Once lauded for confronting Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu now faces doubt in Arab capitals as the Palestinian question returns to center stage. Not long ago, he was treated across the region as Israel’s central address. For rulers in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo, Netanyahu was the indispensable partner who could open doors in Washington and stand […]

Sinan Ciddi has written recently in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune a multi-part analysis of Turkey in Syria (“Turkey’s Quiet Relationship with ISIS” and previous). His bottom-line argument is that Erdoğan’s Syria policy was driven largely, first, by his desire to spread and eventually lead, political Islam throughout the region, and, second, as a means to that […]

On July 31, Syrian Foreign Minister Asa’ad al-Shaibani met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the same city where deposed President Bashar al-Asad now lives in exile. Shaibani was carrying an unexpected request. According to sources familiar with the meeting, Damascus asked Russia to resume military police patrols along Syria’s southern border with Israel. […]

With the Syrian state still in its formative stage, lacking a defined political identity, two Gulf monarchies – Qatar and Saudi Arabia – are seeking to dominate Syria. This competition will only intensify as the interim Syrian government of Ahmad al-Shara’a grapples with state-building. Qatar provided a cash infusion on August 6, when its UCC […]

“O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.”Pindar, Pythian iii If only jihadists would heed Pindar’s timeless warning. By celebrating only “this life,” the classical Greek poet understood the hazards of seeking meanings beyond the grave. Much later, a similar warning was offered by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in […]

When a microphone falls silent because a voice has been cut short, the void it leaves is not only personal grief but also a summons to conscience. Charlie Kirk’s death cannot be reduced to mourning alone. It must sharpen our collective focus on the ideas and methods that make such violence possible: the doctrine of […]

There is much to celebrate as we mark the fifth anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the historic agreements mediated by the first Trump administration and signed on September 15, 2020 by Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain, and later by the Kingdom of Morocco.  Long isolated from, and regularly vilified by, […]

Today Jerusalem is all-in on Baku. The Israeli media repeatedly publish fawning accounts by analysts who participate in Azerbaijani junkets and partake in caviar diplomacy. But what happens to Israel-Azerbaijan bilateral relations if the partnership actually succeeds in ending Iran’s Islamic Republic?  The 30-year partnership is based on a swap of arms for energy, paying […]

At the June 25 summit at The Hague, all but one of NATO’s 32 member states agreed to raise defense spending to five percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez rejected the increase, insisting that his country’s current plans to raise defense spending to two percent of GDP were […]

On June 29, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in al-Sham (ISIS), was recorded on video speaking at the al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul, Iraq. (“Al-Sham” is the traditional Arabic name for the Levant.) He declared himself to be the caliph or divinely inspired absolute ruler of an Islamic state.  ISIS had risen […]

The Lebanese government has taken the unprecedented political step of forming a committee to create a plan for disarming the militia groups in the country, starting with “the low hanging fruit” of collecting weapons from Palestinian armed groups in a Palestinian camp in Beirut. But Israeli assessments indicate the new Lebanese government and its army leadership […]

The new Lebanese president, General Joseph Aoun, says in closed-door meetings that he has no intention whatsoever of sending his military to clash with Hizbullah. He insists that implementing the Lebanese government’s agreement to disarm Hizbullah must be preceded by dialogue and solid understandings.  Aoun, as military chief before becoming president in January, instructed his […]

Syria’s civil war broke out in March 2011, in reaction to the brutal crackdown by the regime of Bashar al-Asad of popular protests that were part of the wider Arab Spring. In supporting the Syrian rebels, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initially used the language of humanitarian intervention, claiming to protect civilians from the Asad […]

Among Lebanese Shi’ites there is a widespread perception that their community must not return to the era of persecution and oppression that lasted hundreds of years under the Ottoman Turks and continued under the French Mandate and modern Lebanese state (until the founding of the first Shi’ite political movement, Amal, in 1975 followed by Hizbullah […]

A Jordanian immigrant in the US goes to her bank in order to transfer money to a cousin in Amman. But there is a problem. Her cousin is a senior official in the Islamic Action Front, the political party affiliated with the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The US has just designated the Muslim […]

Optimism about Syria abounds. The regime, despite its Islamist orientation, has adopted a generally moderate and pragmatic approach (though there are legitimate concerns about its security forces’ actions in the predominantly Druze area of al-Suwayda). Israel’s decimation of Hizbullah and weakening of Iran – the former Asad regime’s primary pillars of support – created this […]

On December 15, 2024, Israel announced it would temporarily close its embassy in Dublin, owing to “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government,” and open an embassy in Chișinău, Moldova. What is most noteworthy in this Israeli move, suspending relations with one small country on the margins of Europe and investing in another, is the […]

When Bashar al-Asad’s regime abruptly collapsed in December 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan saw more than just a regional upheaval. He saw a long-awaited opportunity.  With Iran’s influence waning and Russia distracted by internal instability and foreign entanglements, a rare power vacuum emerged in Syria. Erdoğan moved swiftly. For over a decade, Ankara had […]

Robert Silverman: You are an American Jew who moved to Israel, with your wife, as a young couple shortly after the Six-Day War. Then you wrote a book in the 1970s that influenced a whole generation of American Jews. It was called Letters to an American Jewish Friend. And you were talking to your counterparts […]

Yossi Klein Halevi: In terms of my personal journey, it’s framed by my evolving, understanding of the Holocaust, my relationship to the Holocaust and my generation’s experience as opposed to my father’s experience. My father was a survivor from Hungary.  I grew up in a very charged Holocaust environment in Brooklyn, in the 1960s, which […]

Gadi Taub: I believed in Oslo [the 1990s Palestinian-Israeli peace process] because I imagined the Palestinians to be like us. I imagined their national liberation movement to be a national liberation movement just like ours. Then reality just exploded outside my window. Tel Aviv is small. So from where I lived back then, when a […]