This week’s announcement that a bipartisan group of House and Senate members have created an Abraham Accords Caucus to encourage more Arab-Israeli normalization agreements reminds us that the accords have the potential to reshape the region’s politics, economics, diplomacy, and military relationships. The question is whether, in the months to come, the Biden administration will …
All the focus on whether the United States and Iran will resume talks over resurrecting the 2015 global nuclear deal obscures an issue of equal importance: escalating skirmishes between Washington and Jerusalem on the one hand and Tehran on the other that raise the risk of miscalculation and, in turn, war. In recent days, the …
Continue reading “Iran’s not feeling the pressure to change”
The teenage boys of Gaza, some of whom are still in junior high, are learning how to shoot guns, launch anti-tank missiles and protect themselves while peering around walls. The boys are attending summer camp, but it’s not the swimming and softball, hiking and cookouts that many of us fondly recall. It’s camp as run …
Continue reading “Western Silence as Gaza Summer Camps Train Future Terrorists”
“Israeli authorities do face legitimate security challenges,” Human Rights Watch acknowledged after accusing Israel of committing two “crimes against humanity” – apartheid and persecution – against Palestinians. It was a grudging, and altogether disingenuous, admission in a new 217-page report about Israeli actions in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem that ignores history and …
Continue reading “Human Rights Watch did a one-sided takedown of Israel”
“The investigation,” the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said the other day in announcing her probe of Israeli and Palestinian activity in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, “will cover crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed . . . since 13 June 2014.” The starting …
Continue reading “Israel Has Good Reason to Be Wary of ICC Probe”
“If they want Iran to return to its commitments,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, declared this week about the 2015 global nuclear agreement, “the United States must lift all sanctions in practice.” Hours later, President Biden told CBS News that he will not lift sanctions until Iran agrees to abide by the agreement’s restrictions on …
Continue reading “Iran nuclear program presents new challenges”
U.S. envoy Richard Mills didn’t say anything particularly surprising the other day when he told the UN Security Council that, to keep the “two-state solution” viable, Israel should refrain from settlement and annexation activity, while the Palestinians should abandon incitement and payments to terrorists. But, as President Joe Biden restores a traditional U.S. approach to …
Continue reading “Peace Problem: Israel Knows How to Capitalize on Its Conflict With Palestinians”