إسرائيل

Conspiracy is like oxygen in the Middle East. Everyone breathes it. And it’s a mode of thought suited to understanding Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel. The attacks, after all, represented a sudden shift in the group’s thinking. In the six years following Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the Shia militants didn’t cross

The critical question of whether or not the current conflict in Lebanon will escalate to a broader regional war is being answered in two overly simple ways. One such analysis is that this is a “meltdown” with escalating violence and mounting pressures for further escalation. A second, equally simplistic view

Iran thumbs its nose at Western diplomats and continues nuclear enrichment. Hamas’s chief, speaking from Damascus, boasts about kidnapping an Israeli soldier. Hezbollah launches a cross-border raid, prompting Israeli retaliation in Beirut and a return volley of rockets on northern Israel. Just another bleak week in the hopeless Middle East

In a July 17 article in Kayhan, a newspaper sponsored by Iran’s supreme leader, editor Hossein Shariatmadari wrote, “The Muslim nations should not let the engagement [with Israel] remain in its limited regional boundaries. The Zionists are scatted in many parts of the world and their identification is not that

On July 19, 2006, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon, David Schenker, and Dennis Ross addressed The Washington Institute’s Special Policy Forum. General Yaalon, a distinguished military fellow at the Institute, is the former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff. Mr. Schenker, a senior fellow in Arab politics at the

This article originally appeared as a chapter in the book The Last Arab-Israeli Battlefield? Implications of an Israeli Withdrawal from Lebanon (Washington Institute, 2000). John Hillen is currently assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. When he wrote this essay, he was serving on the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st

The outbreak of hostilities after Hizballah’s July 12 raid into Israel, in which it captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others, has elicited a variety of responses from government officials and other prominent figures throughout the Middle East. Though it is not surprising to see harsh statements about Israel

Last year I gave a speech in Gaza and told my audience that the upcoming Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was both a challenge and an opportunity for the Palestinian people. A challenge because they would have to be able to govern themselves and bring order to Gaza once Israel had

Israel faces a crisis with a Palestinian Authority that lacks a clear address. Who can be held accountable? The internal Hamas, which makes up the cabinet and the legislative council? Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister, tells Mahmoud Abbas that he knows nothing and was blindsided by the attack at Kerem