Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has laid out his terms for peace in the Middle East. In a highly anticipated speech at Israel's Bar-Ilan University last Sunday, Netanyahu said – for the first time – that he was willing to consider a "demilitarized"...
It was touted as an historic election, a vote to determine the future direction of Lebanon. But even with the winners declared, analysts say the Jun. 7 ballot was far from decisive, and did little to alter the fundamental balance of power in the country. In the U.S.,...
It was neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer who, in the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, inaugurated Washington's unipolar moment. "America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome,"...
An informal truce between Israel and Hamas went into effect early Thursday morning, temporarily suspending a year of fighting that has left more than 600 Palestinians – many of them civilians – and 18 Israelis dead. The guns fell silent at 6 a.m. amid...
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit to Beirut Monday to pledge her support for an agreement giving greater political power to Hezbollah, the militant Shi'ite group that Washington still considers a terrorist organization. The Doha-brokered...
With the Iranian nuclear "threat" in the crosshairs, discussion of Palestinians or a Syrian-Israeli détente was virtually nonexistent. But then again, one should not expect many overtures for peace when attending the annual policy conference for the...
Speaking last year at the same forum, he received scattered boos. But as Senator Barack Obama strode towards the podium Wednesday morning at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he was greeted with a standing ovation....
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold." As the White House agenda for the Middle East continues to unravel, events over the past 24 hours seem to suggest that US allies in the region are determined to construct a new edifice based on diplomacy, with or...
From the people who brought you the "war on terror" and the "axis of evil" comes a new verbal tonic for combating that amorphous emotion. Out with pejoratives like "Islamo-fascists," "jihadis," and "mujahedin," and in...
Almost every country in the world has had a civil war, but rarely has a nation survived a second one. The outburst of violence that erupted on the streets of West Beirut last week now threatens to rip apart the small patchwork state, with analysts here and in Lebanon...
