It was one of the strangest incidents in the annals of the Middle East. Middle Eastern politics can often be murky, but the Saad Hariri comic opera was unprecedented in terms of its layered opaqueness. Now, more than a month after the Lebanese prime minister tendered his resignation in Saudi Arabia, only to rescind it […]
Fulfilling a solemn presidential campaign promise, Donald Trump has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and instructed the State Department to begin preparations to move the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. His historic decision, which touched off anti-American and anti-Israel demonstrations in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and a host of […]
The massacre of 311 Muslims in a Sufi mosque in the northern Sinai Peninsula on November 24 underscores an unpalatable reality that Egypt has yet to accept and internalize: the Egyptian armed forces have utterly failed to quell the jihadist insurgency in the Sinai. No group claimed responsibility for the attack in the remote town […]
Despite all his troubles, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria can count his blessings. His steadfast ally, Russia, is fully behind him, no matter what atrocities his armed forces commit in the ongoing civil war in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin is assisting Damascus militarily and politically. Without Russia, Assad might already have lost the war […]
It was a visit like no other in Israel’s history. Forty years ago, on November 19 at 7:59 p.m., a Boeing 707, code-named Egypt 01, landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, one minute ahead of schedule. Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, had arrived in Israel, the first Arab head of state to set foot in the Jewish […]
Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu singled out Iran as the source of most of Israel’s security concerns. Speaking at a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires — a terrorist attack which claimed the lives of 29 Israeli diplomats and local workers and which was […]
Israel’s next general election is about two years away, but the newly elected leader of the center-left Labor Party, Avi Gabbay, is already maneuvering for advantage. Gabbay, who was elected to his post in July, has moved the Labor Party rightward in the hope of siphoning votes away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud […]
Massoud Barzani, the longtime president of the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, announced his resignation on October 29 in a tacit acknowledgement that his historic gambit for Kurdish statehood had failed spectacularly. In the face of Iraqi and regional animosity, Barzani — the head of the Kurdish Democratic Party — went ahead with […]
Conditions are not yet ripe for Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a peace agreement, but in the meantime, the Israeli government should adopt pragmatic measures to ensure that final-status talks will be possible in the future, says Amnon Reshef, the founder of Commanders for Israel’s Security, a non-partisan Israeli organization that promotes a two-state […]
The recent fall of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa is one more indicator that the days of the Islamic State’s caliphate in Syria are numbered. Raqqa, its self-proclaimed capital since 2014, was captured by U.S.-backed Arab and Kurdish forces on October 17 after four months of intense battles, which reduced much of it to rubble […]