Periodic waves of violence have washed across the West Bank since it was conquered by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. The reason is crystal clear: Israel’s military occupation, plus its settlement building program, have always been vehemently opposed by the West Bank’s Palestinian Arab inhabitants. The Palestinians under the leadership of Yasser Arafat […]
Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to withdraw some 2,000 American ground troops from Syria within 30 days struck Washington like a thunderbolt. “We have defeated (Islamic State), my only reason for being (in Syria),” he said in a Twitter post on December 19, blithely disregarding the advice of his national security officials. Trump’s abrupt announcement, though […]
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has disclosed he is considering the possibility of cancelling a lucrative contract to sell more than 900 light armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia, which has a horrendous human rights record. This was not an entirely surprising development. Two months ago, Canada announced it had suspended the approval of new arms […]
Emulating the pragmatic example set by Russia last year, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison made the right decision by announcing that Australia would move its embassy in Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem one day. “Australia now recognizes West Jerusalem, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of government, is the capital of Israel,” […]
If you take Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his word, Israel and Saudi Arabia could be on the cusp of establishing diplomatic relations and becoming good neighbors and even allies. This may happen one day, but at the moment, there are no solid indicators that this scenario will pan out. If anything, the Saudis still […]
As Nikki Haley, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said, December 6 could have been “a historic day” at the UN. Haley had hoped that a non-binding American resolution condemning Hamas, the first of its kind to be considered by the General Assembly, would pass. “For the sake of peace, and for the […]
Tensions are flaring again between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel’s most formidable adversary and one of Iran’s chief allies in the Middle East. On December 3, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Belgium to conduct talks with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Iran’s plans to strengthen Hezbollah — which fought a month-long war with Israel in […]
George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, was at the centre of the political and military turbulence that lashed and shaped the Middle East a generation ago. Bush, who died on December 1 at the age of 94, served from 1989 to 1993, during which the U.S. liberated Kuwait in the […]
By Iranian standards, Hassan Rouhani, the president of Iran, is something of a moderate. But when it comes to Israel, Rouhani is ideologically on the same page as Iran’s hard-line spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who never tires of threatening the Jewish state with destruction. Addressing the annual Islamic Unity Conference in Tehran on November […]
With a metaphorical wave of the hand, U.S. President Donald Trump has absolved Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman of complicity in the brutal murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2. By shielding the crown prince from accountability and treating him so […]