The surprise agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz, leader of the Kadima party, offers some glimmer of hope for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, because a government that includes Mofaz’s centrist party is more likely to seek a peace deal than a government involving only the Israeli right. But the greater consequence [...]

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stunned Israelis Tuesday morning with a political shocker. He convinced his largest opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, to join his coalition, thus cancelling early elections scheduled for September. Speaking to the media, Netanyahu said that the coalition agreement (called by some in the Israeli media a stink bomb) is good for [...]

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A key rival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized his hawkish stance on Iran’s nuclear program on Saturday, making the issue a central theme for parliamentary elections expected this year. via Netanyahu is mistaken on Iran, says election rival – Chicago Tribune.

Defense establishment sources admit construction in the outpost is illegal, and that no real steps have been taken to stop it; situation could spark crisis in Netanyahu’s coalition. By Jonathan Lis, Barak Ravid, Amos Harel and Chaim Levinson Some 20 homes that have been built in the Mitzpeh Cramim outpost during the past year could [...]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyuhu met Tuesday at his official residence in Jerusalem with senior Palestinian officials, who gave him a letter from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the stalemate in the peace process. Although PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was expected to participate in the meeting, in the end, he did not come. The [...]

The celebrated German author Günter Grass has been declared persona non grata in Israel following the publication of his poem warning that the Jewish state’s nuclear programme was a threat to an “already fragile world peace”. The row over the literary work continued to reverberate over the weekend, with the 84-year-old Nobel laureate saying in [...]

The Israeli prime minister has intervened to prevent the eviction of hardline Jewish settlers from a house in the tense West Bank city of Hebron, despite a Palestinian family’s insistence that they are the legal owners of the property. Binyamin Netanyahu overruled his defence minister Ehud Barak, who had ordered the eviction of scores of [...]

(Reuters) – The United Nations launched an international investigation on Thursday into Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, with the United States isolated in voting against the initiative brought by the Palestinian Authority. The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned Israel’s planned construction of new housing units for Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East [...]

Bibi Netanyahu returned a few weeks ago from his annual pilgrimage to Washington DC, where he met with the president and thrilled an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) crowd with his usual baleful predictions of Jewish catastrophe at the hands of a nuclear Iran. Though the hysteria of the prime minister’s portrayal of the [...]

Beer-Sheva, Israel – In response to the recent assassination of Zuhair al-Qaisi, the Secretary General of the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip, along with another fighter, Palestinians fired rockets at southern Israel and the Israeli military launched air strikes at targets throughout the Strip. Within hours, the media fanfare began. Israeli news outlets [...]