Russia’s ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, made some very strange comments the other day that cast doubt on his grasp of current affairs in the Middle East. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, he accused Israel of aggressive behavior toward Hezbollah, claimed that the cross-border tunnels the Israeli army discovered last year in southern […]
Israel has launched an ambitious infrastructure program to expand existing settlements, construct new ones and build more roads in the occupied West Bank, says Hagit Ofran, the head of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Project. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s broad objective is to consolidate Israel’s control of the West Bank and block the emergence of a […]
After signing historic normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan this past summer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have assumed that Saudi Arabia would be next in line to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. U.S. President Donald Trump, who was instrumental in facilitating these path-breaking accords, buoyed Netanyahu’s confidence by boldly […]
A tempest with far-reaching ramifications is brewing in Carmiel, a picturesque town of 46,000 in northern Israel. Carmiel was built in 1964 as part of an Israeli government plan to increase the Jewish population in the Galilee, which is inhabited by a slight majority of Muslim and Christian Arabs, the descendants of Palestinians who did […]
Iran is reeling following the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of the architects of its covert nuclear program. The audacious strike was a humiliating assault on Iran’s national pride, but not necessarily a crushing blow to its nuclear ambitions. Fakhrizadeh, a physicist and brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was gunned down in […]
Israeli and Lebanese negotiators have met three times since October in a bid to demarcate their maritime border in the Mediterranean Sea, which is rich in gas deposits, among other natural resources. The negotiations, which have unfolded in the southern Lebanese town of Ras Naqoura under U.S. and United Nations auspices, have been blandly described […]
The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, has urged the UN Security Council to deal with Iran’s flagrant violations of a disengagement agreement that resulted in the creation of a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Syria. The buffer zone, located on the Golan Heights, is 80 kilometres long and 0.5 to 10 […]
The leaders of two major Jewish organizations in Canada, in seamless lockstep with the Israeli government, have condemned Canada’s support of a recent United Nations draft resolution favoring a two-state solution. Passed by the General Assembly’s Third Committee by a lopsided margin of 163 to 5, with 10 abstentions, the motion was opposed by Israel, […]
Mike Pompeo paid a supposedly “private” visit to the West Bank on November 19, thereby becoming the first U.S. secretary of state to set foot in the West Bank since it was captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. Pompeo went to Psagot, a Jewish settlement near Ramallah built on privately-owned Palestinian land […]
Israel and Lebanon have been locked in an official state of war since 1948, but in the past month they have engaged in three rounds of maritime border talks that may well defuse regional tensions. The talks are likely to be difficult. As a Lebanese spokesman said, the opening round was the “first step in […]