Ballistic Blowout
Together with the bellicose stance of Iran’s leaders, Teheran’s missile and WMD progress have raised existential fears in Israel which have been mostly absent since 1973. Israel is not helpless, however, and hanging over this tense situation is the question of Israel’s capability of intercepting a missile attack from Iran. Such capability exists, but assessing its strategic effectiveness is a complex problem. Paradoxically, although Israel has been unable to stop the unrelenting barrage of crude Qassam rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, its defences against short- to medium-range missiles are probably the most comprehensive in the world....read more
Latest Updates
Hamas Consolidates Gaza Power/ The Kadima Primary
Readers will likely be aware of the drama of the past few days, where Hamas in Gaza used the pretext of a bombing to attack a Fatah-linked clan in Gaza, killing many, and sending more than 180 members of the clan fleeing to Israel....read more
Olmert Throws in the Towel
As readers will largely be aware, on Wednesday night embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced to Israelis that he would not be contesting the leadership primary for his party, Kadima, scheduled for September 17, and will resign the prime ministership at that time....read more
Latest Iranian nuclear developments
Today's Update leads with a report from Middle East media monitoring organisation MEMRI that summarises two articles from Kuwaiti newspapers alleging Iran is building a secret nuclear reactor in the south west of the country....read more
Hezbollah and the Future of Lebanon
The Israel-Hezbollah exchange of prisoners for the bodies of abducted soldiers last week has renewed the focus on the political battle occurring inside Lebanon, as Hezbollah tried to capitalise on the hero's welcome given to released terrorist and child-murderer Samir Kuntar. Thi...read more
Opinion
Preventing a nuclear-armed Iran is the issue - Colin Rubenstein
IN the nuclear crisis with Iran, the focus of the international community must be to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state, full stop. It is cavalier and dangerous to assume that we can "manage" the threats from a nuclear armed Iran by strategies such as de...read more
Peace will elude us until Arab world accepts the reality of Israel - Bren Carlill
The reason Israeli-Palestinian peace seems so elusive is one of simple rejectionism. Much of the Palestinian and wider Arab elite still fundamentally reject Israel's right to exist. Given that Israel has existed for 60 years, this sounds bizarre. But it explains why books, Palest...read more
Don't downplay the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran - Colin Rubenstein
A nuclear-armed Iran would completely alter, for the worse, the strategic landscape of the region. Ahmadinejad appears to be driven by a religious zealotry that welcomes the apocalypse, and has more than once predicted Israel's imminent disappearance while parading ballistic miss...read more
Myth busting - Bren Carlill
It’s time to debunk some myths. Israel did not replace or destroy any country. It did not prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The Palestinian refugee crisis occurred because of the actions of Palestinian and other Arab fighters. The reason the Arab-Israel conf...read more
Background
Lessons and Learning
It was a fitting finale to a war most Israelis would rather forget. As thousands followed the coffins of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose bodies arrived in Israel two years after the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, a sense of sobriety, introspection and cat...read more
Europa Europa: Sarkozy's "Club Med"
In European terms, Sarkozy pulled off a remarkable coup. Not only did he assemble the disputatious Arab parties, plus Israel, in a single room - something that only the Americans had previously been able to do - but he also raised expectations that his “Club Med” coul...read more
Deconstruction Zone: True Colours
Israel and Hezbollah revealed their true colours last month. On July 16 they carried out a macabre exchange - bodies for Israel; live prisoners and bodies for Hezbollah. In and of itself, the exchange didn’t reveal a great deal. It’s the events leading up to and follo...read more
Essay: At the Core
Why are there still people who see one particular conflict as “the Middle East conflict,” and who believe that in seeking to resolve it, they are pursuing “the Middle East peace process”? The Middle East is not analogous to Europe, it has multiple sources ...read more
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