Officials from the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas this week threatened President Barack Obama with violence and “catastrophe” during his upcoming March visit to the region. Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs and a member of the Western-backed Fatah faction, instructed the president to pressure Israel to...

A 21-year-old Ethiopian immigrant to Israel has been crowned the country’s Miss Israel 2013. Yityish (Titi) Aynaw told the audience during the competition’s spoken-word portion that her candidacy was an apt demonstration of Israeli diversity: A panel of judges at the International Convention Center Haifa on Wednesday awarded the title...

Israel’s pundit class is increasingly converging on the opinion that, for the first time in several political cycles, Israel is heading for a coalition government without any religious parties. Channel 2 political correspondent Amit Segal went so far as to tell Army Radio [Hebrew] that a configuration of only secular parties was...

A political alliance between two relative newcomers appears to be complicating efforts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new coalition, after his Likud party emerged as the winner in Israel’s January election and was tasked by Israel’s president Shimon Peres with creating the next government. Yair Lapid and his Yesh...

Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are currently in the Gaza Strip, high-level Palestinian security sources tell The Tower. The Iranians, according to our security sources, are experts in missile production, and are in Gaza to help Hamas and Islamic Jihad develop long-range missiles. Israeli security and political officials declined...

Almost four months have passed since the end of Operation Pillar of Defense, and  Southern Israel is learning to live under new circumstances with which it’s scarcely familiar: quiet from the Gaza Strip. This time it’s not a just a fragile period of calm in which the odd Qassam rocket or...