The negotiations between Israel and Syria on a political settlement that lasted throughout the last decade of the previous century came to a halt on March 26, 2000 with the failed meeting between Presidents Clinton and Hafez al-Asad. Since then, considerable changes have occurred in the strategic map, impacting on the current and future situations in Israel-Syria relations. They have occurred in Syria, in Israel, in the region, and around the world.

Wars once had clear endings and definitive out comes. They would end with surrenders and peace treaties, cremonies and victory marches. Wars today rarely end so clearly, if they end at all.

On November 8, an errant IDF artillery shell intended to disrupt the launching of Qassam rockets landed in a residential area in Beit Hanoun and killed 23 Palestinians. That tragic result, which dramatized the distress to Gaza Strip residents caused by the constant escalation of violence, also prompted Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to renew negotiations on the guidelines for a National Unity Government. But after several weeks of discussions, differences over basic principles and division of authority remained unresolved.

Israel should not try to second-guess U.S. decisions about putting American soldiers in harm's way. However, the specific strategy that the Baker-Hamilton report proposes for facilitating an American pullback in Iraq - the use of an international support group including Iran and Syria - poses serious problems that affect vital Israeli interests.

Following the failure of efforts to reach agreement between Hamas and Fatah on the formation of a government of national unity, there are growing fears among Palestinians that the two movements are now on the brink of an all-out civil war. Indeed, some argue that the war has already begun, albeit still on a small scale.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's set of proposals to break the seemingly interminable impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems doomed to failure - but not because there is anything in them that is wholly unreasonable. First, it would appear to be the wrong moment for any real progress to be made, with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government relatively weak. The second flaw, however, is one of Madrid's own making, namely the botched manner in which the peace plan was sprung upon a divided international community.

This article examines as a case study the Arab reaction to Shimon Peres’ economic initiative, the New Middle East. The initiative, which followed the Oslo peace accords, offered a comprehensive program to strengthen cultural, scientific, political, and primarily economic ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz denied last night that Israel Air Force warplanes had fired missiles at a German naval vessel off the Mediterranean coast in the north of the country on Tuesday. Peretz called his German counterpart, Franz Josef Jung, to inform him that such a firing did not take place, nor does Israel have any intention to fire on German forces. He added that cooperation between Israel and UNIFIL in the area should be upgraded.

From Israel’s standpoint, difficulty number one, we have to fight on two fronts: in the south against the Hamas, in the north against the Hizballah. Then we have to fight in a disappointed situation because everybody in the world told us land for peace. We gave back the land; we didn’t get the peace. We left Lebanon completely. There is no claim against Israel. Even we were complimented by the United Nations. We gave Gaza completely back to the Palestinians, and they are continuing to shoot. That is a problem for us.

"Israel believes this threat is existential," explained the clearly dubious former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Richard Murphy. Well, how could they think that? (And by the way, all former ambassadors, especially those who served in Saudi Arabia and now are advisers to Saudi banks, should be taken with a large grain of salt.) Could it be because Iran has announced its intention to wipe Israel off the map and is hurtling toward building nuclear weapons? Could it be because Iran's agent, Hezbollah, welcomes "World War III"; is pledged to destroy Israel; and is raining missiles down on Israeli cities and towns?

In trying to negotiate an end to the latest Middle East conflict, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears to see the solution through a broader prism that redefines its stakes. The real issues, U.S. officials say, are not simply the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah but far wider questions of Lebanon's sovereignty and what the administration sees as an existential battle between forces aligned for and against democracy in the region.

Less than a month into the still nameless war waged across the Israel-Lebanon border, neither side is entitled to claim victory. The killing of more than 50 Lebanese civilians by bombs in the village of Kafr Kana was a severe moral setback for Israel. But Jerusalem, while apologizing, said it would press home its attack on Hezbollah.

We learn that "world opinion" is quite exercised over Israel's unintentional killing of a few hundred Lebanese civilians behind whom hides Hezbollah -- a terror group that intentionally sends missiles at Israeli cities and whose announced goals are the annihilation of Israel and the Islamicization of Lebanon. And, of course, "world opinion" was just livid at American abuses of some Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. In fact, "world opinion" is constantly upset with America and Israel, two of the most decent countries on earth, yet silent about the world's cruelest countries.

After some initial uncertainty, and mixed messages from the State Department, the Bush Administration now seems properly focused on exploiting the clash between Hezbollah and Israel as a strategic opening. The opportunity is to degrade Hezbollah and further isolate its enablers in Syria and Iran.

OVER the past week, with rockets exploding among the cafes of Beirut and in the streets of Haifa, the world has been stunned by the rising ferocity of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia. But equally surprising, to many, has been the way the conflict has illuminated the sweeping changes that are reshaping the entire Middle East.

In war innocents pay a heavy price. There is no way to fight a war without “collateral damage” to civilians unless the opposing armies agree to meet in a desert and let the superior force prevail. It certainly cannot be done when the aggressor is a terrorist army that deliberately places its headquarters, its weapons depots, its missile launchers and its staging bases in the middle of large urban centers like Beirut, or in the small villages abutting the border of its victims.

When Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah held his press conference to declare his new victory over his enemy, Israel, he was triggering –probably without knowing- a new era in the history of Lebanon and the region. “We will continue in faithfulness to our line,” he declared, in legitimizing his cross border attack on an Israeli patrol, killing soldiers and kidnapping two. But the real “fidelity” Nasrallah was referring to wasn’t to his captured men in Israeli jails, but to the regimes decision-makers in Tehran and Damascus. The “operation of July” came as a tipping point in a larger conflict, which superseded Hezbollah’s detainee, the Shebaa farms, borders skirmishes and Israeli tactical responses.

As expected, spokespersons from the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of Islamic Conference and an assortment of human rights organizations have condemned Israel for its ‘disproportionate’ response to Hezbollah’s unprovoked attacks. They have called for an immediate ceasefire, which is exactly what Hezbollah wants in order to stay in place and build up for more devastating future attacks.

This Mideast crisis is different from all other Mideast crises. Over the years, since the Six-Day War of 1967, the United States and other onlookers have become accustomed to a certain kind of Middle East crisis. Palestinians or their sympathizers would threaten and wreak violence against Israel. Israel would respond, sometimes locally, sometimes by major actions like the defensive War of 1973 or the occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982. The cry would go up: Let the cycle of violence end, let Israel give up land it has occupied in return for peace.

President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from that of his predecessors.

As the misery and wreckage mount in Lebanon, I find myself wondering what happened to two news items, one old and the other very recent. The old item concerns the fate of Lt. Col. Ron Arad, an Israeli air force officer whose plane went down over Sidon 20 years ago and who was captured by Hezbollah. He was at one point offered as a bargaining chip for Hezbollah prisoners, and letters from him were produced as proof that he was alive. A strong but unconfirmed report indicated that he had been taken to Iran, or even sold to Iran, which would have been a fairly extreme form of rendition. In any event, Hezbollah's Lebanese chieftain Hassan Nasrallah has since announced that Lt. Col. Arad is dead, and that his remains have been "lost," so that his family has no information and nothing to bury.

Imagine yourself as a heavily bearded 46-year-old Shiite cleric from Lebanon named Hassan Nasrallah. Your job title is secretary general of Hezb Allah, or Party of God, which holds 14 of parliament's 128 seats, including a seat in the cabinet. You've provoked a war with Israel, to the dismay of many Lebanese, though by no means of all. Refugees are streaming northward as an Israeli land invasion threatens. The south Beirut office where you worked until last week has been reduced to rubble by Israeli warplanes.

This week marks the anniversary of a massacre eerily connected to today’s news—the July 18, 1994 terrorist bombing of the seven-story Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 95 people and wounding more than 200. A similar bombing in March 1992 destroyed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people. The governments of Argentina, the US, and Israel suspect Iran of carrying out the attacks through its Hezbollah hit men.

Opening a security conference in Tehran on July 8, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad exhorted the Islamic world to mobilize against Israel and "remove the Zionist regime." The nations of the region are growing furious, he said. "It will not be long before this intense fury will lead to a huge explosion."

For the millions of Christian Lebanese, driven out of our homeland, "Thank you Israel," is the sentiment echoing from around the world. The Lebanese Foundation for Peace, an international group of Lebanese Christians, made the following statement in a press release to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert concerning the latest Israeli attacks against Hezbollah:"We urge you to hit them hard and destroy their terror infrastructure. It is not [only] Israel who is fed up with this situation, but the majority of the silent Lebanese in Lebanon who are fed up with Hezbollah and are powerless to do anything out of fear of terror retaliation."

As the violence in the Middle East escalates, it is hard not to conclude that every player involved directly or indirectly has badly miscalculated. This conflict will not end by a restoration of the status quo ante. Israel will refuse to allow a replay of the last two weeks. This means that there must be a dramatic change in both Lebanon and the Palestinian territories that satisfies Israel's security concerns and sends the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table in a permanently calm atmosphere.

Today, we the G-8 Leaders express our deepening concern about the situation in the Middle East, in particular the rising civilian casualties on all sides and the damage to infrastructure. We are united in our determination to pursue efforts to restore peace. We offer our full support for the UN Secretary General's mission presently in the region.

Once again Lebanon finds itself a major player in a war it did not choose to fight in. And once again Lebanon is paying the price. So who stands to profit from the latest developments in Lebanon? Certainly not the Lebanese who are once again seeing their country destroyed right in front of their eyes.

Yesterday's events, in which members of Hamas and a group known as the Popular Resistance Committees attacked a military base in Southern Israel, killing two Israeli soldiers and kidnapping a third, represents a dangerous escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

A widely-publicized attack on supporters of Israel by two leading academics commits a fair number of inaccuracies not the least of which is their characterization of controversies surrounding the Israel Lobby as they manifest themselves on American campuses

Saddam Hussein had begun showering Israel with scuds. David's upscale community in Ra'nana, where he and his family lived, where his wife was in the hospital, was also being attacked. Earlier in the week, another terrorist bomb had exploded somewhere in Israel -killing the young, the old and the innocent.

The results of the heavy fighting that raged Sunday along the Israeli-Lebanese border was clearly seen from Mount Adir near the border fence.

The ad pulls no punches. Israeli withdrawals from south Lebanon and Gaza, it says, have played into Al Qaeda's hands and increased the terror threat "for Israel and for us." Olmert's proposed "convergence" program in the West Bank - a follow-up to last year's unilateral retreat from the Gaza Strip, when 21 communities were destroyed and 9,000 Israelis were expelled - will only intensify that threat. "Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," the ad bitingly observes. "We cannot afford any more of this insanity."

In the wake of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Washington, press attention continues to focus almost entirely on the latest chapter in a story that began with Hamas' creation nearly 19 years ago: the terrorist organization's conflict with Israel. But the mainstream media thus far has largely overlooked another story, one which doesn't fit the ordinary paradigm of Arab vs. Jew: the fact that Hamas' relations with Jordan are worsening, and the same may be about to occur with Egypt.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in Washington, where he will be asking for advice and assistance in financing the withdrawal of 50,000 to 100,000 Israeli settlers from 90% to 95% of the West Bank and major portions of Jerusalem, and for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to be repositioned largely near the security barrier Israel is constructing. Most Americans are inclined to believe that such disengagement may be a reasonable step toward a two-state solution, even if some territorial disputes remain to be negotiated. It is also widely assumed that Palestinian hostility to Israel is fueled by despair that can only be reduced by Israeli concessions. Both assumptions, however, may be fundamentally flawed.

When Ehud Olmert, the new Israeli Prime Minister comes calling at the White House this Tuesday, his main objective will be to receive President George W. Bush’s support for and Israeli retreat from the West Bank and Samaria of the Bible, the historic birthplace of the Jewish people. President Bush should voice his strongest opposition to this dangerous and reckless scheme.

Current issues in U.S.-Israeli relations include Israel’s military sales to China, inadequate Israeli protection of U.S. intellectual property, and espionage-related cases.

An investigation into the attempted attack on April 26th 2006 reveals that it was carried out by the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip under the direction of Hamas.

The suicide bombing attack carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) at the old Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv murdered nine people: six Israeli civilians, a Jewish tourist from France and two workers from Romania. As of April 20, approximately 30 of the wounded were still hospitalized, two of them in critical condition. Among the wounded are a French citizen, a Slovakian and two holders of both American and Israeli citizenship.

Following the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), charged Hamas leader Ismail Haniya with the task of forming of a new government.

Is al-Qaida setting up a base in the Palestinian territories? Are Osama bin Laden's mujahedeen positioning themselves within easy striking distance of Israel? Both Israeli and Palestinian officials believe that to be the case. However Hamas, who recently won the elections and will form the next Cabinet, denies the presence of any al-Qaida operatives in the PA.

Ariel Sharon always claimed that his achievement in doubling the Likud's Knesset representation from 19 seats to 38 in the last Knesset was a success for what he saw as his pragmatism - the readiness for "painful compromise," the robust alliance with the Bush administration.

This report provides an overview of the new political realities in the West Bank and Gaza after the election, the challenges Fatah and Hamas face, and possible implications for U.S. policy.

In a Capitol Hill briefing held today on Hamas's strategy after the Palestinian elections, MEMRI's President Yigal Carmon presented an assessment of this strategy and its limitations, as well some policy recommendations.

Israel has always had to be on guard against enemies to have a clear-eyed view of potential threats, and to confront dangers squarely. Throughout its history, the country has faced sudden, random acts of terrorism -- attacks intended to shake Israel's confidence and break the will of its people.

Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council has set off a flurry of speculation about the possible implications for regional politics beyond the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.

When the President of Iran calls for "wiping Israel off the map," while his country provides weapons and training to terror groups, and the International Atomic Energy Agency officially declares that it is in violation of its commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty prohibiting the development of nuclear weapons, what can the advocates of human security and multilateral disarmament offer in response?

The massive electoral victory of Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections has created an entirely new strategic reality for Israel which vastly increases the importance of the Jordan Valley (a desert zone almost devoid of population) for Israel's security in the near term.

The best way to provide Israel with that additional security is to upgrade its relationship with the collective defense arm of the West: NATO.

Hamas' landslide victory in last month's Palestinian legislative elections is largely reminiscent of the great electoral triumph of Algeria's Islamist movement, the Islamic Salvation Front, in the early 1990s.

It is impossible to deny the reason for such disproportional empathy with the Palestinians. Through history, each group that has blamed the Jews has been utterly convinced that its own unique reason for doing so is fair and obvious. Surely, they say, the Jews would recognize they are at fault if only they'd stop crying "Anti-semitism!"

The idea is as logical as it is radical: The notion of Israeli membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is bubbling to the surface after recent events that have crystallized the threats to Israel and how common they are to the dangers confronting the U.S. and Europe.

The U.S. and EU should also withhold all funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and call for an immediate inquiry into how it has been spending donors’ money as well as allegations that it has hired members of terrorist organizations and stoked anti-Semitism among Palestinian refugees.

Nuestra posición para el diálogo es que Hamas renuncie a la violencia, que reconozca a Israel y que reconozca los acuerdos que se concluyeron entre la OLP e Israel, en especial, los acuerdos de Oslo. Así es que ese es el marco en el que podríamos considerar tener un diálogo con el Hamas. Esta posición es la posición francesa que fue retomada por la Unión Europea y por el Cuarteto.

Hamas’ surprising victory in the recent Palestinian parliamentary elections—the first democratic elections to date—have raised a number of questions, not least due to the steep rate of the movement’s success and its sheer unstoppable rise to power.

Many Palestinian Christians expressed shock and now wait to see what will develop following Hamas's upset victory in January's parliamentary elections, Palestine's first since 1996.

With Hamas dominating the Palestinian Authority, Jordan could find itself sandwiched between the pro-Iranian forces in Iraq and a pro-Iranian Palestinian Authority. In addition, should Israel face a new round of armed Palestinian violence, its ability to isolate the Hamas regime from external reinforcement will be a key security requirement.

Which is all the more reason for the U.S. to promote a more serious diplomatic response suggested to us last week over lunch at the Journal by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar: Begin NATO accession talks with Israel.

The Bush administration allowed the Palestinian Authority to take sole credit for U.S.-funded projects intended to help its prospects in today's Palestinian elections. This marked a sudden reversal of a recent policy to take direct credit for development projects in the Middle East as part of a new public diplomacy effort to improve America's image.

The Palestinian people have voted for change, but it is the view of the Quartet that their aspirations for peace and statehood, as articulated by President Abbas in his statement following the closing of polls yesterday, remain unchanged. The Quartet reiterates its view that there is a fundamental contradiction between armed group and militia activities and the building of a democratic state. A two-state solution to the conflict requires all participants in the democratic process to renounce violence and terror, accept Israel's right to exist, and disarm, as outlined in the Roadmap.

This is the path Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced several years ago. We - who were his partners in its formation - worked with him in order to establish a new public movement, which will determine our path in the coming years, and which will propel Israel forward.

Hamas is set to join the Palestinian legislature and possibly the government after next week’s elections. The U.S. and EU currently avoid (in the American case, bar) contacts with the Islamist movement, deny funding to projects with Hamas-run municipalities, and threaten to halt aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas joins it.

The terrorist attack in Netanya in the first week of December is but the latest in a string of suicide bombings carried out by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) after the declaration of tahdia by mainstream Palestinian organizations.

Hamas’ sweeping gains in the fourth round of the Palestinian Authority (PA) municipal elections, held on December 16, completed its evolution as the dominant faction in local politics, with significant ramifications for national Palestinian politics as well.

The political propaganda machine has created many such myths to fuel their war against the Jewish state. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East that elects its leaders in free elections and guarantees rights to its citizens, and honors those rights. Yet Israel is the target of those who claim to be fighting for “human rights.”

Israel this week completed its disengagement from Gaza and from areas of the northern West Bank. Responsibility for these areas has been handed over to the Palestinian Authority.

The death of Yasser Arafat (Nov. 2004) and the election of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) for Chairman of the Palestinian Authority marked the beginning of a new era, or rather a new phase, in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian violent confrontation that had started in September 2000. In this new era, terrorist attacks were supposed to stop and there was supposed to be a lull in the fighting, based on an agreement achieved in Cairo between the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian terrorist organizations. The fundamental disagreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority should have been resolved by resuming dialogue and negotiations in the spirit of the agreements achieved in the Sharm el-Sheikh summit (February 8, 2005).

Viewed through the prism of the Turkish media, the visit to Israel of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was not just another visit of a Turkish state dignitary to yet another foreign country. That is because Turkish-Israeli relations are widely seen, not as a “bilateral” matter, but rather as part of a much broader and more intricate framework containing major Middle Eastern, European and, of course, American components.

Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S). April 2005. This article will both analyze Syrian interests in Lebanon and examine the main stages of Syria’s assumption of control of it, from the beginning of the civil war to the régime of Bashar Assad. It will also examine the weakening of that control, culminating in Hariri’s assassination, mass demonstrations of opponents of the “Syrian order” and its Hezbollah-led supporters.

A spokeswoman on behalf of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana issued a statement (Nov 25, 2004) denying Solana or his office staff had met or held “direct contacts” with Hamas or other terrorist organizations on the EU list of banned terrorist organizations. Yet, in an interview given to the BBC soon afterwards (Nov 25, 2004), Solana mentioned that he had “had direct contact with Hamas, but not in the last few days.”

The United States is working with Palestinians and Israelis to improve security on the ground. Building true security for Israelis and Palestinians demands an immediate, strong and sustained effort to combat terrorism in all its forms.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met this morning (Tuesday, 15.3.05) with French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who arrived in Israel for the dedication of the new Yad Vashem museum.

The one-day meeting held in London on March 1 to mobilize global support for the Palestinian Authority was a fallback position for the participants, many of whom would have much preferred a full-blown international conference to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Parte del trabajo en curso del Proyecto de monitorización MEMRI TV es monitorizar las declaraciones de las principales organizaciones terroristas, como Al-Qa'ida o Hezboláh. Lo siguiente son extractos de dos discursos del líder de Hezboláh, el jeque Hassan Nasralah.

En este artículo, 'Uweis debate las condiciones de las Brigadas de los Mártires de Al Aqsa con respecto al cese de la violencia. Lo siguiente es extracto del artículo.

Following are Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting today (Sunday), 27 February 2005