Israel gave the world an unusually raw look at its internal divisions this week when the annual Herzliya Security Conference, traditionally the top showcase for the country’s defense doctrines, turned into an extended food fight. By the end of Day 2 of the three-day gabfest, angry exchanges of retorts and threats had broken out on…
Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid said his centrist Yesh Atid party will topple Israel’s governing coalition should it move to annex any Israeli West Bank settlements. Lapid’s declaration came at the beginning of a barb-filled session at the annual Herzliya Conference, an Israeli policy conference hosted by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, an Israeli university. At…
Tzufim settlement outpost, western Samaria, October 2012 / Getty Images The chairman of the Knesset’s law and legislation committee on Thursday postponed, for the second time in two weeks, a scheduled vote on a bill requiring transparency in government funding of West Bank settlements. The bill has majority support in the committee, whose membership mirrors…
New outpost goes up at Eli, Judea-West Bank, February 2008, courtesy of the World Zionist Organization / Getty Images The settler movement and its right-wing Knesset allies are finding they’ve got their hands full swatting back demands from the center and left — an unusual alliance of Labor, Yesh Atid and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah —…
Israel’s peace-pact rejectionists, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon (Wikimedia Commons) Benjamin Netanyahu is looking more and more these days like he’s preparing to take on the pessimists and nay-sayers and prove them wrong. For most of the past year the cynics have been insisting that neither Netanyahu nor Palestinian Authority chief…
To understand why Shelly Yachimovich was booted out as head of the Israel Labor Party after just two years on the job, it helps to note that Labor has had a bad habit, ever since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, of changing leaders every time it holds a primary. But this time was different. Previous…
Israeli politics were turned upside down this week by the surprise acquittal on Wednesday of Avigdor Lieberman, the blunt-talking, Arab-bashing, Soviet-born former foreign minister and head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party. He had been charged with fraud, witness tampering and breach of trust for allegedly promoting a crony to an ambassadorship. The promotion was allegedly…
A bill that would legalize civil marriages in Israel was submitted to the Knesset. Under the measure presented Tuesday by the Yesh Atid party, any two people — no matter their religion or sexual orientation — could enter into a civil union with the same legal status as any marriage. The bill would create a…
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