Middle East

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The dredging up of the dual loyalty charge — that lawmakers who reject the Iran nuclear agreement and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is lobbying against it, are more closely aligned with Israel than the United States — illustrates just how tense the debate over the… Read more »

CAIRO (JTA) — It’s been a particularly challenging summer for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. Within one week in late June and early July, his attorney general was assassinated in the upscale Cairo suburb of Heliopolis and an Islamic State affiliate launched a two-day siege in the North Sinai town of Sheikh… Read more »

  WASHINGTON (JTA) – Congress has until mid- to late September to consider whether to reject the nuclear restrictions for the sanctions rollback deal reached by Iran and six major powers on July 14. Some of the debate is over the meaning of certain provisions in the accord. Here’s a breakdown… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Few communities were as battered during last summer’s conflict between Israel and Hamas as Nahal Oz, a kibbutz of some 350 people located just a mile from the Gaza border. At one point in the fighting, 40 missiles landed on the community in a single… Read more »

DUMA, West Bank (JTA) — The smell of stale smoke wafted from the burnt concrete home now marked by a banner bearing the grinning face of a baby and, in bold red letters, a name: Ali Saad Dawabsha. Some 100 Jewish visitors trudged hesitantly under the banner and into the… Read more »

(JTA) — New York Sen. Chuck Schumer was not actually in New York on Wednesday, but the Democrat’s influence on the fate of the Iran deal loomed large when several thousand people descended on Times Square to protest the agreement. Many of those demonstrating against the agreement chanted “Where… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The road to the Iran nuclear deal did not start in November 2013, when the major powers and Iran launched formal talks. It did not begin in 2010, when the U.S. Congress passed the far-reaching Iran sanctions and the U.N. Security Council approved its own set of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Cancel your summer vacations. That was the order AIPAC’s executive director, Howard Kohr, gave his employees in a staff meeting convened this week at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after the United States announced the Iran nuclear deal. With the influential pro-Israel lobby group pushing for Congress… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The nuclear deal with Iran, 20 months in the making, is now done — at least as far as negotiations go. The accord, announced early Tuesday, still faces hurdles, although they likely won’t keep the deal from going ahead. So what happens next? We read the laws, perused the… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Years before it is deemed a success or a failure, a nuclear deal between Iran and the major powers could unleash far-reaching changes in the region. Much of the focus in Congress and the media in recent weeks has been on whether the deal would inhibit… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In nuclear talks between Iran and the major powers, it’s deadline time, and skeptics on both sides are laying out red lines in a bid to shape a final deal. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who had been wary of the talks, last week outlined his… Read more »

(JTA) – This time, Israel and its supporters came prepared. Anticipating what they believed would be an unfair U.N. report on last summer’s Gaza War, the Israeli government and friendly groups in the United States were ready with at least three reports they say better reflects the reality of… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) – Conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East now appears a permanent condition, but it didn’t have to be that way, according to a one-hour PBS special premiering on June 30. “1913: The Seeds of Conflict” traces the relationship between the two Semitic tribes… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The Iran deal may not be done, but bids by its opponents to shape it are all but buried. Skeptics of the nuclear negotiations have all but given up on a congressional role before the June 30 deadline for an agreement between Iran and the major… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Now that the outline for an Iran nuclear agreement has been released — or, more precisely, two outlines, one by Iran, the other by the Obama administration — major gaps have emerged that will need to be resolved ahead of a June 30 deadline for a… Read more »

(JTA) – Israel and the Obama administration have stepped up their war of words over the framework agreement that aims to limit Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for a gradual rollback of sanctions. President Barack Obama made his most detailed effort yet to persuade skeptics of the accord reached… Read more »

(JTA) — For President Obama, the framework agreement reached Thursday with Iran is a “historic understanding” that does more to roll back Tehran’s nuclear program than any possible alternative and avoids the risk of a destructive war in the Middle East. But to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s… Read more »

(JTA) – Diplomats in Lausanne, Switzerland, have extended their deadline on a framework accord on Iran’s nuclear program. But even if an agreement is reached this week, it’s merely a way station toward a comprehensive deal that is due by June 30. If a deal is reached, who needs to approve… Read more »

(JTA) — Ayelet Tsabari acted as a child and teen, appearing in Habima’s youth performances in Israel, a commercial and some student films. Although Tsabari no longer acts, the author of the award-winning “The Best Place on Earth” feels that the experience of fiction writing is not entirely unlike… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview that as long as he is Israel’s prime minister, a Palestinian state will not be established. The interview was published Monday on the Israeli news website NRG, a day before Israelis head to the polls, as Netanyahu attempts to shore… Read more »