While Ethiopia is engaged in bloody internecine fighting in its Tigray region, and Sudan is in the midst of a significant political transition, plans for the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam—constructed athwart the Blue Nile, which flows into Sudan and there joins the waters of the White Nile and continues on to Egypt—continue apace. Since work on the dam began in 2011, it has been the subject of tension between Addis Ababa and Cairo, the latter fearing its potential effects on the Nile’s waters in Egypt. Both Egypt and Ethiopia have longstanding friendly relations with Israel, while Sudan only recently signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state. Alberto M. Fernandez examines the implications for the Middle East:

During the past four weeks, there has been a rash of violent attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank. These are not a response to any Israeli actions, nor are they spontaneous outbursts. Rather, as Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch explain, the violence is the result of deliberate incitement by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which began when its president, Mahmoud Abbas, realized he was unlikely to win the upcoming national elections. The violence, write Marcus and Hirsch, was originally a way to win votes, and is now a way to maintain popularity after Abbas’s decision to postpone the elections in definitely: