Communications

As the US presidential transition approaches, indications are multiplying that the incoming Trump administration will seek a regional accord with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Building on the Abraham Accords and the work of the Biden team, the deal would include a defense treaty between the United States and Saudi Arabia, normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and...

The Israel Defense Forces thwarted an attack by Hezbollah on a number of strategic targets in Israel's north and center on Sunday. Had the attack succeeded, we would have already been in the midst of a major conflict, one that may still be unavoidable – and which we may have to be the ones to initiate. The price will be high and the current timing is not opportune. Israel...

Israel's 'go it alone' strategy has had a rude awakening: it needs far more backing from the US and Arab allies to confront Iran and its malevolent partners, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Biden's post-war plan offers that lifeline, but there's one more element the president should add.

“The Biden Administration believes,” Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national-security adviser and the author of “Israeli National Security,” told me, “that Bibi has no coherent way of coping with the long term, or fully achieving his government’s military goals. It believes that the fighting must be scaled back in favor of a diplomatic track, whose centerpiece is...

Over the last four months, as Israel has waged a devastating war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, politicians, scholars, and observers from around the world have debated the future of a post-war Middle East. As is often the case – and understandably so – the majority of these discussions, proposals, and pleas revolve around the idea of a “two-state solution”: Jewish and...

Chuck Freilich, also former Israeli deputy national security advisor and senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, told Breaking Defense, “I think there is a danger this could end up being just another big round.” Freilich was referring to similar campaigns waged by Israel in 2009, 2014 and other conflicts in Gaza, which failed to root out Hamas. The...

“I tell you what many of us will want to happen, and we then need to have a reality check,” says Prof Manuel Trajtenberg, an economist and executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The idea is to take this terrible event, and turn that into an opportunity; to do something that was unthinkable just before … a long term settlement with the...