The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

Even by Israeli standards, Uri Tzafon (Awaken North) is a far-right fringe group. Amid mounting tension with Lebanese Shiite political group and militia, Hezbollah, along the Lebanon-Israel border, Uri Tzafon is calling for Israeli settlement of southern Lebanon.

The Dahiya doctrine that mandates the destruction of infrastructure, images of Gaza’s devastation, IDF soldiers’ social media postings, and inflammatory statements by officials, politicians, religious figures, and pundits call into question Israeli assertions that its military is among the world’s “most moral.”

Israeli military triumphs and exploits often produce battlefield victories that fail to garner political gains. The Gaza war has changed that paradigm.

A former Israeli hostage negotiator suggests Hamas may be willing to shift the paradigm in Gaza ceasefire negotiations.

Gaza is not one but multiple wars. Beyond the horrors of the kinetic war in the Strip, Israel, the Palestinians, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, and multiple political groups, including pro-Palestinian students, supporters of Israel, and right-wing forces, are waging often inter-connected Gaza-related information wars.

The coming week or two could determine Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s political fate and reshape the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s Gaza war. That is, if Mr. Netanyahu fails to comply with war cabinet member Benny Gantz’s demand that the prime minister produce a plan for the post-war administration of Gaza by June 8 and Mr. Gantz makes good on his threat to resign.

Innocent Palestinians bear the brunt of Israel’s Gaza war, but they are not the only victims of the conflict. So are freedoms of expression, the media, and academia in the West, as well as Arab autocracies.

Jordan's King Abdullah is caught between a rock and a hard place.

Israel’s territorial claims, West Bank policies, and Gaza war conduct shine a spotlight on problematic Jewish religious legal precepts, much like the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks did with Islam.

For more than two decades, jihadists took pride in place as symbols of extremism and illustrations of the need for religious reform. They made Islam the focus of post-9/11 calls for religious change and moderation. Today, Islam no longer stands alone. One of the world’s foremost faiths, Islam has been joined by most major religions that have long flown under the radar.

It goes without saying that the Palestinian issue touches many across the Greater Middle East. Israel and the world’s inability or unwillingness to help Palestinians secure their rights and Palestinians’ sense of not being accorded the dignity and respect accorded to others mirrors a quest for recognition and dignity across the region.

US President Joe Biden doesn’t fit the mould of a high-risk gambler. Yet, gambling is the crux of his velvet glove dealings with Israel. With one eye on Israeli politics and the other on presidential elections in the United States in six months, Mr. Biden is walking a tightrope.

By James M. Dorsey The Greater Middle East is a ticking time bomb. Simmering at the surface in Gaza and across much of the Middle East and North Africa is social, economic, and political anger and frustration that could erupt at any moment but may not immediately manifest itself publicly.

Diaspora Jews, Palestinian Israelis, and Turkish Kurds have more in common than meets the eye.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has fractured a long-standing pillar of Israeli foreign policy that dictated it always needed to ensure the backing of the United States. Fixing the pillar may prove easier said than done.

This week’s Gazan short-lived celebration of a ceasefire that was not to be, highlights what is at stake in the seven-month-old war and Israel’s refusal to end the carnage.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s insistence on Israeli security control of all the land west of the Jordan River, coupled with his public rejection since October of the notion of a Palestinian state and Israel’s Gaza war conduct, has in Palestinian ears the same ring that ‘From the Sea to the River’ has in Israeli ears: the rejection of the other’s rights and eradication of the other’s...

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other leading Israeli figures appear blinded and progressively cornered by the gathering of increasingly dark clouds.

Israel’s latest Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange proposal puts the ball in Hamas’ court.

An Israeli ground offensive in the southern Gazan enclave of Rafah is a question of when, not if. Not because Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is oblivious to US and international pressure but because it could prove to be make or break for Israel’s embattled leader.

Words matter. In the Israeli-Palestinian battle of narratives, they, more often than not, either are designed to thwart solutions or, by design or default, reinforce entrenched mutually exclusive positions.

Multiple overt and covert wars have pushed the Middle East to the edge of a cliff. Increased tension between Iran and Israel complicates efforts to pull the Middle East back from the abyss.

The Gaza ceasefire negotiations have all but broken down, with Israel and Hamas pursuing mutually exclusive goals.

Despite its devastating human and physical cost, Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas has a whack-a-mole aspect.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is tying himself up in knots as he grudgingly, and only to a limited degree, bows to US President Joe Biden’s demands. In doing so, Mr. Netanyahu is puncturing Swiss-cheese size holes into Israel’s Gaza narrative, making it easier for Mr. Biden to take him publicly to task.