Maybe, just maybe Benjamin Netanyahu got carried away by the inconclusive results of Israel’s March 2 general election, the third in less than a year. Aiming for a record fifth term in office, the 70-year-prime minister sounded euphoric as he addressed jubilant supporters following the election. Calling the projected outcome “the biggest victory of my life,” […]
Turkey and Syria, once the best of neighbors, are effectively at war. On March 1, Turkey launched a major offensive into northwestern Syria, the last bastion of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels fighting the Russian-backed regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The campaign is largely designed to stop the flow of some one million displaced Syrian civilians into Turkey […]
President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, Robert O’Brien, recently equated the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank with the growth of antisemitism around the world. It’s a bizarre and ridiculous conflation that needs to be refuted. Urging the Palestinians to abandon their rejection of Trump’s one-sided peace plan, O’Brien claimed it could be […]
President Donald Trump’s Arab-Israeli peace plan, released at the White House on January 28, aroused indignation in Palestinian and Arab circles. Among the ideas that provoked a storm of criticism was one that advocated land swaps between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority in populated and unpopulated areas of Israel and the West Bank. Under […]
With Israel’s March 2 general election just more than one week away, Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz appears to have painted himself into a corner. It could cost him dearly. Gantz, whose centrist party won more Knesset seats than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party in the last two inconclusive elections in […]
It was another case of deja vu all over again. Just hours after Egypt and the United Nations hammered out the latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on February 13, a new round of violence erupted. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired two rockets into southern Israel and the Israeli Air Force struck back, leaving […]
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, in New York City a few days ago, and predictably enough, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vociferously condemned their meeting as “shameful” and “disgraceful.” For Netanyahu, Olmert and Abbas were convenient targets. Twelve years ago, they came tantalizingly close to reaching a peace […]
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the leaders of Uganda and Sudan, two African countries embedded in the lore of the Zionist movement for better or worse. Visiting Kampala, the capital of Uganda, Netanyahu said that Israel is intent on upgrading its mercurial relationship with the countries of the African continent. “Israel is coming […]
Before Donald Trump finally released his much-vaunted and anticipated peace plan on January 28, he reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Arab states would support it and play a helpful role in implementing it. Trump’s sanguine calculation was misguided, a case of wishful thinking, as was his assumption that the Palestinians would climb […]
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to withdraw American forces from the “endless wars” in the Middle East, yet he resists calls by Iraqi nationalists demanding a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq. Trump’s position is not exactly contradictory. Although he has drastically reduced the size of the U.S. force in Syria, he […]