Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former prime minister, regarded Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan as little more than an opportunity to annex a chunk of the West Bank, says Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist whose book, Trump’s Peace, was published in Hebrew last month. The Trump administration released its proposal, Peace to Prosperity, on January 28, […]
Extreme Jewish settlers in the West Bank are on a rampage. Violent attacks against Palestinians increased by almost 50 percent in 2021 over the previous year. In the main, the attackers have been Jewish extremists living in illegal outposts that were built without the authorization of the Israeli government. There have been a wave of […]
To no one’s surprise, Iran has carried out its threat to wreak vengeance on the United States for its central role in the assassination of one of its most revered national figures, Qassem Soleimani, who commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Soleimani and his Iraqi associate, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of the pro-Iranian Popular […]
Justice has finally caught up with Anwar Raslan, a former colonel in Syria’s intelligence service. On January 13, a court in Koblenz, Germany, convicted him of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Now 58, he supervised the murder, the torture and the sexual abuse of dozens of prisoners. Though only a cog […]
Last May, as Israel fought its fourth cross-border Gaza war with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, deadly ethnic violence between Jews and Arabs erupted in a string of cities, shocking and disheartening Israelis. Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, compared it to a “civil war,” while an Arab member of the Knesset, Aida Touma-Sliman, likened it to the […]
The foreign ministers of Israel and Iran, Yair Lapid and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, clashed online a few days ago in what can only be described as a futile Twitter exchange. Israel and Iran are the bitterest of enemies due to Iran’s constant calls for Israel’s destruction and its financial and military support of proxies like Hezbollah […]
The first day of 2022 in Israel had an awfully familiar ring to it. During the early hours of January 1, two rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip. One exploded in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Jaffa. The second landed in the water near Palmachim, south of Rishon Lezion. Israeli […]
Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are driving in opposite directions, judging by their second direct meeting since the formation of Israel’s new government in June. On December 28, Gantz invited Abbas to his home in Rosh Ha’ayin. It was Abbas’ first meeting with a senior Israeli official in Israel […]
Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Islamist Ra’am Party and a supporter of Israel’s governing coalition government, is a realist. Judging by two of his most recent comments, he has a sound appreciation of the political environment in Israel. Several days ago, at a conference in Tel Aviv sponsored by the Hebrew-language Globes newsmagazine, Abbas […]
It was a milestone in the annals of Israel’s bilateral relations with the Arab world. On December 13, Naftali Bennett became the first Israeli prime minister to visit the United Arab Emirates. It is one of four Arab countries that agreed to normalize relations with Israel under the diplomatic umbrella of the 2020 Abraham accords, […]