Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

This Update leads with articles analysing the issue of Syria's relationship with Lebanon, and especially the Fatah-al-Islam group sparking violence, as well as wider Syrian foreign policy.

This Update concentrates on analysis of recent developments in Lebanon that entangle Syria, Lebanon's past overlord which still maintains ambitions to renew its direct dominance.

The Winograd Committee's Interim Report, assessing Israel's performance in the first days of last year's Hezbollah-Israel conflict, has strongly criticised Israel's prime minister, defence minister and former military chief of staff for setting impossible-to-achieve objectives and for moving without

This Update contains articles on both the conflict between the Lebanese army and the Fatah al-Islam terror group in northern Lebanon, and the ongoing fighting in Gaza.

The recent Winograd Committee preliminary report, assessing Israel's performance in last year's Hezbollah-Israel conflict, was highly critical of the relevant political and military leaders.

This Update opens with a good piece analysing the latest US-led effort to push Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation forward...

A lot of myths surround the release of the Winograd commission report into the Olmert Government's conduct of last year's war on Islamists.

Today's Update focuses on some of the discussions of the wider security problems Israel faces which have been exposed by the Winograd report into last year's Lebanon war.

This Update features stories on Hamas' extraordinary arms build-up in the Gaza Strip, based on smuggling, and apparent efforts to continue violence against Israel, if necessary via other groups, regardless of any ceasefire agreement.

Today's Update features three pieces looking at different aspects of current Western policy toward Syria and Iran, in the wake of the regional meeting on Iraq that occurred on the weekend.

Much is being made of the supposed "reversal" of US policy announced late last week, with US Secretary of State Rice agreeing to an international conference on Iraq including Iran and Syria, with whom the US has largely avoided direct negotiations until now.

The Fatah-Hamas agreement mediated by the Saudis in Mecca in the first week of February revives a long tradition in Palestinian politics of prioritising internal unity over progress toward strategic objectives.

This Update contains three articles assessing the ongoing crisis in Lebanon, with Hezbollah and its backers still trying to overthrow the government of Fouad Siniora.

This Update is devoted primarily to the crisis in Lebanon on Tuesday, when Hezbollah and its allies launched a general strike in an effort to overthrow the anti-Syrian Siniora government...

When we talk about Lebanon, the truth is we do not know what the real score of the war was. We don't know because it is only chapter one of the war that is over, the Israeli-Hezbollah clash over south Lebanon and the Galilee. Chapter two of the war is the battle for Beirut.

The resurgence of internal Palestinian conflict in recent days sheds some light on the assertion advanced again by the report of the Iraq Study Group in Washington. This claim is that the Israeli/Palestinian question is the "core" of the problems radiating out of the Middle East. Everyone of goodwi

The bipartisan Iraq Survey Group report to US President George Bush makes some reasonable if unsurprising recommendations about military strategy in Iraq, but also two recommendations about wider Middle Eastern policy that are fundamentally flawed.

You know it's not business as usual when prosecutors from one nation file a criminal indictment against another nation'?s chief of state. But that's precisely what happened in late October when Argentine authorities laid terrorism charges against former Iranian President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani.

Anyone following the war in Lebanon in the Israeli media could not but come away engulfed in deep depression. Israelis and their media tend to focus obsessively on themselves, their own losses and failings.

The always volatile politics of Israel have, in that curiously Israeli way, returned to their normal state - that is, a state of flux. The conduct and consequences of the war against Hezbollah have seen accusations hurled back and forth between the various political parties, pundits, and serving and