• What is the significance of all this? It reflects the long-standing American (and Israeli) concern that their officers or government figures might one day find themselves before the court on charges of breaking international law or as bearing responsibility for war crimes

  • The Middle East is becoming irrelevant. The discovery of enormous new oil and gas reserves along with new oil-recovery technology is steadily curbing the demand for Middle Eastern oil. Soon, Saudi Arabia and Iran are going to have less geostrategic clout

  • Why did Salam Fayyad recently resign as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority? Nathan Thrall explores the factors that led to his departure, including the challenges of holding a position widely backed by Western powers but only weakly supported by Palestinians

  • After several years of mutual silence, Turkey and Israel are talking to each other again. However, this latest rapprochement owes more to US diplomatic efforts than a genuine desire by Ankara and Tel Aviv to reset diplomatic relations

  • Israel is in the process of watching a peace treaty unravel. I don't mean the one with Egypt, but the one with Syria. No, I'm not crazy. Since Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy in 1974, the Israelis have had a de facto peace agreement of sorts with the al Assad family

  • Obama's visit to Israel was a great success, but don't expect peace between Israelis and Palestinians anytime soon. So now we may have more cordial relations. But settlements continue to be the main thing blocking any Palestinian peace deal

  • Israel's continued disregard for Palestinians is yet again highlighted in its latest segregation of the region's bus systemâ€"modern day apartheid at its finest. Especially problematic is the fact that the bus system is a public service

  • Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak says Iran's nuclear program is the biggest challenge facing Israel, the Middle East and the world, and that 'all options' remain open to addressing possible atomic weapons development

  • International law progresses through violations. We invented targeted assassination and we had to push it. At first there were protrusions that made it hard to insert into the legal molds. Now, it is in the center of the bounds of legitimacy

  • Residents of the Holy City woke up to a blanket of white as some six inches of snow fell overnight, the largest snowfall since 1992. Schools were cancelled, businesses closed and joyful children rejoiced

  • In 'The Gatekeepers,' filmmaker Dror Moreh has come up with a profoundly humane political documentary for a different, smarter, humane way forward in the Middle East. This may not be the movie Israel's right wing would've commissioned. For anyone else it's an eye-opener

  • The second phase of the Israeli election ritual is underway with the president's mandate to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to form a government

  • Police and soldiers moved into a Palestinian tent camp just outside Jerusalem, evacuating about 100 squatters

  • The UN vote on Palestine was a most amazing event. Only nine of 193 nations voted against the motion. What made this so striking is that most prognosticators had guessed that, after the Gaza conflict, Palestinians would muster less sympathy

  • What exactly is it that Israel intends to do with the Palestinians now in the territories that it has just opened for home construction for Jewish settlers, thereby extending its policy of occupying and annexing what are legally Palestinian lands?

  • In the film 'Groundhog Day,' Bill Murray wakes up each morning and relives the previous day. A similar scenario is playing out in the Middle East between Israel and her enemies

  • The strategic environment during the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead was vastly different from the one Israel faces in today's Operation Pillar of Defense. To understand the evolution in regional dynamics, we must return to 2006

  • Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have never been friendly. But then Netanyahu openly supported Mitt Romney for president, the first time an Israeli prime minister has so publicly taken sides

  • A new report by two Israeli organizations found a shortage of over 1,100 classrooms in east Jerusalem. The report also found 24,000 students are not enrolled in any educational framework at all

  • Located in southern Tel Aviv, Hatikva was the site of the worst race riots since Israel's founding. Egged on by Likud Party politicians, local Jewish residents brutally assaulted migrants and looted their stores

  • The Israelis are again worried about chemical weapons. This time, it is chemical weapons that the international community believes Syria possesses

  • Shaul Mofaz, chairman of the centrist Kadima party, abruptly pulled out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition

  • '5 Broken Cameras' is one of five candidates for the Oscar in the Best Documentary Feature category this year. Palestinians hope this Oscar-nominated documentary depicting a non-violent struggle against Israel will succeed in telling their story

  • Argentina has crossed a line by making a deal with Iran to jointly investigate a 1994 terrorist attack against the AMIA Jewish community center, which according to Argentine prosecutors and Interpol was masterminded by top Iranian officials

  • Don't try to find anyone to go on the record as being a Hamas member in Ramallah. While recent polls show the faction became more popular throughout the West Bank of late, Hamas members lay low to avoid arrest

  • Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Syrian President Bashar Al Assad have an important thing in common: When a part of the populations under their control rise up against them, they do not negotiate or compromise

  • Contemporary T-ball war works out like this: A far weaker Gaza sends a shower of missiles into Israel, hiding its launchers among civilians to ensure collateral damage and favorable propaganda during Israeli retaliation

  • Benjamin Netanyahu is so eager to see Mitt Romney elected president that he's making a fool of himself

  • Arab newspapers barely mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to go to early elections, some nine months ahead of schedule

  • Speeches, rhetoric and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war

  • Palestinian authorities say they aim to ban Israeli potatoes and other produce in a move aimed at protecting Palestinian growers. They deny polticis is playing a role

  • Restaurant in Jesus-era town of Capernaum is accused of dumping sewage into the lake

  • A fight in Israel over a new university is a perfect metaphor illustrating the nation's deep divisions -- a fault line that further isolates Israel and presents a continuing danger to the world

  • Despite extraordinary pressure, President Obama stood up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and refused to be dragged into still another war -- this one against Iran

  • These days, there is a growing sense -- both within the Washington Beltway and beyond -- that Israel could soon strike Iran to prevent it from going nuclear

  • Graffiti declaring 'Death to Christianity' had been cleaned up and Israeli government officials visited with apologies and expressions of concern. But for the Christian community in Israel, the environment remains inhospitable

  • A small shipment of household furniture from the Gaza Strip could point the way to a new source of jobs and economic growth in the Palestinian Territory

  • A study took surveys conducted during the height of the Second Palestinian Intifada to see whether people's sense of 'life satisfaction' was affected by the violence

  • Israel's unemployment rate dropped to a preliminary 5 percent, capping a steady decline of two-and-a-half years to its lowest rates since the late 1980s, but even the government's Central Bureau of Statistics was quick to discount the importance of the figure

  • New Israeli legislation limits and taxes contributions to organizations opposed to the occupation

  • Christians are a tiny and dwindling minority throughout the Holy Land, which comprises Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. But Christians say they are free to practice their faith

  • Can anyone reasonably expect a newly-nuclear leadership in Tehran to be reliably rational?

  • Chief of Israel social and economic reform panel says his countrymen are less willing to make peronal sacrifices for national security because they feel alienated and distressed

  • Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer warns Europe's debt crisis will hurt Israel's economy but says budgetary restraint by the governrment can help mitigate the impact.

  • If ever there was a time when 'see, I told you so' was warranted, it is now as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon

  • Gosh, what a surprise: According to the United Nations, Iran seems to be at work on developing a nuclear weapon. I am shocked -- shocked. Goodness, what target do you think the mullahs and their nutcase president, the all too imitable Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, might have in mind?

  • A new unit of Mayor Ron Huldai's office, Tel Aviv Global City, wants to add a new element to the city's nightlife -- start-up entrepreneurs working all hours writing business plans and computer code. The goal is to turn itself into the high tech center not just of Israel but all of Europe in 10 years' time

  • Israel's middle class is shrinking even as the economy is thriving and unemployment is at its lowest in decades

  • Living and working on the edges of Israel's Start-Up Nation, Palestinian and Israeli Arab high tech entrepreneurs are trying their hand getting companies aloft by leveraging their closeness to Israel's technology juggernaut and the low cost of Palestinian engineers

  • U.S. chipmaker Intel is Israel's biggest private sector employer and top exporter

  • If Israel or the United States starts a disastrous war with Iran, it will be because someone thought it was a good idea

  • 'Holy Wars, 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land' illuminates those major battles that shaped this part of the world for three millennia

  • Now that a far right-wing government has governed Israel for almost three years, settlers feel emboldened so that Jewish extremists are wreaking havoc and mayhem

  • An NGO's report cites setbacks in Israeli legislation, police behavior over the past year as hurting the Israel's human rights profile

  • Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad Interview -- 'Without doctrine of non-violence, too many missing ingredients' for statehood

  • A newly developed trial in Israel's north meanders through a scenic, site-rich route from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee that Jesus himself may have walked

  • Though the main focus of his trip was on business and investments, Prime Minister Sali Berisha also gave Israel support on the Palestinian issue

  • Economic and social grievances at heart of surge in violence in the Egyptian-ruled Sinai Peninsula

  • Only the United States seems to have an affinity for protecting tiny, vulnerable countries. Israelis, anti-communist Chinese, Kurds, Greeks and Armenians have a few things in common. They have relatively small populations, aggressive neighbors, few strong allies, many expatriates and refugees in the United States, and a tragic history of persecution and genocide

  • Neglected and treated as the city's dirty backyard and a polluted dump, the Kidron Valley is conceived to become a green pilgrim path

  • The Dead Sea has become the object of flag-waving patriotism, political point-scoring and potential profits as the people and governments of the two countries and a third country in the making lobby for their shared patrimony to be declared one of nature's seven wonders

  • The debate over attacking Iran's nuclear installations that had been simmering behind the closed doors of the Israeli defense establishment has cracked wide open with ministers and experts pushing the pros and cons in the media

  • Nearly two decades of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have failed miserably. The key reason for this failure is the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state

  • The flare-up in fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants was as much a showcase for military technology as it was a forceful statement of the two sides' political agenda

  • U.S law enforcement officials learn counter terrorism techniques from Israel and told the key was sharing intelligence

  • Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu says the U.S. shouldn't cut aid to Israel and offers her state's help for the country's nascent energy industry

  • In response to a growing housing crisis in the Gaza Strip in the occupied Palestinian territory, several new building projects have been initiated by the Hamas-led government, and thousands of families have begun purchasing properties in new communities

  • The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to admit Palestine to full membership, adding heft to the Palestinian Authority's bid for membership to the United Nations and triggering a possible substantial loss of funds for the UN agency

  • Representative Joe Walsh and 30 co-sponsors issued a resolution supporting Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

  • Israel has welcomed a proposal by international mediators to resume peace talks with the Palestinians 'immediately and without preconditions'

  • The bustling Mahane Yehuda Market, or shuk, is a well-known Jerusalem landmark. People travel from far and wide to buy vegetables, meat and fish, spices and treats. More recently, chic cafes and boutiques have sprung up. And now there's a project called Tabula Rasa to transform the rundown surrounding streets with urban artwork

  • Once the preserve of fishing boats and yachts, in the space of just a few weeks the serene waters of the Eastern Mediterranean have become a field of contention. As Greek Cyprus begins exploiting its potentially vast gas and oil reserves, Turkey asserts its growing role as a regional power, and a worried Israel is pushing back

  • The United States has effectively relinquished its role as the key negotiator of Middle East peace as the Palestinians, ignoring President Barack Obama's entreaties, announced their decision to pursue UN membership and be recognized as an independent state

  • As Palestinians head to the United Nations, President Obama faces one of the most excruciating dilemmas of his presidency, a predicament partly of his own making