In 1982, she moved to the United States to take-up a research fellowship at the Harvard University Center for International Affairs, where she wrote her first book, The Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, Co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, described it as, "An impassioned, thought-provoking, and accessible brief from a highly esteemed journalist on how all of us, as individuals, can act to help better our country and world."
In February 2003, she started publishing "Just World News", a blog on global issues that has gained a broad international readership and has been cited in Le Monde diplomatique and elsewhere.
Cobban used to be a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and formerly sat on the Middle East Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch.
For her 1984 book The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power, and Politics[1] she interviewed many founders and leaders of the PLO and used much original material gathered during her reporting work in Beirut in the late 1970s.
That doesn't annul the historical fact of the Israeli occupation of 1948, but Hamas and the other factions have all accepted this solution of a Palestinian state at the 1967 line.
[citation needed] Cobban has helped to lead, or participated in, several Track II diplomacy programs between Israelis and Palestinians and has developed some nuanced assessments of the potential benefits and pitfalls of such efforts.
[6] In her 1985 book The Making of Modern Lebanon[7] she analysed Lebanese politics as being the result of complex interactions among the country's different population groups, which she divided—based on an analysis by Fuad Khuri —into "sects" and "minorities."
The book, which also built on considerable on-the-ground reporting, identified and analysed the rise of the country's previously marginalised Shiite community.
She expanded on that work in her 2000 book,[13] described by Raymond Hinnebusch as "A must-read for anyone with interest in the Middle East or the dynamics of peace negotiations in general.