The State Department has seemingly confirmed speculation, first reported yesterday by The Hill, to the effect that Secretary of State John Kerry is traveling to the Middle East this weekend in part to bolster fraying reconciliation efforts between Israel and Turkey. Journalists yesterday pressed State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland over...

A document leaked to an Israeli newspaper outlines a series of temporary moves being made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in anticipation of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s upcoming trip to the Middle East: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to suspend all unilateral measures vis-à-vis the United Nations agencies to...

Analysts and observers are struggling to unravel reports that Egyptian security officials seized a ship — currently of unknown origin and destination — carrying tens of thousands of weapons. Turkish media outlets identified the ship as an Iranian fishing vessel named the ““Sawit 1” and reported that it was carrying...

A Syrian jet carried out an air strike in Lebanon yesterday, flying 12 miles into Lebanese territory and firing a missile near the border town of Arsal. The incident is the latest in a series of strikes and counterstrikes that have seen Lebanon-based groups cross-fight in Syria and the Syrian...

A strong plurality of Palestinians would select as president Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah-linked terrorist currently serving five life sentences for coordinating attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, over current Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas or Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh in presidential elections: These are the results of the...

Israeli and Palestinian sources have confirmed to The Tower that Israeli Air Force jets last night struck Hamas-built tunnels in the Gaza Strip intended to be used in attacks on Israel. Hamas announced Israel had struck “open areas” near the border – one east of Gaza City and the other...

Israeli troops on the Golan Heights took cross-border gunfire and at least one mortar from Syria yesterday. IDF forces returned fire. While insisting that Israel would not intervene in the Syrian war except in cases where Israel’s “red line” against the transfer of advanced weapons was at stake, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon...

The White House is dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to “smooth things over” between Israel and Turkey, after statements and threats made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised “worries that the Obama administration’s newly brokered friendship between [the two countries] risks unraveling.” The administration is concerned about Turkish...

Watchdog groups are calling renewed attention to religiously driven anti-Jewish and anti-Israel Palestinian incitement. A video uploaded today to YouTube by Palestinian Media Watch shows a young girl reciting a poem in which she attacks “Allah’s enemies” and “the sons of pigs,” and in which she embraces “dying with… honor.”...

The head of Hezbollah’s executive council on Monday blasted the Obama administration for intervening in Lebanon’s affairs and sowing “crises” in the country: “We are to this day still working with all our might to ward off the specter of strife [hanging over] our country – a strife we have rejected...