It seems there is no line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t cross to defend settlements. Israeli law says settlers can’t steal Israeli-recognized Palestinian private land for their own purposes? Netanyahu leaves no principle of rule of law unchallenged in the effor to "legalize" the settlers’ actions. The boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement challenges Israel’s legitimacy? Netanyahu jumps on the chance to exploit the BDS threat to legitimize settlements, accusing anyone who differentiates between Israel and settlements of embracing BD...
It is easy, perhaps too easy, to harp on the absurdities of how American politics relate to Israel. It is the satirical material of popular political shows, such as “The West Wing,” in which fictional President Josiah Bartlet once considered framing and mounting a map of the Holy Land from 1709 and got dressed down by staffers: “People would be offended – the map does not recognize Israel.”
In the current election, reality makes fictional scriptwriters seem unimaginative: drafting the Democratic platform became a Basil Fawlty-like exercise in not mentioni...
The greetings President Obama extended last week to Israel’s new government may have sounded conciliatory, but Mr. Obama no longer entertains any illusions about Israel’s leaders.
In the wake of last month’s election, the longtime peace activists and diplomats who have devoted much of their professional lives to achieving a two- state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are more depressed and demoralized than ever before.
Well before Mr. Netanyahu declared during the recent election campaign that Palestinians would remain under Israeli military occu...
A Pipeline Against Peace
Israel's Recent Gas Deals May Exacerbate Tensions in the Middle East
In October 2014, Israel struck a $15 billion gas deal with Jordan—it would export 1.6 trillion cubic feet of gas for the next 15 years, starting in 2017, from one of its two newly discovered oil fields in the Mediterranean. This deal was the latest in a string of negotiations that Israel has made in the region. The previous one, in January 2013, was signed with a Palestinian company—a $1.2 billion contract for 168 billion cubic feet of gas over 20 years. Both of these agreements,...
This agreement is arguably the most important and the most complex of this century. It treats with widespread concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. It resolves a serious nonproliferation problem for at least 15 years and likely beyond. It sets U.S.-Iranian relations on a new course. It opens the door of possible change in the Middle East region while at the same time also raising issues for key U.S. relationships there. The agreement between Iran and the P-5 + 1 (Five Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council—China, France, Russia, the Un...
Having won re-election, Benjamin Netanyahu is set to become the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, overtaking founding father David Ben-Gurion.
A straightforward rightist grouping is his simplest option in forming a coalition. As well as his Likud party, it would include settler- dominated Jewish Home, foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, the ultraorthodox parties and the soft-right Kulanu .
This offers a narrow majority but one that appears relatively homogenous and stable. Mr Netanyahu could also try to incorporate the centrist...
