Donald Trump’s bark seems worse than his bite. Having accused Iran of being behind a recent air attack that heavily damaged Saudi Arabia’s petroleum industry, the U.S. president threatened military retaliation. He warned that the United States was “locked and loaded” to respond to the devastating September 14 drone and cruise missile assault on the […]
Israel’s second election in five months has opened the door to the prospect of a legislated program of liberal reforms that could nudge the country toward greater secularization and grant the disaffected Arab minority a far more tangible stake in Israeli society. With the September 17 general election having ended almost as inconclusively as the […]
The timing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to annex the Jordan Valley and the adjacent northern portion of the Dead Sea — areas of the West Bank that Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War and that Palestinians view as an integral part of a future Palestinian state — was hardly accidental. He issued […]
Shortly after Israel’s relatively brief exchange of cross-border fire with Hezbollah on September 1, the prime minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri, claimed that Hezbollah is not “a Lebanese problem” but “a regional problem.” In effect, Hariri admitted that Lebanon is powerless to control Hezbollah, an increasingly potent Lebanese Shi’a militia aligned with Syria and Iran, […]
It’s a truism that Hamas is a thorn in Israel’s side. Hamas, an implacable enemy that rejects Israel’s very existence, has fought three wars and countless skirmishes with the Jewish state in the past decade, causing untold hardship to Israelis living near the border and misery to the Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Israel, […]
U.S. President Donald Trump announced this week that, if “the circumstances were correct,” he would “certainly agree” to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani within weeks. Disclosing he would seek a “very simple” deal focusing on Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its stockpile of ballistic missiles, Trump said his administration is “not looking for regime change in […]
Israel has reportedly opened a new front in its concerted campaign to thwart Iran’s military buildup in the Middle East. It would seem that the long arm of the Israeli armed forces has reached Iraq. This is the first time in nearly four decades that Iraq has been targeted by Israel. In 1981, Israeli aircraft […]
Donald Trump barked and Benjamin Netanyahu caved in. One may be excused for wondering whether Israel is a banana republic, doing the bidding of its master. Israel’s decision to ban U.S. Democratic congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering the Israeli-occupied West Bank on a four-day fact-finding trip to examine the conditions of Palestinians […]
Much to Israel’s discomfort, two of its staunchest foes, Iran and Hamas, have upgraded their bilateral relations. Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip for the past 13 years, dispatched a high-level delegation to Tehran late last month, when tensions between Iran and the United States were on the rise and an outbreak of fighting […]
Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing ahead with his counter-productive election campaign promise to extend Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank and thereby demolish the two-state solution. On August 8, the Israeli prime minister yet again reiterated his pledge to annex parts of the West Bank during a cornerstone-laying ceremony for 650 new housing units in the […]