After nearly six months in office, President Joe Biden is tweaking rather than altering U.S. policy in the Middle East vis-a-vis Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Apart from concerted efforts by the United States to normalize relations with the Palestinians and return to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, Biden is more or less […]
Less than a month has elapsed since Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, ending their fourth cross-border war in 13 years. But in recent days, fighting has resumed on a far smaller scale, prompting speculation that even a short-term truce may be elusive. With Egyptian mediators having convinced both sides to lay down […]
Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu towered over Israeli politics like a colossus, ruling Israel for a total of 15 years and eclipsing the legendary David Ben-Gurion as its longest-serving prime minister. In a career spanning more than three decades, he was also Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, its foreign minister and its finance minister. And though […]
Israel turned a new leaf on June 13 as Naftali Bennett supplanted Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. This will be the first government in 12 years not led by Netanyahu, who was Israel’s longest serving prime minister. The Knesset approved the new government by a margin of 60 to 59, with one abstention, thereby ending […]
With the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership fast approaching, several of his allies in Israel and abroad have engaged in what Prime Minister-designate Naftali Bennett has aptly described as “hysterical outbursts.” Aryeh Deri, the leader of the Shas Party, has claimed that the incoming government will endanger Israel. Moshe Gafni, the head of the United […]
Benjamin Netanyahu is laboring under a grand delusion. Having failed to form yet another right-wing government, he cannot come to grips with the “sacrilegious” notion that a rival, namely Naftali Bennett of the far right-wing Yamina Party, may soon replace him. Netanyahu is so delusional and so self-centred that he cannot imagine Bennett, or anyone […]
Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented 15-year reign as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is ending. On June 2, Netanyahu’s adversaries informed President Reuven Rivlin they had agreed to form a new coalition to supplant his right-wing government. The two leading figures in the so-called “change bloc” are Yair Lapid, 57, the leader of the centrist Yesh Atid Party, […]
The Human Rights Council, a United Nations body that has proven to be notoriously anti-Israel over the years, plans to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Its mandate is to determine whether Israel committed war crimes during the recent Gaza war and whether […]
Judging by their overblown reaction to the latest cross-border Gaza war, which ended with a truce on May 21, the leaders of Iran may as well be living in an alternate universe. As far as they’re concerned, Hamas won a spectacular victory and Israel was humbled by a crushing defeat after 11 days of fighting, […]
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’a militia which perceives Israel as its prime enemy, was uncharacteristically mute as the Israeli armed forces and Hamas fought an eleven-day border war in and around the Gaza Strip from May 10 to May 21. Its usually outspoken leader, Hassan Nasrallah, remained deafeningly silent, even after one of its members was […]