It looks like Benjamin Netanyahu has repaired his frayed relationship with Donald Trump. Trump, the former U.S. president and now the Republican Party candidate in the forthcoming presidential election, warmly welcomed Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, to his palatial Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on July 26. They arrived in Florida at the end of […]
Judging by her 40-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on July 25 and her previous comments about the Israel-Hamas war, U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, seems to have adopted a more balanced and critical view of Israel than Joe Biden, the outgoing president. A few hours after […]
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, set a record when he spoke to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on July 24. In delivering his fourth speech to Congress in 28 years, he surpassed Sir Winston Churchill, who delivered three speeches on Capitol Hill. Netanyahu, who has been in office even […]
Iran, Israel’s regional rival and arch enemy, is moving closer to joining the nuclear club, a prospect that would unsettle and destabilize the Middle East. Two months ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has enriched enough weapons-grade uranium to make at least several nuclear bombs in just a matter of days and […]
The timing was not accidental. On July 18, a day before the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued a sharp but non-binding advisory opinion stating that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was illegal and should be terminated as soon as possible, the Knesset passed a motion, supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]
It is now official. Israel is fighting a three-front war. On July 20, several hours after a Houthi armed drone evaded Israeli defences and struck a high-rise apartment building in the center of Tel Aviv, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding eight others, Israel retaliated. The Israeli Air Force, in one of its longest operations, […]
Mohammed Deif, the elusive commander of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, is like the proverbial cat with nine lives. Against all odds, he manages to survive and pull through impossible situations. Needless to say, his astonishing knack for survival has constantly frustrated Israel, his arch nemesis. In the past two decades, he […]
Amid its protracted war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and its increasingly destructive war of attrition with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel is creating unacceptable and potentially destabilizing facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank. Earlier this month, on two successive days, Israeli government bodies converted yet more land in the West Bank […]
Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president-elect, is regarded as a “reformer” in some Western circles. Within the strict parameters of Iranian politics, this could even be true. Compared to his staunchly conservative predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in May along with the Iranian foreign minister, and to his hard-line opponent, Saeed Jalili, […]
Nine months into the Israel-Hamas war, one of the longest and most arduous in Israeli history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have reached a crossroads. Should he carry on relentlessly until Israel’s main objectives are achieved? Victory would mean the elimination of Hamas as a military and political force in the Gaza Strip and […]