DUBAI: Israeli tennis players unwittingly court controversy

Politics and sports make a volatile mix when a game involves Israeli athletes competing in the Middle East in an environment of hostility toward the Jewish state.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates recently denied a star Israeli female tennis player entry to the city-state of Dubai to participate in an international tournament.

The incident was met with a wave of condemnations by journalists, sports associations and politicians in the U.S.

For now, it looks like the oil-rich Arab country might backtrack on its earlier decision to bar Israeli players.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) told a news conference in New York that the UAE would grant male doubles player Andy Ram a visa to take part in the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships next week.

Organizers of the tournament argued that the presence of an Israeli player would anger local crowds and create an unacceptable security situation.

Anti-Israeli sentiment has been exacerbated throughout the Arab world after the Israeli offensive in Gaza, which ended last month.

For weeks, Arab TV viewers were exposed to daily footage of Israeli jets causing havoc in Palestinian towns and of children agonizing in hospital beds. 

KUWAIT: Arab rift over Gaza hard to heal

Arab divisions, which have hardened since the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, resurfaced at the Kuwait summit.

Arab governments failed today to develop a common position over the situation in Gaza, but hopes for reconciliation arose after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia criticized Arab divisions and called for unity. “We have transcended the phase of differences and opened the door for Arab fraternity and unity to every Arab.” 

Shortly after, Egyptian, Saudi, Qatari and Syrian leaders sat for lunch together, which some media celebrated as a sign of a possible rapprochement  between the U.S. allies who refuse to throw their full support behind Hamas, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia on one hand, and Iranian allies in the region,  namely Syria, on the other.

EGYPT: Biting criticism of Doha summit

The Egyptian state-owned media have pursued their ruthless campaign against Qatar, which hosted an Arab summit Friday despite the boycott of many Arab countries.

On Saturday, the semi-official press dismissed the Qatar-sponsored summit as "opportunistic" and "a failure." The attendance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad elicited further criticism. The front page of Akhbar El-Youm newspaper shrugged off the summit as "Persian" rather than "Arab."

Since Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza Strip, Qatar has been calling for an extraordinary Arab summit to hammer out a united Arab position on the conflict. In the meantime, Qatar-financed news channel Al Jazeera spearheaded a campaign criticizing Egypt for declining to throw its full support behind Hamas and open its borders fully to Gazans. 

Eventually, Egypt and its partner Saudi Arabia decided not to attend.

The conflict exposed the rift between U.S. allies in the region, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and U.S. opponents, led by Syria, Iran and Islamist groups that seek to consolidate an alliance to counter the Israeli power.

QATAR: Public kissing lands married couple in hot water

The couple was first rebuked by authorities in Qatar for kissing in public along the beach. So the two Lebanese expats argued that they were married and were doing nothing wrong.

But the plea, ironically, put them in even more trouble, as their union was judged unlawful by a court in this conservative Muslim Persian Gulf country.

The couple, who fled Qatar before the verdict was announced, was sentenced in absentia to a year of prison for having an illicit sexual relationship, according to recent media reports. 

The court argued that their marriage could not be recognized in Qatar because it was an interfaith union between a Muslim woman and a Christian man. 

The Lebanese woman, 24, and her husband, 27, were married under civil law in Cyprus, said a report in the English-language Qatari daily, Gulf Times.

LEBANON: Backroom deals and checkbook diplomacy

In the conspiracy-minded Middle East, nothing is how it appears, especially when enemies suddenly put aside their differences and make a deal.

After six months without a president and more than a year-and-a-half without a properly functioning government, Lebanon today finally swore in a new head of state, President Michel Suleiman, and began the process of healing a rift which has cost scores of lives in sectarian and political violence over the last few weeks.

On the surface, the U.S.-backed government and the Iranian-backed opposition put aside their differences during talks in the Qatari capital of Doha and made a last-minute deal for the good of their nation.

But nobody really believes that.

On the streets of Beirut, a common view is that Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani stepped in as talks were about to collapse and whipped open his checkbook.

Most believe his intervention salvaged not only Lebanon but his tiny Persian Gulf state's fledgling attempt at high-stakes conflict resolution and international diplomacy.

LEBANON: Protestors warn politicians they're fed up

Think Americans have it bad with their elected leaders?

Consider the Lebanese, whose politicians have somehow managed to bring the country back to the brink of civil war 18 years after the end of the last one.

On Friday, as Lebanon's political leaders headed to the recently reopened airport to fly to Qatar and attempt to resolve their differences, a group of disabled Lebanese, many of them disfigured in the last civil war, gathered at the airport to greet them with a blunt message: If they don't work out a new power-sharing deal, they should just stay away.

"If you don't agree," said signs held up by the demonstrators, "don't come back!!!"

LEBANON: Qatar emerges as diplomatic powerhouse

Pity Amr Moussa.

For months the dour Arab League secretary-general shuttled between his Cairo home and the Lebanese capital in a futile attempt to get Lebanese factions to talk, only to walk away in abject failure.

Then along came a smiling Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, foreign minister and prime minister of Qatar.

In a space of hours, he appears to have done what neither Moussa nor French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (who also spent many fruitless weeks trying to solve the Lebanese mess) have  been able to do: get these guys locked in a room together to hammer out some kind of agreement.

During the news conference announcing a new deal between fighting Lebanese factions, Sheik Hamad spoke gently but firmly to the whole country, as if they were adults who must take charge of their own country:

The Lebanese people will have to help us. As Lebanese, you have to accept that this is your wound. You will have to heal it. … All the Arabs are with you, but you have to exert your own efforts. You as Lebanese have to decide to end this crisis.

Sheik Hamad also said: “Everyone knows that there is no winner in this.”

Except for maybe the sheik himself, who emerged as a diplomatic rock star.