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U.S. official: Trump will not press ‘two-state’ peace track in first talks with Israel’s Netanyahu

Though Mr. Obama this spring threatened in international forums to revisit the United States’ longstanding defense of Israel against Palestinian moves, many experts now see that as unlikely. With the president having secured a legacy-defining foreign policy achievement with Iran, the world focused on the refugee crisis and the rise of the Islamic State, and Palestinian internal politics in turmoil, the long-shot prospects for progress on peace do not seem worth the political risk as the 2016 presidential campaign intensifies.

Mr. Netanyahu has already started saying things his allies like to hear. After his session on Thursday with David Cameron, the British prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu said he was ready to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank even though it is “a nightmare for my security people.”“I’m willing right now, without any preconditions, any preconditions whatsoever, to sit down with President Abbas and negotiate this peace,”

Netanyahu is a man for whom no moral consideration comes before political interest and whose chief political interest is himself. He is a cynic wrapped in an ideology inside a scheme.

To have an Israeli prime minister lend credence to the slur that Zionism is a form of racism by prospectively bringing undoubted racists into his coalition is simply unforgivable.

Anti-Israel slanders may abound, but they will do little to hurt the state if a majority of Israelis understand they have no serious foundation in truth. Netanyahu’s behavior jeopardizes that confidence.

Benjamin Netanyahu's run as the longest-serving Israeli prime minister may be coming to an end. Naftali Bennett, leader of the small right-wing party Yamina, announced Sunday evening he is working toward a coalition agreement with Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist party Yesh Atid, to join a new government.

"After four elections and a further two months, it has been proven to all of us that there is simply no right-wing government possible that is headed by Netanyahu. It is either a fifth election or a unity government," Bennett said.

The "change" coalition will likely be made up of parties from the right to the left of Israeli politics, but it would still almost certainly need some sort of outside support to reach the 61-seat threshold. That support may come from outside the government, such as one of the Arab parties, most likely the Islamist United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas.

The past offers strong lessons as to the Israeli mindset after major attacks. The Palestinian uprising of September 2000, known as the second intifada, prompted a rise in the proportion of Israeli Jews who self-identified as rightwing, according to my survey research over the years; this was accelerated by Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, followed by Hamas’s takeover in 2007. This process quickened following Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009, and correlated with a dark cycle of violent escalations with Hamas in Gaza every few years until this current war.

It’s hard to imagine Israel being any more rightwing than it is now. Netanyahu’s government has 64 seats out of 120 in parliament, with the most extreme politicians in its history. Rightwing ideology in Israeli terms extends to well over 70 members of parliament – hardline, nationalist, militant and probably annexationist regarding the Palestinian

it’s all too likely that today’s centrists will rush to the right following the atrocities of the Hamas assault.

A day after Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for lighter economic sanctions, the difference in the moods on the streets of Tehran and Jerusalem couldn't be starker.

We hope all the world knows we use this nuclear (power) just for peace, not for war

most Iranians are extremely happy with the deal, especially after many rounds of negotiations that yielded no results.

In an appearance at the Washington office of the Council on Foreign Relations, a retired major general in the Saudi armed forces, Anwar Eshki, and a former Israeli ambassador close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Dore Gold, described their common interests in opposing Iran. It was the culmination of five meetings between the two men, who both run think tanks, though Mr. Gold will become the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday.

“We’re both allies of the United States,” Mr. Gold said after the presentation. “I hope this is the beginning of more discussion about our common strategic problems.”

Operating against extremists committed to killing Jewish civilians seems like a necessary part of any Israeli national security strategy. But what happens after the inevitable ceasefire matters as well, and we lack signs that the Netanyahu government is thinking strategically. Setting back the cause of extremists is half the battle; buttressing moderates is the other half. Netanyahu and his ministers are notably inexpert at helping the more moderate Palestinian factions strengthen their hold on the West Bank, and they specialize in putting their collective thumb in the eye of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. A clever post-conflict Israeli strategy would be to help the Palestinian Authority extend its mandate more deeply into Gaza

Israel must take the interim steps, regardless of Palestinian participation, to protect its democratic character. Israeli moderates must "demand a complete halt to construction in the settlements, the evacuation of illegal outposts, a reexamination—once the current tension has ebbed—of the Israel Defense Forces’ deployment in the West Bank, and the removal of what remains of the Gaza blockade (possibly in coordination with Egypt

I'm not hopeful at all that the Netanyahu government will listen to such advice. Because myopia has shown itself to be the enemy of compromise and progress in Israel, and not just in Gaza.

Indyk somehow retains hope for a peace deal. For all the stasis and backsliding over the past two decades, he argues that the Palestinians have made some strides over the years. Instead of rejecting Israel, they've accepted its right to exist. Instead of practicing terrorism, Abbas's Fatah party has embraced non-violence. Palestinian officials have come to terms with acquiring a demilitarized state encompassing only 22 percent of historic Palestine as part of a two-state solution.

On the Israeli side, Indyk added, annexing the West Bank and its 2.5 million Palestinian Arabs, as some Israelis on the right are calling for, is antithetical to Israel functioning as a democratic, Jewish state. If it remains democratic under this scenario, then the Palestinians will constitute a majority of the population. If it remains Jewish, then the Palestinians will be stripped of their rights.

But then, beginning in mid-February, Abbas suddenly "shut down." By the time the Palestinian leader visited Obama in Washington in March, he "had checked out of the negotiations," repeatedly telling U.S. officials that he would "study" their proposals, Indyk said. Abbas later signed 15 international conventions and struck a unity deal with the Gaza-based militant group Hamas. These moves deflated the peace process.

As the Iranian nuclear talks creep on into double overtime, let’s remember that this isn’t just about centrifuges but also about creating some chance over time of realigning the Middle East and bringing Iran out of the cold.

“A better deal would significantly roll back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure,” noted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “A better deal would link the eventual lifting of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to a change in Iran’s behavior.”

Netanyahu also suggests that a deal would give “Iran’s murderous regime a clear path to the bomb.” That’s a fallacy.

Where past Republican leaders had their disagreements with Israel, today’s Republicans have made support for the Jewish state an inviolable litmus test for anyone aspiring to national office.

“If you’re a Republican and you hedge on your support on Israel, it’s viewed as having a flawed foreign policy,” said Ron Bonjean, a party strategist who has worked for Republican leaders in Congress. “It’s a requirement for Republicans these days to be very strong on Israel if they’re going to be taken seriously by primary voters.” Any deviation on that, he said, leads to inevitable questions: “If you’re not supporting Israel, then who are you supporting? Are you supporting Iran?”

“Bibi would probably win the Republican nomination if it were legal,”

Jerusalem (CNN)Israel's President has warned of possible harm to the country's democracy, after the Speaker of Parliament refused to hold key parliamentary votes.

"A Knesset that is out of action harms the ability of the State of Israel to function well and responsibly in an emergency," said President Reuven Rivlin in remarks addressed to Edelstein. "We must not let this crisis, as serious as it is, harm our democratic system."

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz commands a wafer-thin majority in parliament. It may ultimately prove insufficient to form a government because of bitter rivalries within his bloc but is enough to elect a new speaker and advance parliamentary business. Among the first pieces of legislation Blue and White wants to pass is a bill that would make it illegal for an indicted lawmaker to become Prime Minister.

JERUSALEM — When Israelis opened their newspapers and news websites on Tuesday, they encountered a barrage of reports and commentary about the possible downfall of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving leader.

Mr. Netanyahu’s political future hung in the balance on Tuesday night, as opposition leaders struggled to agree on a fragile coalition government that would finally remove him from office for the first time in 12 years. The deadlock set the stage for a dramatic last day of negotiations, which the opposition must conclude by Wednesday at midnight or risk sending the country to another round of early elections.

During his current 12-year term, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process fizzled, as both Israeli and Palestinian leaderships accused each other of obstructing the process, and Mr. Netanyahu expressed increasing ambivalence about the possibility of a sovereign Palestinian state.

A coalition of Israeli political parties announced Wednesday night they had agreed ​to a deal to form a new government, paving the way for the exit of Israel's longest serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, notified Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that he had managed to cobble together a coalition less than an hour before the midnight deadline.

In a statement, Lapid said the "government will work to serve all the citizens of Israel including those who aren't members of it, will respect those who oppose it, and do everything in its power to unite all parts of Israeli society."

When the hard right, the left and an autocrat (who denies Turkey’s genocide of the Armenians) combine forces, you know there is something wrong. Let’s be clear: German politicians do not need to wrestle free of history to navigate the debate on the Gaza war. It is a myth that Germany is uncritical in its support of the Israeli government.

When Israel used excessive violence in earlier Gaza wars, Germany raised public concerns. Berlin has constantly criticised the expansion of settlements. More than a decade ago, the then foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, called the situation in Hebron (in the occupied West Bank) “apartheid”. Berlin has supported the Palestinian Authority with over €1bn, and is among the top donors to Unwra, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees.

There was never any love lost between either the Merkel or Scholz governments and Benjamin Netanyahu. Angela Merkel knew he was working with Donald Trump to kill off the nuclear deal with Iran behind her back. And that he was lying about his acceptance of two states. Nobody involved with the Middle East dossier in Berlin trusts Netanyahu

For the last few years, though, I’ve felt the opposite — that so much of my work was decrying bad choices made by big players

Vladimir Putin’s tightening dictatorship and aggression, culminating in his brutal invasion of Ukraine; Xi Jinping’s reversal of China’s opening; Israel’s election of the most right-wing government in its history; the cascading effects of climate change; the loss of control over America’s southern border; and, maybe most ominously, an authoritarian drift, not only in European countries like Turkey, Poland and Hungary but in America’s own Republican Party as well.

If I think about the three pillars that have stabilized the world since I became a journalist in 1978 — a strong America committed to protecting a liberal global order with the help of healthy multilateral institutions like NATO, a steadily growing China always there to buoy the world economy, and mostly stable borders in Europe and the developing world — all three are being shaken by big choices by big players over the last decade

Maj-Gen Yair Golan said on the eve of Thursday's annual Holocaust Day that he detected trends in Israeli society suggestive of "nauseating processes" that occurred in 1930s Nazi Germany.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said he had "total confidence" in Gen Golan.

"There is, after all, nothing easier and simpler than hating the foreigner... arousing fears and terrifying."