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Dissolve Gaza, Expand the West Bank

Insisting any Palestinian state include the Gaza Strip poses an insuperable obstacle to their self-determination. Gaza became economically unviable after terrorism emanating from the Strip forced Jerusalem decades ago to limits its inhabitants' employment opportunities in Israel. The post-October 7th war then rendered this economically...

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Turning Wadi Gaza into an Armistice Line: Israel's Best-case Scenario.

Israeli and American policymakers began crafting detailed plans for postwar Gaza immediately after Hamas's October 7 massacres. These plans shared the flawed assumption that following an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation Hamas would no longer control Gaza's territory. However, Washington is currently pressuring Israel to...

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Netanyahu's Government Will Likely Survive Until 2026

Widespread expectations that Prime Minister Netanyahu's premiership will not outlast the war in Gaza are unfounded. His prewar coalition need not face Israeli voters until the next scheduled Knesset election in October 2026. Unless Likud's popularity soars following a successful military campaign against Hamas, no...

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Egypt Cynically Rejects a Safe Corridor for Gaza's Civilians: Muslim Countries Demand Palestinian Civilians Accept Martyrdom to Preserve the Ummah's Honor

Hamas murdering more than 800 civilians during Operation al-Aqsa Flood persuaded Jerusalem that it must finally dismantle the terrorist group committed to Israel's destruction. However, Gaza's high population density will result in appalling civilian casualties unless noncombatants can seek refuge elsewhere until Israel completes its...

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Israel's "Useless Class" Revolts Against the Supreme Court

Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli high-tech sector's court philosopher, rationalizes gutting welfare states in post-industrial economies. He claims Industrial Era governments "invested heavily in the health, education and welfare of the masses because they needed millions of healthy labourers to work in the factories." However,...

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Israel's Constitutional Crisis is Class Warfare

The Israeli Supreme Court's political orientation decreasingly reflects the country's because a majority of the Judicial Selection Committee's members are sitting justices and unelected representatives from the Israel Bar Association. Israel, like Britain, lacks a written constitution and parliamentary sovereignty prevailed until the 1990s. Before...

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Gaza Body Count

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights documentation showed that from the start of the Great Return March protests on 30 March 2018, by 26 October 2018 at least 222 Palestinians had been killed in the Gaza Strip. Of the total fatalities, 168 were killed at...

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Middle East Appetite For Fighter Jets Rages Despite Low Oil Prices

Defense sector analysts see a growing market for warplanes among Middle East nations over the next five years despite slumping oil prices in recent years. During the Dubai Airshow, which runs from November 12 to November 16, plenty of aircraft manufacturers will be angling to...

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The cat's out of the bag on US virus war -- watch out for fleas

In the Nineties I set out in my book Virus Creation Labs to tell some of the story of the anti-virus industry. As part of the job Its programmers were always keen to discover the identity of virus-writers and they became good at it. Now...

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The Situation in the Middle East: A Turkish Model of A Different Sort?

My colleague at the Naval War College, professor John Schindler, comments on the situation: "Several decades of U.S. policies towards the Middle East are unraveling in real-time, before our eyes." Tunisia's government fell; Egypt's is possibly toppling; and others (like Jordan and Yemen) are attempting...

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Hezbollah--Weber's Stepchild

With the appointment of Sunni businessman Najib Mikati as prime minister of Lebanon, Hezbollah may have achieved its critical goals: it has a "friendly" government in Lebanon, of which is also a part, which will leave its state-within-a-state alone. I do not expect that Hezbollah,...

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The Exciting Story of Stuxnet and Received Wisdom

By now you have heard of or read the exciting story of Stuxnet as a joint Israeli-US cyberweapon. The first of its kind, setting back Iran's nuclear program for years, Stuxnet ushers in a new and glorious age of cyberwar, the world is forever changed....

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Kosovo Precedent for Palestine: First Steps?

Two months ago, I raised the questionwhether, in the absence of concrete moves towards a conclusive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian question, the Palestinian leadership might unilaterally declare the existence of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even without an agreement with...

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Stuxnet: Great cyberweapon or cyberfizzle?

Chalk the excitement over Stuxnet up to the enjoyment some network security experts get from imagining themselves to be experts in everything, which in this case, is Iran's race to the bomb. It's a human thing. One gets attention on a hot story of audacious...

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Behind the Flotilla Headlines: Turkish Strategic Competition and U.S. Policy in the Middle East

By Ghassan Schbley and Scott Weiner In the wake of the Israel Defense Force raid on the Mavi Marmara ship bound for Gaza, the United States must maintain a delicate regional balance between four influential actors in the Middle East. The first is Israel, an...

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Israel's Birthday: Are the Stars Misaligned?

I have a vivid memory of the day Israel was born as I both attended a meeting called by Ben-Gurion and joined the fighting that preceded and followed. Few remember that after decades of promises to create a homeland for Jews in Palestine (the Balfour...

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The Secret Condition

The White House is hinting broadly that it is considering imposing a peace settlement on Israel and the Palestinians. Three elements of the plan the United States is to push are well known (no refugee return, a divided Jerusalem, and redrawn 1967 borders), but the...

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There is no place for 'no-solutionists'

There is no place for 'no-solutionists' cross-posted by Ori Nir Special to WJW 8 January, 2009 Increasingly, you hear them at public events and symposia. You read their analyses in the press and on blogs. They are the "no-solutionists." Ultra-skeptical, hypercynical, often giddy about their...

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Short History of Israeli Right Wing Terrorism

Cross-postedFollowing the arrest and indictment of Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, who reportedly admitted to a series of murderous terrorist attacks against Israelis and Palestinians over the past twelve years, the settlers and their supporters cried foul. Teitel is an exception, they said, a single case, a...

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Peace is the Answer to the Specter of Israel's International Isolation

Israel's deputy prime minister, Dan Meridor, spoke over the weekend in Washington about what he sees as the three chief foreign policy challenges that Israel faces today: Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the Goldstone report....

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Obama Administration's New Missile Defense Plan Is a Losing Proposition

This week, President Obama reneged on a long-standing agreement with America's allies and formally abandoned the "third site" missile defense plan. The U.S. will no longer be deploying 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, a plan formerly regarded as...

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New Op-Ed in Washington Jewish Week: The 'West-Bankization' of Israel?

8/12/2009 The 'West-Bankization' of Israel? by Ori Nir Special to WJW Israelis were recently appalled by reports of sadistic hazing in the Israel Defense Forces' tank corps. Israeli newspapers uncovered routine patterns of beating, lashing, severe humiliation and other forms of brutal behavior toward...

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The Speech that Bibi won't Give

[this was posted today on the Washington Post - Newsweek PostGlobal] The Speech Netanyahu Won't Give By Ori Nir Here's what Benyamin Netanyahu should - but most likely won't - say in his much-anticipated policy speech on Sunday. Bar Illan University President Moshe Kaveh, distinguished...

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Living with the Outcome: Elections in Lebanon By Aram Nerguizian and Ghassan Schbley

By Aram Nerguizian and Ghassan Schbley Lebanon is scheduled to hold elections Sunday [June 7], and the pro-Western political alliance favored by the United States may lose. If it does, the Obama Administration should not consider the result a triumph for Hezbollah, but a challenge....

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Israel's Lieberman: Regional fear-factor by Ori Nir

Very few people in Israel posses more influence and have a broader global strategic perspective than Major General (res.) Amos Gilad, director of the Defense Ministry's Diplomatic-Security bureau. Gilad enjoys so much clout and influence that last December he was depicted by Israel's leading Haaretz...

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Israeli Election: Possible Scenarios

With a couple of hours until the polls close across Israel, this is the best analysis I have seen so far of the possible scenarios. The author is Yossi Alpher, the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, and...

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