The New Republic

Israel has once again demonstrated that when it sets a red line with its neighbors, it means it. Having declared that they will prevent qualitatively new arms from being transferred from Syria to Hezbollah, the Israelis, without openly admitting it, acted to enforce this threshold.   READ MORE >>

The Iraq conflict came back into view in the last week of April, when several areas of northern Iraq exploded in violence on a scale not seen since the height of the 2006-2008 civil war. The carnage began on April 23, with either a botched arrest attempt or a brutal crackdown by government troops, just three days after Iraq held largely peaceful elections for local government. READ MORE >>

Ever since last week’s revelation that U.S. officials believe President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has used chemical weapon, there has been more talk than ever of the United States’ potentially escalating its involvement in Syria’s civil war. READ MORE >>

There are at least three questions to ask about Syria: First, what exactly is happening there; second, what is the United States doing about it; and third, what, if anything, should the United States be doing about it? It is hard to sort out the details of what is happening in Syria; but the outline is pretty clear; and it’s also fairly clear that the U.S. should be doing something consequential if, as reported, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its people. But it remains unclear what the U.S. is actually doing or planning to do. READ MORE >>

Barack Obama came to Jerusalem to win over the Israeli people, and with a single speech he did. It happened when he addressed an audience of several thousand young people in Jerusalem and delivered what may have been the most passionate Zionist speech ever given by an American president. READ MORE >>

TEL AVIV—“I was considering it, but I reached the conclusion that the best time will be the next time." That was what former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert told me a week after Israel's January election when I asked him why—after surveying a political comeback last fall—he decided not to challenge successor Benjamin Netanyahu. "My assessment," he explained, "[was] that the time was not yet ready for a comeback that will make me prime minister. I was not interested in being minister of defense or minister of foreign affairs. READ MORE >>

One Friday evening last November, Mahmoud Abbas made a rare appearance on the popular Israeli TV station, Channel 2. In his boxy suit and tie, the Palestinian president looked every bit his 77 years, his olive skin tinged with gray, his voice soft and whispery. He shifted in his seat with every answer. READ MORE >>

In 2008, when a new government-owned newspaper debuted in the Persian Gulf emirate of Abu Dhabi, it was greeted as the latest sign of the formerly sleepy oil town’s cosmopolitan ambitions. The island city of around 900,000 was in the process of making itself home to a series of prestigious Western institutions. Plans had been hatched for branches of the Guggenheim and the Louvre museums, as well as campuses of New York University and the Sorbonne. READ MORE >>

A decisive turning point in the recent political history of Palestine came in June 2007, when Hamas defeated Fatah’s security forces in Gaza and took over uncontested administration of the strip. This was the moment that Palestine became divided in two with rival governments in charge—Hamas in Gaza and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in West Bank—which meant the end of a single, coherent Palestinian leadership that could negotiate with the Israelis. READ MORE >>

Here we go again. A recently minted American secretary of state eager to burnish his foreign policy credentials barely a day after his confirmation has already called both the Israeli prime minister and Palestinian president to discuss the importance of trying to resume the peace process and to express America’s commitment to Arab-Israeli peace.  READ MORE >>