Israeli voters delivered an unexpected outcome in the general election held on January 22nd. According to still preliminary results, a late surge by the new centrist Yesh Atid party saw it capture 19 seats and emerge as the second-largest grouping after Likud-Beiteinu, which secured 31 seats in the 120-member Knesset (parliament). Overall, the election More »

With Israel’s new Knesset polarized and, in broad strokes, almost evenly divided between right and center-left following recent parliamentary elections, it remains to be seen what type of government will emerge to lead the country into the near future – or whether a government can be formed at all. A final tally of the vote More »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fared worse than expected in this week’s election.  His Likud-Beitenu Party won just 31 seats.  The right-wing religious HaBayit Yehudi Party (leader – Naftali Bennett), claimed 11 seats. The real surprise was the second place win by the centrist Yesh Atid Party, led by Yair Lapid, the former television news presenter, More »

Children building snowmen and palm trees sprinkled with snowflakes were just some of the many pictures that filtered through my Facebook news feed last week when Jerusalem experienced its heaviest snowfall in more than 20 years. As I clicked on photo after photo of the snow-covered holy city and its surrounding white-laced hilltops, I was More »

Israel did not bomb Iran last year. Why should it happen this year? Because it did not happen last year. The Iranians are proceeding apace with their nuclear program. The Americans are determined to stop them. Sanctions are biting, but the diplomatic process produced nothing visible in 2012. Knowledgeable observers believe there is no “zone More »

As U.S. President Barack Obama approaches the beginning of his second term, experts caution that his Administration must radically rethink its strategy to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal or risk seeing its stated goal of a two-state solution slip away. Such was the conclusion of a Washington symposium organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International More »

As President Obama enters his second term, experts warn that his administration must radically rethink ways to achieve an Israeli-Arab peace deal or risk seeing his goal of a two-state solution slip away. Yet, while they agree that the old approaches will not work, there is a range of possibilities of what might achieve More »

Israel and Hamas on Wednesday agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Egypt on the eighth day of violent conflict between the two parties in the Gaza Strip.   Israel has agreed to stop all hostilities, whether by land, sea or air, and has pledged not to target individuals or undertake any kind of military incursions More »

The escalating violence between Israel and Gaza should remind us of old lessons that still need to be learned and new realities to which attention must now be paid. First and foremost among the old lessons is the fact that the successive waves of violence that have characterized the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have More »

The fighting between Israel and Hamas has escalated. Hamas rocket barrages are targeted the coastal cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon along with areas as far south as Dimona (seventy-five kilometers from Gaza and home to Israel’s nuclear reactor). In all, 274 rockets have been fired at Israel so far, reportedly including a longer-range Fajr-5 More »

-  A tentative cease-fire in the Gaza Strip collapses -  Noisy protests in Jordan over austerity measures that sent the price of fuel higher -  An update on the new Syrian government-in-exile -  Why the U.S.  is urging a minority group to become more involved in the efforts to remove Bashar Al-Assad from More »

As fighting in Gaza continues, reactions from major world powers have little to do with mediation – all while Iran seems to be benefiting the most from the current escalation. From Washington to Moscow, everyone was counting on Egyptian diplomacy to end the current bout. China remains ‘concerned’ about the developments and many are stressing, More »

After nearly a month of low-level fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, the situation erupted into a fully-fledged conflict on November 14, following the death of Ahmed Jabari, military chief of the Islamic Hamas movement, in an Israeli airstrike. Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and other militant groups responded More »

Asia specialists will not openly admit it, but they hate the Middle East. To them, the Middle East is the great distraction that keeps people from focusing on what’s really important – their own area in the Western Pacific. The media are primarily to blame, according to this narrative. The media love sudden drama, even More »

- The UN Security Council holds an emergency meeting on Gaza violence - Syrian refugees prepare for winter in Jordanian camps as best they can - Obama voices some support for the Syrian opposition coalition - Iraq’s Kurdish region is seeing an economic More »

- The top Hamas military leader is killed by an Israeli airstrike - Protesters take to the streets of Amman, Jordan - U.S. calls new Syrian opposition coalition a legitimate representative of the Syrian people - Kurds have new hopes amidst Middle East More »

- Mixed reaction from Israel to the re-election of President Obama – new dynamics in play there - Efforts to form a government-in-exile for Syria are  stymied - The International Committee of the Red Cross explains why its so difficult to get supplies to the people who need them More »

While Americans have been focusing on their election, there have been a few developments in the so-called “Middle East Peace Process.” PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas has said he would drop his precondition for negotiations – a total construction halt in the settlements and in East Jerusalem – and return to the table after the U.N. More »

With President Barack Obama’s re-election, many people across the Middle East are contemplating what this region might expect from his second term. Over the next four years, Obama will likely continue the policy directions set in his first term: by completing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, and reaching out to global players like More »