With yesterday’s passage of the first part of the Israeli government’s divisive proposal to overhaul the judiciary, Israel’s domestic crisis has ominously deepened, throwing Israel into its worst domestic crisis in decades. Not since the 1993 Oslo peace process and Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has Israel been so internally splintered and […]
With its recognition of Morocco’s territorial claim to the disputed Western Sahara region, Israel has taken a giant leap forward to consolidate its bilateral relations with that North African Arab nation. Israel officially recognized Morocco’s claim on July 17, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent King Mohammed VI a letter affirming Israel’s decision to “recognize […]
Judging by recent events, Israel’s alliance with the United States, its most important and enduring ally, has entered an unsettling period of turbulence. U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s divisive plan to overhaul Israel’s judicial system and has expressed public support for the mass demonstrations breaking out in Israel […]
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s two-day visit to Baku recently underscored Israel’s burgeoning ties with Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim state which shares a border with Iran, Israel’s arch enemy. Gallant arrived in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, on July 13 with the objective of upgrading Israel’s strategic relationship with Azerbaijan in such key sectors as security, diplomacy […]
Tensions along Israel’s tense border with Lebanon have been escalating of late. Over the past four months, Hezbollah — the Lebanese Shi’a militia which has repeatedly confronted Israel in armed clashes since its founding in the early 1980s — has grown increasingly bolder and dangerously overconfident. Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran and an ally of […]
Six months after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his intention to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, thereby setting off recurring nation-wide protests, the debate over his contentious and controversial plan is still boiling over furiously and has yet to be resolved by compromise. The ongoing turmoil has split the country into two warring camps. This does not […]
The Syrian government recently revoked the British Broadcast Corporation’s media accreditation after it published a disturbing report delineating the incriminating links between the illegal Captagon drug trade, President Bashar al-Assad and his family, and Syria’s armed forces. The Syrian Ministry of Information denounced the BBC report as “biased and misleading … based on statements from […]
Israel’s brief offensive in Jenin, its biggest military intervention in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in March 2002, was months in the making. Jenin and its adjacent Palestinian refugee camp, one of 19 such camps in the West Bank, were targeted because they are bastions of armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of […]
Benjamin Netanyahu has said that his chief foreign policy objective in the Middle East is to normalize bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia and thereby expand the membership of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which currently consists of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. The Israeli prime minister claims that Saudi Arabia’s inclusion would effectively […]
The brief rebellion staged by Wagner mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia on June 24 has probably weakened Russian President Vladimir Putin and tarnished his reputation as a paragon of stability and continuity. But it will probably have no discernible effect on Russia’s foreign policy, particularly its rapidly expanding relations with Iran, Israel’s chief enemy. […]