Middle East Task Force: Latest Articles

This was supposed to be the year in which Benjamin Netanyahu was re-crowned King of Israel -- he looked untouchable in the polls, and sitting prime minister Ehud Olmert's days looked numbered. That might still happen, but an inauspicious start to 2008 turned downright ugly this past weekend for Netanyahu when a new political scandal broke -- with him at its epicentre. Israel TV Channel 10's Raviv Druker broke the story -- not only of profligacy and embarrassing… more

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's latest Middle East trip has drawn to a close, and she is now heading back to Washington via Brussels. On being told by a reporter at a press conference in Ramallah that this was her 13th visit, and asked whether she was bringing anything new, Condi responded that 13 is not a lucky number, so maybe she needed to come back again.

Maybe the latest round of violence between Israelis and… more

Why have two of Washington's more noted journalists, The New York Times' Elizabeth Bumiller, and Glenn Kessler from the Washington Post, both come out with books about Condoleezza Rice in recent months? Certainly her story is a unique and appealing one: Rice may be both the second woman and second African-American to fill the position of secretary of state, but she is very much the first person to be both. Unusually for a Bushie, she maintains high approval ratings, and… more

The last week has been a period of grace, of partial freedom for the 1.4 million residents of the large open-air prison also known as Gaza. Last Wednesday Hamas activists apparently blew up the border barriers between Gaza and Egypt, and by morning it was a free for all. Gazans, used to being blockaded into 360 square kilometers, turned the Egyptian border towns of Rafah and El Arish into an impromptu and unlikely shopping mall/holiday resort. Tens if… more

At last week's Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert politely asked his colleagues to shut their mouths about the recently released U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

Olmert's gag order followed two weeks of unhelpful, knee-jerk reaction by some Israeli politicians caught off guard by the reports' conclusions, which found that Iran suspended its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that it acts as an essentially rational player pursuing traditional national interests of "security, prestige and… more