The negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program during the past few months have produced nothing more than a diplomatic dance in the face of persistent Iranian ploys for time coupled with intransigence on key issues. In failing to reach a negotiated settlement, the conflict with Tehran is inching closer toward a point of no return, where Israel might decide that the circumstances warrant a unilateral attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Although there are other scenarios under which Israel may decide to attack Iran, chief among them is Israel’s fear that Iran is close to reaching what Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak terms, “a zone of immunity.” Under such circumstances and given more time, Iran would be in a position to store much of its previous enriched uranium, as well as its high quality centrifuges, deep inside the mountain base of Fordow, thus becoming completely immune from aerial bombardment.
    
This objective, which Tehran is hard at work in seeking to achieve, limits how much time Israel would have before it acts. This Israeli concern makes the continuing diplomatic efforts coupled with sanctions advocated by the Obama administration unviable options and might in fact be extremely risky to pursue. The Netanyahu government is absolutely convinced that Iran will continue to play for time as it has over the past several years, during which time Tehran has considerably advanced its nuclear program in defiance of the IAEA and in spite of severe sanctions.

Regardless of what may come out of Kofi Annan’s peace plan to end the internal conflict in Syria, and whatever may emerge from the Arab League meeting this week in Baghdad, the prospect of Assad’s fall offers the Kurdish minority in Syria a historic opportunity to gain equal political and civil rights. Given the totalitarian nature of Baathist rule under Assad, the regime’s fall in Syria will take the entire system of government down with it, much like Saddam’s Iraq in 2003. But unlike Iraq’s Kurds who have enjoyed virtual autonomy since 1991 when the United States enforced a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, Syria’s Kurds are less organized and more divided. Syrian Kurds need to close ranks, fully join the Syrian people in pursuit of freedom, and not allow this historic window of opportunity to slip away.

The negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 over Tehran's nuclear enrichment activities have failed to reach an agreement, and Iran is much closer to mastering the technology of nuclear weapons.

With the changing political and demographic dynamic between Israel and the Palestinians and the advent of a new American administration, a new government in Israel and Palestine and a renewed push of the Arab Peace Initiative, an Israeli-Palestinian peace can be reached. The question now is will all these forces coalesce to drive for a peace agreement now which has eluded them for decades.

One of the most momentous declarations to come out of the
Arab world since Israel's inception in 1948 is the Arab Peace Initiative, launched in March 2002 in Beirut, Lebanon, and re-adopted by the Arab League in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in March 2007. It would be tragic to allow the Initiative to languish as it offers a solid promise for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace.

Israel's ongoing and decisive military response to Hamas' continuing rocket attacks should have been anticipated by the organization's leadership. Yet it seems they have badly miscalculated the Israelis' sentiment and resolve.

Much has been said and written in recent days about the issue of proportionality in armed conflict in the context of Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s unprovoked across-the-border attack. No cogent argument can be made for or against Israel unless we first consider the three fun

It has been said time and again that there is no logic or reason or rationale to the to the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This observation certainly seems to describe the lunacy of recent events and underscore as well the tragic madness of Hamas and other militant groups in be

In the search for a solution to the present impasse between Israel and Hamas, one has to establish what actually precipitated the crisis. The killing of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of Corporal Guilad Shalit in a daring attack on an Israeli military post has become a symbol of Pale