Israel’s new prime minister, Yair Lapid, faces a multitude of uncertainties as the country heads toward its fifth election since 2019. Lapid, the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid Party, took over as caretaker prime minister after he and his political partner, Naftali Bennett, dissolved the 24th Knesset after several crises. Lapid will also continue […]
Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, was internationally ostracized following the murder of Saudi journalist/dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed the order to kill and dismember Khashoggi had come from the “highest levels” of the Saudi government, but he […]
Egypt, in 1979, was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but until about two years ago, bilateral relations were invariably chilly, if not downright frigid. In virtually every aspect, Israel’s relationship with Egypt was unremittingly cold, the direct result of Egypt’s wholehearted embrace of the Palestinian cause and grassroots Egyptian […]
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz has confirmed that Israel has joined a new Middle Eastern military partnership composed of, among other nations, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and the United States. Known as the Middle East Air Defence Alliance, it is designed to fend off missile, rocket, and unmanned drone attacks from Iran, whose nuclear […]
There is a disconsolate strain of illiberalism in Israeli society that runs disturbingly deep. Recently, Matan Kahana, the deputy religious affairs minister, told high school students in the West Bank settlement of Efrat that, if possible, he would transfer Israeli Arabs to Europe with the press of a “button.” Kahana, a member of Prime Minister […]
Once heavily dependent on the import of oil and natural gas, Israel has become a net exporter of energy. Thanks to its discovery of major gas fields off its coastline in the past 13 years, Israel has consolidated its role on the global energy market. In recent years, Israel has exported natural gas to Egypt […]
Israel’s undeclared war against Iran is intensifying. In the past month, Israel has carried out a series of attacks against Iran and Iranian interests in Syria, Iran’s chief Arab ally. Iran, in turn, has threatened a harsh armed response. On May 22, Israel assassinated a top-ranking officer of the Quds Force, an arm of the […]
Israel has been condemned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council yet again. On June 13, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, chaired by Navi Pillay, presented its 18-page report to the Human Rights Council, a body consisting of 47 countries. The commission, set up after last year’s Gaza war, […]
A year after forming what is probably Israel’s most ideologically diverse government, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is clinging to power by the skin of his teeth. As of now, he controls only 60 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, allowing him to govern but leaving his government potentially unstable and vulnerable to upheaval and […]
Throughout much of the Arab world, Israel is regarded as a pariah state, a country that occupies Palestinian land and oppresses the Palestinians. But alongside this black cloud is a silver lining in which a more positive view of Israel has taken hold among a handful of conservative Arab states. The United Arab Emirates and […]