The mainstream Palestinian leadership heaved a sigh of relief after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential election. Under Trump’s presidency, the United States’ bilateral relationship with the Palestinian Authority sank to a new low, prompting the Palestinians to invest their hopes in a Biden presidency. Although Trump has so far refused […]
U.S. President Donald Trump was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s best friend in Washington, a generous benefactor who bestowed gifts on Israel until the November 3 presidential election. Like the vast majority of Israelis, Netanyahu hoped that Trump, the Republican incumbent, would prevail over Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger. With Biden’s victory, Netanyahu will need […]
Certain events are ineluctably embedded in one’s mind, even after the passage of time and the dimming of memories. I vividly remember John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the outbreak of the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, the fall of the Berlin wall, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and the […]
Israel’s damaging and counter-productive settlement expansion program in the West Bank continues apace. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Defence body responsible for authorizing the construction of settlements, the Civil Administration’s High Planning Subcommittee, advanced plans to build 4,948 homes, bringing this year’s total to a record-breaking figure of 12,159. Much of the construction will […]
Sudan is on the cusp of normalizing relations with Israel, and this is a significant development, a milestone, in the annals of the bitter Arab-Israeli conflict. According to reports, Sudan — a strategically key nation on the shores of the Red Sea and the largest country in Africa — will formally establish diplomatic ties with […]
The Knesset approved Israel’s normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain by an overwhelming margin of 80 to 13 last week. All the dissenting votes were cast by the Arab Joint List, the third largest political party, though 27 parliamentarians were absent and two MK’s, both from the Arab Joint List, were unable […]
Much to Israel’s disappointment, Saudi Arabia in the short term is unlikely to follow the lead of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and sign a normalization agreement with Israel. Saudi Arabia — the seat of Islam and the site of some of the holiest shrines in the Muslim world — is sticking to its […]
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a major policy speech on October 1 that confirmed yet again that Turkey under his administration is pursuing a neo-Ottoman foreign policy that blends Islamic consciousness with Turkish nationalism. Harkening back to the era when the Ottoman Empire was a global hegemon and Palestine was one of its far-flung […]
On October 1, shortly after Israel descended into its second lockdown in six months to contain the second wave of the rampaging coronavirus contagion, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin paid an “emergency” visit to a leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi, Shalom Cohen. The purpose of his trip was to urge Cohen to encourage his followers in the haredi […]
Israel’s normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, formalized in Washington, D.C. in a White House ceremony presided over by U.S. President Donald Trump last month, already seem warmer and more substantive than the peace treaties Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan in 1979 and 1994 respectively. If optics mean anything, Israel and […]