While Abbas crashes and burns

While everyone is busy grilling Mahmoud Abbas these days over the Palestinian Authority’s decision (i.e. his decision) to let the Goldstone Report die, and preparing to eulogize him for all the rage that is being directed at him for it, let’s not forget who benefits from this circus — Hamas. After all, the more intense [...]

Reaching the endgame

It isn’t often that I agree with the Jordanians and Saudis, but they’ve gone and forced my hand.
On Monday, after meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh articulated his country’s complaint against the plodding pace of the peace process.
“In the Middle East,” Judeh said, “there has been [...]

Explaining war

This is today’s IDF: coordinated, rehearsed, media savvy. Perhaps even more significantly, it is an army in which its spokesmen play a larger role than ever before – for better and for worse.

Durban II? Yawn…

For the record, I don’t care one whit about Durban II. What I do care about is Bushehr, Natanz and Isfahan. Everything else is just a sideshow, and a waste of time.

One lie about two states

Anyone who says Netanyahu is not committed to the creation of a Palestinian state is either a fool, or a liar.

It must still be Purim

This is rich — Netanyahu as Robin Hood, taxing the rich to rain money on the poor, and Barak playing the sidekick to Netanyahu. It must still be Purim.

Strange bedfellows

Binyamin Netanyahu’s improbable courtship of Ehud Barak is proving the popular saying of American essayist Charles Dudley Warner that “politics makes strange bedfellows.”
How ironic it is that Barak, who defeated Netanyahu in the 1999 elections and reversed his policies, is now lining up behind the Likud leader. How ironic it is that Netanyahu, whose ”concerned citizen” speech [...]

Deal, or no deal?

Several things were noteworthy about Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s announcement on Tuesday night that negotiations for the return of Gilad Schalit had broken down:
1) News of the development was presented as a failure of the government to complete the deal. The language and tone indicated that success in this affair was solely a matter of Israeli compliance, [...]

1,001 Arabian nights

It was with much skill and cunning and more than a little charm that young Scheherazade entertained Sharyar, weaving enchanting stories whereby, for 1,001 consecutive nights, she bought herself a reprieve from the jealous sultan’s pledge to lop off the pretty maiden’s head.
As Gilad Schalit approaches his own 1,001st night in captivity in Gaza, one wonders what tales [...]

So long, Salaam

The joy that Fatah and Hamas share at the news of Salaam Fayad’s resignation makes so much sense. I mean, which sane Palestinian would want an independent, internationally recognized economist, unbeholden to either of the parties that have systematically destroyed any chance of a viable Palestinian state, in charge of the billions of dollars in financial aid that foreign donors have lavished on his people?