Middle East

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week via JTA) — Don’t make the enemy of your enemy your friend. That’s the message some lawmakers hope to convey to the Obama administration as they consider its request for a war authorization to combat ISIS. Concerns about how best to shape such an authorization… Read more »

WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week) — For the second year running, a bid to pass a bill intensifying sanctions against Iran appears to be foundering on threat of a presidential veto. In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama vowed to veto further sanctions legislation, saying it would… Read more »

International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced a preliminary examination concerning the "situation in Palestine." (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — On Jan. 16, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, launched a “preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine.” Here is a review of what that means based on interviews with experts on international law and statements by the ICC and Israeli and U.S. officials. Has… Read more »

Anett Haskia fared poorly in the Jewish Home primary but said party voters embraced her despite her background. (Ben Sales)

PETACH TIKVAH, Israel (JTA) — Outside the Moriah Synagogue in this central Israeli city, boys in ritual fringes and girls in long skirts handed out fliers for the dozens of candidates running in the Jan. 14 primary for the Jewish Home party, a right-wing, modern Orthodox faction. Religious voters… Read more »

(JTA) — When Britain’s Parliament voted in favor of recognizing Palestine in October, Elie Barnavi, a former Israeli ambassador to France, dismissed the motion as mere symbolism. Reflecting many Israelis’ view of the string of nonbinding motions on Palestinian statehood adopted by European parliaments in recent weeks, Barnavi said… Read more »

Wendy Sherman, the top U.S. negotiator in the world powers' nuclear talks with Iran, says the two sides have "made impressive progress on issues that originally seemed intractable. (Eric Bridliers/U.S. Mission Geneva)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Is the Obama administration preparing the ground for an Iran nuclear deal — one in which both sides can claim victory? Wendy Sherman, the top U.S. negotiator, in an unusually detailed and optimistic speech on Oct. 23, for the first time suggested that the pieces of… Read more »

President Obama speaks before the U.N. General Assembly, Sept. 24, 2014. (Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) – A year ago, when President Barack Obama took the dais at the U.N. General Assembly, his speech focused on Iran’s nuclear program, Syria’s chemical weapons and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He talked about Egypt’s messy transition to democracy and defended America’s actions in Libya. A year… Read more »

Martin Indyk said that refraining from imposing ideas on the Israelis and Palestinians inhibited both sides from embracing them. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – What was supposed to have revived the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — allowing negotiations to develop organically — instead helped kill them, Martin Indyk, until recently the top U.S. peace broker, told JTA in a candid and wide-ranging interview. Speaking by phone Sept. 19 while in transit… Read more »

President Barack Obama speaking at the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 24, 2014. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) – President Obama devoted the bulk of his U.N. speech to the fight against violent Islamic extremism and hardly mentioned Iran’s nuclear program. In his address last year to the General Assembly, Obama spent a great deal of time talking about Tehran’s nuclear pursuit, describing it… Read more »

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida greets Israel's U.S. ambassador, Ron Dermer, at a Jewish New Year celebration hosted by Dermer in Chevy Chase, Md., Sept. 17, 2014. (Courtesy Israel Embassy)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Saying a nuclear Iran would be a “thousand times” greater threat to the world than ISIS, Israel’s ambassador to the United States warned against including Iran in any coalition to derail the jihadist group. Ron Dermer, speaking Wednesday to guests at a pre-Rosh Hashanah reception at… Read more »

The emir of Quatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, right, with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, second from right, during an official visit to the Gaza Strip, Oct. 23, 2012. (Mohammed Salem-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – It was the first Persian Gulf state to establish ties with Israel, the first to welcome Israeli students and the only one to allow direct dialing to Israel. Israeli athletes shine on its courts. Now Qatar is on the outs with Israel because of its embrace… Read more »

Iraqi families who fled ISIS fighters near the Iraqi city of Mosul prepare to sleep on the ground near the Khazair temporary displacement camp in a Kurdish-controlled part of Iraq, July 3, 2014. (Spencer Platt/Getty)

(JTA) – Between this summer’s war in Gaza and gains by Islamic militants in Iraq, Syria and Libya, there’s still plenty of cause these days for pessimism about the Middle East. But there’s also some good news for Israel. If it wasn’t obvious before, the conflagrations have driven home… Read more »

University of Central Florida student Melissa Catalanotto (L.), president of the UCF Society of Professional Journalists attends a candlelight vigil held for journalist Steven Sotloff on Sept. 3, 2014 at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. (Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Don’t bring it up. If it comes up, change the subject. If you can’t change the subject, consider an outright denial. Those are some of the strategies used by Jewish reporters working in the Arab and Muslim Middle East to conceal their religious heritage. The dangers… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Egypt announced a new open-ended cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian groups shortly after an Israeli struck by a Gaza mortar died of his wounds. The official Egyptian News Agency announced Tuesday evening that the cease-fire would begin at 7 p.m. In the hour leading up to… Read more »

Palestinian militants of the Al-Nasser Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, display their skills at their graduation ceremony in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Sept. 27, 2013. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — After four weeks of a punishing Israel air and ground campaign that left nearly 2,000 dead and much of Gaza in ruins, Hamas has lived to see another day. For Israel, that might not be the worst thing. That’s because for all of Hamas’ violent… Read more »

Palestinian man seen in front of a fire raging at Gaza's main power plant following an overnight Israeli airstrike, south of Gaza City, July 29, 2014. (Emad Nassar/Flash90)

RAMLE, Israel (JTA) — In her living room in the Israeli town of Ramle, Sarah says she wants a peaceful life. At 79, she deserves one. A Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, Sarah was sent to a Nazi concentration camp in Serbia as a child, arriving in Israel at age 17.… Read more »

An Israeli border policeman patrols the area of the Judean desert near the Jordan border. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Emerging from the chaos of the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) terrorist group has gained the world’s attention for its brutal medieval-style Islamic justice and its swift victories in Iraq, threatening to overrun the weak U.S.-backed government there. Now ISIS is also… Read more »

Jordan Elgrably is executive director of the Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles. (Anthony Weiss/JTA)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) – It’s Friday night, and patrons are sitting and chatting over plates of tajine and hummus waiting for the evening’s main event, a stand-up comedy show. It could be any nightspot in this city. But a closer look reveals a bolder agenda than just good food… Read more »

Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas delivers his farewell speech as prime minister of the Hamas-run government in Gaza, a position he stepped down from under the new Palestinian unity agreement, June 2, 2014. (Wissam Nassar/Flash90)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Is the new Palestinian government kosher under U.S. law? A range of American Middle East policy analysts and current and former U.S. officials say that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threaded the needle last week and created a government of technocrats untainted by Hamas and not… Read more »

Pope Francis touches the wall that separates Israel from the West Bank on his way to celebrate a mass in Manger Square in Bethlehem, May 25, 2014. (Nour Shamaly/POOL/Flash90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Perhaps the most lasting image from Pope Francis’ trip to Israel and the West Bank will be the pontiff praying, eyes closed, with his head against a wall. It wasn’t the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site and a necessary stop for visiting dignitaries. It… Read more »