Israel

Much ado has been made of the Israeli security fence isolating the West Bank. When it is completed in 2010, the barrier -- which runs roughly along the 1967 border between Israel and Palestinian territory -- will span nearly 500 miles. Israelis say the purpose of the structure is to

On March 14, 2008, Ghaith al-Omari, James G. Lindsay, David Makovsky, and Dennis Ross addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. al-Omari is a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. Mr. Lindsay is former chief counsel with the UN Relief and Works Agency and a

Qassam rockets -- unsophisticated weapons manufactured in garages and backroom laboratories -- have transformed the strategic equation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These crude rockets give Palestinian terrorist organizations the capability to strike deep into Israeli territory, throwing the security assumptions behind future peace negotiations into doubt. Background Qassam rockets --

It is tempting to view the current violence in Gaza as just another symptom of the greater Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it is not. The Hamas-sanctioned rockets and the Israeli retaliation are actually at the core of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's inability to move the peace process even one inch

In response to the February 12 assassination of chief of operations Imad Mughniyeh, Hizballah has ratcheted up its threats, warnings, and saber rattling. In turn, Israel has locked down its foreign missions, put its military on heightened alert, and deployed Patriot missiles near Haifa. And in Washington, the FBI issued

On February 8, 2008, Martin Indyk and Harvey Sicherman addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Mr. Indyk, former ambassador to Israel and assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs during the Clinton administration, currently directs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Mr

On January 30, retired Israeli judge Eliyahu Winograd released his much-anticipated second report on government decisionmaking during the summer 2006 Lebanon war. It did not issue a deathblow to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, but instead described the breakdown in U.S.-Israeli strategic coordination as the principal rationale for Olmert's decision

Though the White House press release read "President Bush to travel to Middle East to follow up on progress made at Annapolis," his January trip actually centered on Iran, a country he did not visit. America's friends -- the Persian Gulf monarchs as well as Israel -- fear that the

President Bush's recent visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories came six weeks after the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis. That parley marked the first time the United States did not mandate a purely sequential approach to the peace process. Instead, Washington now wants issues to be solved in