BEIRUT - Amid the rapidly worsening situation in Lebanon, the government finds itself too weak and divided to deal either with Israel or Hezbollah. In turmoil since the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, the government of this tiny...
Like 1967 and 1982, the summer of 2006 may serve as a watershed in the history of the modern Middle East. As in those previous summers, Israel is now intent on pursuing political goals through military means, eschewing diplomacy for a massive show of force....
Hopes by the George W. Bush administration for the emergence of an implicit Sunni-Israel alliance against an Iranian-led "Shia Crescent" have faded over the past week as Arab public opinion has become increasingly united by outrage over the Jewish state's...
Zbigniew Brzezinski, speaking at a forum sponsored by the New America Foundation, had this to say about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon: "I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in...
If you've been watching the television images from Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine and have been getting a little depressed, cheer up! U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has explained to reporters that the scenes of death, destruction, and human misery from...
BEIRUT - The continuing Israeli bombing of south Lebanon and south Beirut might just have strengthened the Hezbollah. The bombings appear particularly to have strengthened the hand of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the charismatic Hezbollah leader. Hezbollah has over the...
Over the past two decades, as the Christian Right has grown in political power in the United States, there has been a parallel growth in support for Israel. Organizations made up of conservative evangelical and Jewish leaders have been founded, and millions of dollars...
Jonathan Schell, who ended his Nation magazine column, "Letter From Ground Zero," last February, now takes up "The Crisis of the Republic" in what will be a series of periodic, longer essays appearing in the Nation under that rubric. For all its wealth, its power, its...
JERUSALEM - Avner Pomeranetz does not sound particularly concerned by the barrage of 26 Katyusha rockets that slammed into his home town of Kiryat Shmona on Israel's northern border over the weekend. Nor by the fact that he has to remain in town by order of the army,...
Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen declared in the Washington Post on Tuesday that an-eye-for-an-eye would be a hopelessly wimpy policy for the Israeli government. "Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness," he wrote. "For...
