Among the security assurances given to Israel at the end of its 2006 war with Hezbollah was that an enlarged United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) – the peacekeeping force along the Israeli-Lebanese border – would fan across southern Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from smuggling weapons into the region....

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Iranian ex-pats living in Israel have evaluated claims suggesting that the Islamic republic’s newly inaugurated president Hassan Rouhani will moderate Iran’s foreign and domestic policies. “Deeply skeptical” is how the Jerusalem Post described their reactions: Salome Worch was born in Iran, grew up and spent most of her adult life...

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Videos uploaded yesterday to YouTube by Syrian opposition groups showcase jihadist infrastructure and document heavy fighting close to the Israeli-Syrian border. The footage comes amid new Israeli evaluations that predict the Jewish state may have to fight a multi-front war against elements drawn from extremist Sunni groups that have increasingly...

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The next round of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 are scheduled for next week in Geneva. While an ongoing charm offensive by Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has been praised for changing Iran’s tone toward the West, it has been criticized for offering zero new concessions that might move negotiations forward....

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Palestinian diplomats last year launched a diplomatic campaign to gain non-member statehood status via the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), brushing aside calls from President Barack Obama to put aside the campaign and triggering automatic U.S. sanctions that endangered the financial viability of the organization. U.S. lawmakers specifically expressed concerns...

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The murders of two Israelis last week – one by a Palestinian coworker and one by a Palestinian sniper – had already deepened fears that incitement by official Palestinian organs was driving a spike of violence in the West Bank. This weekend a nine-year-old Israeli girl was shot and wounded...

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When Secretary of State John Kerry announced the resumption of U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, he was explicit that success would rely on both sides not leaking details of the negotiations to journalists and diplomats. Kerry went even further and told reporters that “no one should consider any reports, articles, or...

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There has been confusion about Israeli sentiments regarding the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and skepticism which he has declared regarding diplomatic overtures toward the West being made by Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Netanyahu had emphasized that the Iranians may be duplicitiously using the prospect for negotiations to lock in...

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people in a rare interview Thursday with BBC Persian. He emphasized that Iranian nuclear weapons acquisition would make it functionally impossible to challenge the regime either from within or from outside, and that the result would be tragedy: Israel’s prime minister says...

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Analysts have recently begun analyzing the Middle East as a function of three emerging regional blocs: an Iranian-led bloc that includes Syria and Hezbollah, an extremist Turkey/Brotherhood bloc with which Qatar often aligns, and a U.S.-allied bloc that includes Israel and moderate Arab states. The interactions between these camps vary...

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