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 […]
No one should be surprised in the least by Iraq’s recent decision to criminalize normalization attempts with Israel, its longtime enemy. On May 27, Iraq’s parliament passed a law criminalizing contacts between Iraqi citizens, institutions and organizations and the state of Israel, or “the Zionist entity,” as it is derisively known in Iraq. The new […]
With Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu having paid a landmark visit to Israel, Turkey and Israel have begun the arduous and lengthy process of patching up their often contentions bilateral relations. Cavusoglu, the first high-ranking Turkish official to set foot in Israel in more than a decade, arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport on May 24, about […]
Six days after Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz vowed to prevent Iran from transferring advanced technology to its Shi’a proxies in the Middle East, Colonel Sayyad Khodaei, a senior official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, was assassinated in broad daylight in Tehran. The timing was hardly coincidental, given Israel’s under-the-radar battle against […]