JERUSALEM - The Israeli rescue services had hardly finished evacuating the dead and injured from the scene of the suicide bomb blast in the coastal town of Netanya that killed five people on Monday, and already the speculation was under way. What will be the impact of...
JERUSALEM - A reliable, pragmatic leader who is tough on Palestinian violence but willing to make calculated sacrifices for peace. A leader who does not trust the Palestinians, but understands that Israel's occupation of the West Bank cannot continue in its current...
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was doing his best to dispel the impression that another disengagement plan, from the West Bank this time, was in the works. "Yesterday a rumor spread that we were considering other plans," he told an economic...
JERUSALEM - In the last two weeks, they have become the most courted, the most polled, and the best-fed group of people in Israel. For good reason: they hold the fate of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the ruling Likud party, and possibly even that of the state of...
JERUSALEM – It might have been expected that Israel, not wanting to have pictures broadcast of Palestinians triumphantly entering the evacuated homes of settlers in the Gaza Strip, would want to demolish those homes. It might equally have been expected that the...
Anti-pullout protesters blocked a major highway near Tel Aviv, disrupted an Israeli army graduation ceremony for new officers, and tried to march on a highly sensitive religious site in Jerusalem this week. The three protest actions were launched in just three days by...
JERUSALEM - Opposition leader Joseph "Tommy" Lapid recently bragged that he had been receiving calls from senior U.S. officials asking him to throw the weight of his 14-member Shinui party behind the government's budget for 2005. "I don't know whether...
JERUSALEM - The initial reactions bordered on the euphoric. Lebanese citizens were pouring into the streets of Beirut in open defiance of Damascus, and Israelis were cheering. Talk in Israel of a democratic, Syria-free neighbor to its north abounded. Some even...
JERUSALEM – Having bathed in the dreamy tranquility of Sharm El-Sheikh and imbibed the heady atmosphere of their ceasefire summit at the Egyptian Red Sea resort, both Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas returned to...
JERUSALEM - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon go into Tuesday's summit in Egypt with a strong common interest – to portray their long-awaited meeting as a success – but with very different agendas. In many ways, the...
