The Palestinian Authority held local elections for the first time in seven years over the weekend, hoping to establish a measure of democratic legitimacy as Palestinian Authority President Abbas prepared to violate negotiated understandings with Israel and seek a declaration of statehood in the United Nations. The PA’s efforts suffered...

• Kindle

Palestinian local elections in the West Bank are slated to take place this weekend after several rounds of delays. The Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas is boycotting the polls, ensuring that the currently ruling Fatah party will dominate the results. Moreover, turnout is expected to be lower than in past Palestinian...

• Kindle

A massive car bomb shook Beirut this morning, exploding in the predominantly Christian district of Ashrafiya and killing at least eight. The explosion threatens to reignite the sectarian tensions that were behind the country’s destructive civil war and which continue to plague the country. The security situation in Lebanon has...

• Kindle

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice insisted at a United Nations Security Council meeting yeserday that Hezbollah is part of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad’s “killing machine” and must be countered firmly by the international community. The ambassador’s stance echoes that of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor,...

• Kindle

While sparring over an array of issues, Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan converged on the critical importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship to American interests and on the need to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The candidates’ stances, while differing sometimes sharply in claims and analyses, reflecting a...

• Kindle

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor harshly criticized the U.N. yesterday over the Security Council’s failure to condemn Hamas’s escalating rocket fire campaign. The decision contrasted with the UNSC’s prompt condemnation of the Syrian rockets that recently struck Turkey. Prosor’s criticism echoes similar comments made by the ambassador last February, when...

• Kindle

A Swedish ship carrying anti-Israel activists set sail from Italy on Saturday, in the latest attempt by the Free Gaza movement to breach Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. A comprehensive United Nations investigative committee concluded in 2011 that Israel’s blockade is legal under international law and that Israel...

• Kindle

The United Nations Security Council condemned this week’s cross-border mortar fire from Syria into Turkey, in which five Turkish civilians were killed. Calling on Syria to “fully respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of its neighbors, the UNSC stressed the “grave impact the crisis in Syria has on the security...

• Kindle

The United States has warned European countries that supporting unilateral moves by the Palestinian Authority at the United Nations, where the Palestinians are attempting to achieve non-member observer status outside of a negotiated framework with Israel, would be “extremely counterproductive”and result in “significant negative consequences.” In a private memo, the...

• Kindle

A recent Palestinian move to use the United Nations to bolster claims to statehood “threatens United States and Israeli interests” and “undermines all internationally accepted frameworks for peace,” according to a Heritage Foundation report authored by Brett D. Schaefer and James Phillips. The report insists that “firm action is necessary”...

• Kindle