More in ‘Ehud Barak’

• The person risking the most in participating in upcoming talks is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who could lose control of Fatah and whose Fatah could lose power to Hamas. [LAT]
• By contrast, Prime Minister Netanyahu reassured party members that he knows where the redlines are and he won’t cross them. [JPost]
• Abbas and Defense ...

• A great explanation of what’s really going on with these seemingly bound-to-fail direct talks. [Politico]
• And the best bit of optimism you’ll read concerning them, courtesy former U.N. Ambassador Martin Indyk. [NYT]
• Expect to see a “quiet freeze”: The construction moratorium would be permitted to expire in September, on schedule, but Bibi and Defense ...

• U.N. peacekeepers convened a rare three-way meeting with Israel and Lebanon in an effort to ratchet down tensions after Tuesday’s deadly skirmish. [WP]
• Seeing an opportunity in effective sanctions and technical delays, President Obama is again trying to engage Iran. [WP]
• A Polish court upheld Uri Brodsky’s extradition to Germany. Brodsky, an alleged Mossad ...

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post identified Jordan, not Lebanon, in the sub-headline. That was an error.
Yesterday morning saw the biggest and deadliest Israeli-Lebanese skirmish since the 2006 war—the death toll included two Lebanese soldiers, one Lebanese journalist, and one senior Israeli reserves officer—and 36 hours later, things are nowhere near back to normal. ...

• Three Lebanese soldiers and a journalist were killed in an artillery exchange along Israel’s northern border; a Katyusha rocket also reportedly hit the Galilee. (Another source says only two Lebanese soldiers died.) It was the most serious military incident up there since 2006. [Ynet]
• Another diplomatic dispute between them: Turkey summoned Israel’s ambassador in ...

• Defense Minister Barak arrives in Washington, D.C., today. Main talking points: Current sanctions alone won’t stop Iran from getting the bomb; Israel will treat Hezbollah’s attacks as Lebanese attacks. [WP]
• Michael Hayden, final CIA director under George W. Bush, said he has personally come around to the view that a U.S. bombing of Iran ...

View as a single page.
At one point in my recent interviews with Israeli President Shimon Peres, I ask him why his mentor David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, in choosing among many promising young men of his circle, selected Peres as his aide. Perhaps motivated by modesty, the 87-year-old Peres doesn’t offer a clear explanation. ...

Shortly before Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington yesterday, his one-time adviser Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, made the rounds to deliver a message that the Israeli prime minister would dearly love to deliver in person—but won’t. “The Israeli people have gone through a very tough time this last decade,” Gold tells ...

Quick recap of Israel’s insane coalition politics: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu want to pull the government to the right; opposition leader Tzipi Livni and her Kadima would maybe join the government on the condition of replacing Lieberman; Prime Minister Netanyahu needs Lieberman to shore up the right at home, but while ...

Here’s a further wrinkle to the Israeli government’s already byzantine coalition politics: While Prime Minister Netanyahu needs Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu to shore up his right flank at home, abroad he needs to project a more moderate image; and so, reports the Forward’s Nathan Guttman, Defense Minister Ehud Barak—leader of the ...