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The release of another fabulous video by Gisha, a small Tel Aviv nonprofit that champions freedom of movement for Palestinians, points to what a professor of rhetoric might term the vital importance of tone when making a persuasive argument. If your field is advocacy, it never hurts …
Egypt’s decision to officially re-open its border to the Gaza Strip may be officially tut-tutted over by Israel, which in Hosni Mubarak had a willing partner for besieging the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas. But as a practical matter, the siege effectively ended a year ago Tuesday when Israeli commandos killed nine civilians on …
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns to Israel having affirmed the ebullient support of the U.S. Congress and jousted bravely with President Obama — but in terms that analysts warn will only accelerate the Palestinian effort to render Washington irrelevant by taking their case to the United Nations instead. Everything about Bibi’s …
When he addresses a joint session of Congress next week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is sure to mention the Jordan River Valley. He usually does when the topic is peace talks and Israel’s security. Netanyahu is among those who insist that, as a condition for withdrawing Israeli troops from the high ground that makes up …
Almost unnoticed on Wednesday, as two rival Palestinian factions agreed to bury the hatchet, was the head of Hamas announcing that his group, which exists for armed struggle against Israel, was willing to give peace with the Jewish state a chance, too. The statement from Khaled Mashal was grudging and hardly optimistic, but cut enough …
Few if any nations follow American domestic politics more avidly than Israel, so reaction here to the death of Osama bin Laden arrived laced with worried warnings to Bibi, as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is universally known. So strained are relations between his government and Barack Obama that the American President’s political …
As it does when a Palestinian government makes a move Israel doesn’t much like, the Jewish state is withholding millions in tax revenues ordinarily passed along as a matter of course. In this case, the government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding back $89 million from the faction that runs the West Bank, Fatah, because it …
Egypt’s announcement that it will open its border crossing with the Gaza Strip — loosening the siege of the Palestinian enclave Egypt has helped Israel carry out — has the sound of the other shoe dropping. Coming one day after word that the post-Mubarak government had brokered a tentative unity accord between rival Palestinian …
Fatah and Hamas, the leading Palestinian factions that parted ways amid much bloodshed four years ago, are announcing a tentative agreement to form a unity government. If it holds up, the reconciliation would mark a dramatic shift in the Israeli-Palestinian equation, in which the Palestinians move away from endless rounds of largely …
Talk all you like about the “troubled Middle East” but yet another survey is out showing Israelis, at least, quite like their lives. Israel ranks 7th in the entire world in the new Gallup Global Wellbeing report, which covers more than 150 countries. Residents were asked questions based on the splendidly named Cantril Self-Anchoring …
You really could be in Iran, traveling the roads of Lebanon’s south. The billboards of the martyrs look newer, the young men honored by them having perished not in the 1980s, when Iran and Iraq fought to the death, but just five years ago, when Israel launched an assault on the stronghold of Hizballah, the Lebanese Shiite militia …
By some measures the most powerful politician in Israel is Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister who on Wednesday was informed he faces indictment for money laundering. Benjamin Netanyahu may be prime minister, but Lieberman holds the power to collapse his coalition government and force new elections. All he has to do is withdraw the …
Update: The U.N. reported on April 14 that 34 people were killed during the raid on Camp Ashraf last week.
Was ever there a stranger lot than the Mujahedin-e-Khalk Organization? Today its military arm stands braced for the worst in Camp Ashraf, a dusty military base tucked into a corner of a once-welcoming host nation, Iraq, that …
