squares for the weeks in between.

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Bashar al-Assad never saw it coming. In a Jan. 31 interview with the Wall Street Journal, the Syrian autocrat boasted that his regime was immune from the revolutionary wave spreading across the Middle East because it "very closely linked to the beliefs of the people."

Over the past month and a half, Syrians have made a liar out of their president. Small protests broke out in Damascus on March 15 and have slowly spread to towns and cities throughout the country. And as the movement has gained strength, Assad's crackdown has increased in brutality. The Syrian regime has killed at least 450 people since the uprising began, according to human rights groups, and this week sent tanks into the mutinous southern town of Daraa to quell the protests.

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With heavy rain expected in London on Friday, the royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton could be a meteorological disaster. Rain or shine, it could also be a political catastrophe for the Arab royal families attending as guests. The affair will feature a total of eight Arab royals. By comparison, when the groom's father, Prince Charles, married his long-time "close friend," Camilla, in 2005, there were only four Arab royal guests. When Charles married Diana in 1991, there were just two.

With an estimated 2 billion people watching on television across the world, and another 400 million on the Internet, the royal wedding also promises to be a bold statement of defiance against the Arab Spring -- and clear proof of how much the Arab royals are out of touch.

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In the shadow of the extraordinary events under way in the Middle East, Djibouti's presidential vote was always going to struggle for attention. Indeed, the plight of this tiny country, sandwiched between Somalia and Yemen, remains almost completely ignored. But as the primary seaport to 85 million landlocked Ethiopians, the center of anti-piracy efforts in the Horn of Africa, and a reliable Western ally in the war on terror, Djibouti is a strategically vital country in an unstable neighborhood.

And with Nigeria's potentially tumultuous national vote coming this week, the relative quiet of the Djiboutian electoral process, which culminated with a ballot on April 8, might be considered a pleasant surprise compared with the electoral chaos of Africa's largest democracy. Djibouti boasts fewer than a million inhabitants -- voters in one district of the Nigerian city of Lagos outnumber its entire electoral roll.

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As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Cairo's Tahrir Square during her first visit to post-revolutionary Egypt last month, I watched the news unfold from several miles away in the damp, sparse offices of the Muslim Brotherhood's parliamentary leaders.

"Why doesn't she meet with us?" asked one Brotherhood member.

"We know why," said another.

And then they both fell silent.

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When the famed author Paul Bowles first caught a glimpse of Morocco, he quickly became convinced it was a "magic place."

The Moroccan government long ago embraced this fantasy, selling itself as a bastion of calm in a troubled region, the Arab world's model of reform. And American policymakers bought it. In sentiments repeated regularly by her successors, Madeleine Albright called the North African kingdom a "leader in democratic reform" -- boasting that "other countries are moving in the right direction, but Morocco is showing the way."

If Morocco's political system was our model all this time, then perhaps our standards were too low. Having the least-worst record of democratization in the region should never have been enough. Every time the U.S. government lavished praise on Morocco, we sent a message to all Arab citizens: This was the most they should ever hope for.

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If parliamentary elections were to be held in Egypt before summer, many argue that only the National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Muslim Brotherhood would be able to secure a significant number of seats.  The two are viewed as the only political groupings currently organized at the national level and able to confront the challenge of an imminent election. But after weeks of popular attacks directed against NDP symbols, and several of its highest representatives facing charges in court, what really remains of the former ruling party - of its organization and its capacity to mobilize?

The NDP, target of popular anger

As soon as Egyptian protesters began taking to the streets on January 25, it became clear that the National Democratic Party (NDP) - like its Tunisian counterpart, the Democratic Constitutional Rally - would soon become one of the main targets of popular anger.

Over the past decade, the NDP had come to symbolize everything that crystallized opposition to the rule of President Mubarak: the firm grip over the political arena, illustrated by a continuous and almost complete domination of Parliament; the elaboration and implementation of neoliberal reforms and their negative impact on the social conditions of most citizens, especially the middle class; the corruption of a new business elite that has used its growing political influence for its own profit and enrichment; the grooming of Hosni Mubarak's younger son Gamal as heir.

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Daniel Ayalon is Israel's deputy minister of foreign affairs.

The recent unrest in parts of the Arab world has not only exposed the appalling lack of development in these countries, but also a number of fundamental deficiencies in the international system. The United Nations, which began its life with a plurality of democratic nations, now allows for an automatic majority of nondemocratic nations. The international system dictates that Arab and Islamic nations, and their knee-jerk defenders, have a majority in almost all of its bodies. This is amply demonstrated by the disproportionate amount of time spent condemning Israel.

If there were ever an example of the inmates running the asylum, it is the U.N. Human Rights Council. This body has whitewashed the human rights record of some of the world's most repressive regimes, while also providing them with a forum to ruminate on and condemn the actions of a free and open nation, Israel.

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