After winning the Israeli election with a slim majority, in a campaign that grew more sordid and vilifying by the day, Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to begin his fifth term as Israeli prime minister. The culmination of his dirty tricks campaign was an election-day stunt in which his Likud party broke regulations – and possibly…
Benjamin Netanyahu is an early version of the nationalist populist leaders that have come to power in country after country in recent decades. He has an acute sense of who holds – and does not hold – power and how to manipulate it. No wonder he gets on well with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin….
When President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem last year, effectively sabotaging any hope of establishing a viable Palestinian state, he tore up the international rulebook. Last week, he trampled all over its remaining tattered pages. He did so, of course, via Twitter. Referring to a large piece of territory Israel seized…
2018 wasn’t a good year for Israel. It was even worse for Palestinians, of course. On the surface, it wasn’t an especially dramatic year – just a lot more of the same, without major new wars, and without much bloodshed if you compare it to most previous years. Things appeared frozen in place. The occupation…
William Hague made one, and only one, memorable statement during his time as one of Britain’s more mediocre and gutless British foreign secretaries. It concerned Middle East peace. “If progress on negotiations is not made next year,” Hague said, “then the two-state solution could become impossible to achieve.” This remark was made on 28 November…
Chaim Silberstein insists on showing me Jacob’s Stone. It lies in Beit El – “The House of God” – which is the name of the colony of 7,000 Jews just outside Ramallah. Right here was where the ancient Jewish patriarch lay down on his stone, so it is written, and dreamed of the ladder to…
