Israel’s process of annexing West Bank territory has restored the Palestinian issue to center stage, after Jerusalem succeeded over the past decade in pushing the issue to the margins of the regional and international agendas. The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conducted a war game to examine the ramifications of Israel’s application of sovereignty over territories in the West Bank. In the scenario, following the Israeli government’s decision to apply sovereignty in limited scope to settlement blocs in the Jerusalem...
Since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the political future of this territory has cast a shadow over all other issues in Israel’s relations with Europe. Discord with the EU intensifies particularly when the Israeli-Palestinian political process stalls, even when Israel is not necessarily to blame, and when Israeli settlement activity in the region increases. Large or small-scale Israeli annexation of territory in the West Bank will elicit negative responses from Europe, deepening the divide between Israel’s senior political...
Following the signing of an agreement demarcating the maritime border between Turkey and the Government of National Accord in Libya, which inter alia disregards Greece’s claim that Rhodes and Crete have the right to an exclusive economic zone (EEZ), Ankara is threatening to send drillships in the coming months to the area where these islands are located. Turkey has already made good on similar threats in the past, when it sent drillships into the EEZ of Cyprus. The Turkish threat was issued against the backdrop of many years of...
The “application of sovereignty” is a euphemism for the unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank. This move would thoroughly upset the current state of affairs and change the rules of the game in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that Israel is now presented with what is perhaps a one-time opportunity to change the reality in the conflict arena: “Until today, Israel has always been the one that had to concede, to give, to freeze, and to withdraw…Now President Trump has said that it is...
Israel’s new government will have to review the validity of many ideas within the Israeli consensus that have guided foreign policy over the past two decades. Key questions concern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; relations between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East, particularly in the area of energy and in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; relations with the United States, including the implications of the competition between China and the US; relations with the European Union; and relations with...
The global, regional, and internal implications of the coronavirus are still not fully clear, but Israel’s 35th government will have no 100-day grace period. It must quickly restore the economy to full activity, despite the presence of the virus and the possibility of a renewed outbreak. On the security level, all the regimes in the Middle East are busy with the pandemic and internal affairs, and will most likely seek to avoid escalation in conflicts with Israel. At the same time, the risk of unplanned escalation (in Syria,...
The coronavirus crisis has elicited responses from Salafi-jihadists around the world, including Islamic State and al-Qaeda spokesmen and Islamic clerics. The range of responses has included strict guidelines for believers on how to protect themselves from the pandemic, part of the commandment to save lives, and exhortations to return to Islam and encourage believers to continue the struggle despite the blows they suffered with the disappearance of the Islamic State. The serious crisis in the West has also led to responses of gloating...
What will the world look like one year from now, and how will the corona pandemic affect the Middle East? This article presents four possible scenarios: “continuation,” in which following a temporary interruption of a few months, there is a resumption of familiar global and regional trends from the pre-corona era; “revolution,” in which there is a fundamental change in the patterns that characterized life before the crisis and the world prepares for a new illiberal world order led by China; “breakdown,” in which all global actors...
A comparative analysis enables us to examine different approaches to the challenges posed by the corona pandemic around the world. Most countries have adopted a similar coping strategy, based on three components: the first is a lockdown policy (to varying degrees), in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus and avoid overloading the health system; the second is the improvement of preparedness and readiness in health systems; and the third is a broad economic aid package in response to the sudden economic shutdown and the deep...
It is no exaggeration to say that this is the first time since World War II that such large parts of the world’s population have faced a multi-system crisis with severe and long term consequences as those of the coronavirus pandemic. In the early days of the spread of the virus it was already clear that even though the world is aware of the dangers of nuclear, chemical, and biological war and has even adopted treaties and conventions with the purpose of restricting the production and proliferation of such weapons, it is not...
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is promoting the idea of building the Istanbul Canal between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara as a waterway parallel to the Bosphorus Strait. The idea itself is not new, but Erdogan hopes that its realization will be one of the major achievements of his presidency. Facing him, Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, who was elected to the post in spite of the President’s strong support for another candidate, is one of the leading opponents of the project. The main argument against the canal is...
Despite increasing US pressure on its allies not to install Chinese fifth generation (5G) communications infrastructure, and along with the possibility of punitive measures against those who ignore such warnings, the American campaign against the Chinese company Huawei has met with limited success. Other countries face a dilemma between acceding to the US demands to avoid installing Chinese technology in their communications infrastructure and maintaining proper economic relations with the Chinese power. While some have decided in...
