More than five years after flights by Israeli airlines to Turkey stopped, Israel signed an agreement with Ankara to renew service. Civil Aviation Authority director Giora Romm his Turkish counterpart, Bilal Eksi, struck the deal after talks that took place in Turkey, Haaretz has learned. The sides agreed to address Israel's security concerns which were cited as the reason flights were ceased.

An influential Saudi prince blasted the Obama administration on Sunday for indecision and a loss of credibility with allies in the Middle East, saying that American efforts to secure a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians would founder without a clear commitment from President Obama. “We’ve seen several red lines put forward by the president, which went along and became pinkish as time grew, and eventually ended up completely white,” said Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former intelligence chief of Saudi Arabia.

Teklai Hagos says he watched in horror as Saudi Arabian police beat Ethiopian migrants protesting against the alleged kidnapping and rapes of Ethiopian women by young Saudi men. “When we said stop, then the police started hitting us,” the 30-year-old former pipe-factory worker in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, recalled in an interview in Addis Ababa.

Egyptians will vote on a new constitution on Jan. 14 and 15, pushing on with the army-backed government's plan for transition back to democracy after its overthrow of elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. The new document is designed to replace one passed by Morsi, deposed by the army in July after mass protests against his rule. It should pave the way for new parliamentary and presidential elections to take place next year.

As an emerging middle power Turkey has been actively seeking to exert influence, specifically in the Middle East and in Africa through means of public diplomacy. Educational exchanges, cultural institutions, media outputs, international conferences, infrastructure aid, and humanitarian assistance are Turkey’s most notable governmental and non-governmental public diplomacy tools.

There is no shortage of advice in the United States about how the Obama administration should approach Egypt. The familiar ring of policy prescriptions bouncing around the Beltway and beyond is either a testament to a lack of creativity or limited leverage or the return of some version of the political order that prevailed under Mubarak. Take, for example, Saturday’s lead editorial in the Washington Post called, “The U.S. Must Confront the Egyptian Military’s Push for Authoritarian Rule.”

What Jimmy Carter began, Barack Obama is ending. Washington is bringing down the curtain on its 30-plus-year military effort to pull the Islamic world into conformity with American interests and expectations. It’s about time. Back in 1980, when his promulgation of the Carter Doctrine launched that effort, Carter acted with only a vague understanding of what might follow.