Emily Landau, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, warns that America must stand firm and “not relent,” saying the Trump administration needs to understand how the regime can “twist things, making it seem there are concessions when there are absolutely no concessions at all.”
The Democratic Union, the new mega-faction formed by ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Meretz and Labor party defectors looks to “set Israel back on the correct path,” but another political motive is also clear: "We couldn't risk parties in our camp falling below the Knesset threshold," says former Labor MK.
This week's election merger between Ehud Barak's party and Meretz is good news for the Left and a headache for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But ultimately, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Lieberman will be the one to tip the scales after the election.
"Mahmoud Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, operated in a similar manner, appointing several deputies and preventing any of them from amassing too much power, even encouraging occasional rivalries between them," says Prof. Boaz Ganor, founder and executive director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya.
While there is no proof Israel was behind last week’s attack on an Iraqi military base, its message was quite clear: The stationing in Iraq of Iranian ballistic missiles is unacceptable.
After years of backsliding, the government is now trying to put the public finances on a more sustainable footing, but economists still see "red flags."
Parties have only until Aug. 1 to submit their final candidate lists to the Central Elections Committee ahead of the September 17 elections. Until then, everything is up in the air.
No one, not a single person, has been tried and convicted for their role in the AMIA bombing, in which 85 people died and more than 300 were wounded. Will a shift in leadership change that this fall?
The high-stakes sparring between Iran and the West is playing out while diplomats maneuver for the real prize: new negotiations to put tighter and longer-lasting wraps on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
Had Israel Democratic Party leader Ehud Barak attacked Netanyahu on any issue other than corruption, the embattled former prime minister might not have found himself fighting for his political life.
