Israel

On August 25, 2006, Jeffrey White, David Makovsky, and Dennis Ross addressed The Washington Institute’s Special Policy Forum. Jeffrey White is the Berrie Defense Fellow at The Washington Institute and the coauthor, with Michael Eisenstadt, of the Institute Policy Focus Assessing Iraq’s Sunni Arab Insurgency. David Makovsky, senior fellow and

On August 15, Syrian president Bashar al-Asad gave a significant policy speech to the Syrian Journalists Union in which he expressed his support for Hizballah. More importantly, the address sought to redefine Syria’s position in the Arab world. Building on Washington’s talk of the birth of a new Middle East

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is a man who likes flags. At the start of the war, he appeared on his organization’s al-Manar television station with a Hezbollah flag behind him. Then that was replaced by a Lebanese flag. Lately, he has placed both flags at his side. There’s been one

As diplomacy to end hostilities between Israel and Lebanon intensifies at the United Nations, with a first resolution passed perhaps on Monday, conceptual gaps between the parties remain. The differences range from substantive to procedural. France has been at the center of diplomacy surrounding the passage of a UN Security

The conflict in the Middle East is about much more than Israel and Hezbollah, or even Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian sponsors. What is at stake are the very rules of war that underpin the entire international order. Sadly, judging from how most of the world has responded to Israel's military

Israeli footage of the Hezbollah katushya rocket launcher entering the parking structure of the residential apartment building in Qana, Lebanon, was compelling if not indisputable. But regardless of whether Israel convinces the international community that Hezbollah was using innocent civilians to shelter rocket launchers, the tragic death of more than

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