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In Israel, a combatant is a citizen in uniform. His state ought to have a compelling reason for jeopardizing his life. There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the warned neighbors of an enemy or terrorist. Israel should favor the lives of its own soldiers over the lives of the well-warned neighbors of a terrorist when it is operating in a territory that it does not effectively control, because in such territories it does not bear the moral responsibility for properly separating between dangerous individuals and harmless ones.
Mahmoud Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood. 
In the West there is a growing trend to view Hamas as separate from al-Qaeda in order to open a political dialogue with Hamas, but is this view correct? Hamas was founded in 1987 as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama bin Laden was educated in Saudi Arabia by Muhammad Qutb of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Abdullah Azzam of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, came out of the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood still defines its goal as "a world Islamic state."
Israel must simultaneously pursue three interdependent tracks for advancing Israeli-Palestinian relations: capacity-building measures that foster the rule of law within the Palestinian Authority, regional economic cooperation, and meaningful political dialogue. If we are to proceed with a viable diplomatic process with the Palestinians, it is critically important to curb malign Iranian influence in the region and its support of terror proxies like Hizbullah and Hamas.
The decision of the Lebanese government to recognize the continued legitimate existence of Hizbullah's armed militia demonstrates less a case that Hizbullah underwent a process of "Lebanonization," but rather that the Lebanese state has undergone a process of "Hizbullazation." 
Two factors have led to Turkey's shift away from Israel and toward Syria. First, Turkey no longer needed Israeli assistance to pressure the Syrian government to change its policy of providing safe-haven to the terrorist Kurdish Worker's Organization (PKK). Second, in the past seven years, once secular Turkish politics have undergone a profound Islamist transformation. 
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad published a plan in August 2009 to unilaterally declare statehood after a two-year state-building process. However, any unilateral action that undermines the existing Oslo interim framework could jeopardize the peace process and remove the basis for the existence of the Palestinian Authority. Were the Fayyad plan to be adapted and integrated within a resumed negotiating process, on the basis of the extensive infrastructure that already exists in the Oslo Accords, then this plan could serve as a constructive starting point for any new round of negotiations.
The human rights organizations which reported on Palestinian casualties in Gaza failed to mention the affiliation of hundreds of Palestinian security personnel who were members of terrorist organizations and who were trained fighters, thus artificially inflating the list of "civilians" killed by the IDF. Among the 343 members of the Palestinian security forces who were killed, 286 have been identified as terror organization members (83 percent). Another 27 fighters belonging to units undergoing infantry training raises this total to 313 (91 percent).
Iran is vigorously pursuing several missile and space programs at an almost feverish pace with impressive achievements. The solid-propellant Sejil missile signifies a breakthrough. Iran will face no significant hurdle in upscaling the Sejil to put most of the EU under threat.
In seeking to constrain Israeli settlement activity, the U.S. is essentially trying to obtain additional Israeli concessions that were not formally required according to Israel's legal obligations under the Oslo Accords. The U.S. and Israel have already negotiated specific guidelines for settlement activity so that it will not diminish the territory of a future Palestinian entity. Given the fact that the amount of territory taken up by the built-up areas of all the settlements in the West Bank is 1.7% of the territory, the marginal increase in territory that might be affected by natural growth is infinitesimal. It might be that the present tension in U.S.-Israeli relations is not over settlements, but rather over the extent of an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank that the Obama administration envisions.
- Nadav Shragai 
The central conflict of the Middle East is not territorial but ideological; not about borders but about Islamic Jihadism and Western liberty. No ideology, least of all radical Islam, can be defeated by concessions, which encourage, energize, and inspire Jihadists. Those who wish for peace must face and assimilate this fact, and realize that territorial concessions, or any concessions in any realm in the struggle against militant Islam, have been consistently counterproductive.
Contrary to popular belief, conventional armies can indeed defeat terrorist insurgencies. This study details the six basic conditions which, if met, enable an army to fight and win the war against terrorism, among which are control of the ground where the insurgency is being waged, acquiring relevant intelligence for operations against the terrorists themselves, and isolating the insurgency from cross-border reinforcement with manpower or material. 
The highly acclaimed Daily Alert Internet newsletter,
produced for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations by the Jerusalem Center, offers 100 hyperlinked
excerpts of Israel-related news stories each week from mainstream
English and Hebrew media sources.
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon first proposed his Gaza Disengagement Plan he did not seek a quid pro quo from the Palestinian side. Instead, he obtained one from the United States in the form of a letter from President George W. Bush, dated April 14, 2004, in which the U.S. assured Israel that with respect to the disputed West Bank, Israel was entitled to defensible borders. How the idea of defensible borders works into the post-Iraq War Middle East is fully examined as well as the territorial, legal, and policy implications of this critical U.S. guarantee.
As the uses of force in Somalia, Kosovo, and Iraq show, Western armies are very concerned about protecting the lives of their soldiers, and to that end are willing to risk many civilian lives. They also find acceptable the notion that civilian lives can be forfeited in order to attain important military goals. 
The principle of universal jurisdiction has been, and continues to be, an important tool in the legal practitioner's tool box and an essential means for achieving justice for international crimes. Unfortunately, the principle has also become a political device employed for far more cynical means and far less noble purposes. In the early 1960s, Israel was one of the first states to invoke the principle of universal jurisdiction in its groundbreaking trial against Adolf Eichmann, the "architect of the Holocaust."
Amb. Dore Gold and Judge Richard Goldstone discussed the UN Report on war crimes in Gaza at Brandeis University on Nov. 5 
Israel is a multi-racial society, and the Arab minority actively participates in the political process. There are Arab parliamentarians, Arab judges including on the Supreme Court, Arab cabinet ministers, Arab heads of hospital departments, Arab university professors, Arab diplomats in the Foreign Service, and very senior Arab police and army officers. Incitement to racism in Israel is a criminal offence, as is discrimination on the basis of race or religion. The comparison of Israel to South Africa under white supremist rule has been utterly rejected by those with intimate understanding of the old Apartheid system.
The year 2008 marks sixty years since the establishment of the State of Israel. Yet, today, notwithstanding a 1922 League of Nations Mandate affirming the Jewish people's right to reconstitute itself in its ancient homeland, Israel's fifty-nine year membership in the United Nations and its extraordinary achievements, the very legitimacy of a Jewish state remains an issue of public debate. This publication, based on a conference held on March 26, 2008, engages in a critical examination of the debate on Israel's legitimacy, and the rights of a Jewish nation-state and Jewish self-determination among other nation-states of the world and other nations' claims to self-determination. 
- Amb. Dore Gold, Amb. Meir Rosenne, Prof. Ruth Lapidoth, Amb. Yehuda Blum, Amb. Richard Holbrooke 
Israeli-Syrian negotiations in 1999-2000 discussed security arrangements to compensate Israel for the loss of the Golan Heights. The idea was to guarantee that in case of war, IDF forces could quickly return to the place where they are currently stationed. This analysis demonstrates that Israel does not possess a plausible solution to its security needs without the Golan Heights. Not only was the "solution" proposed in the year 2000 implausible at the time, but changing circumstances have rendered Israel's forfeiture of the Golan today an even more reckless act.
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., Saudi Arabia was under intense scrutiny since 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. In Feb. 2002, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed to Israel "full withdrawal" from the territories in return for "full normalization." In a flash, Abdullah transformed the discourse from Saudi involvement in terrorism to Saudi peacemaking. However, by the time the Abdullah trial balloon reached the Arab summit in Beirut in March 2002, the initiative had been modified and its terms hardened. It watered down "full normalization," rewarded Syria with a presence on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and enshrined a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel.
IDF Maj.-Gen. (res.) Doron Almog addressed a conference in London on Nov. 26, sponsored by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Global Law Forum and the Henry Jackson Society, through a video link, since according to British law he could be arrested in Britain for allegations made by Palestinian activists with regard to his past efforts to fight terrorist organizations in Gaza.
In every flare-up of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the air is thick with accusations of violations of international law. Yet criticism of Israeli behavior lacks any basis in international law. By contrast, criticism ought to be voiced about illegal Palestinian behavior for launching rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli civilians.
Iran has accelerated its quest for regional supremacy through its mobilization of both Shiite and Sunni terror surrogates, including Hizbullah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq and in the Gulf, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades in the Palestinian territories. This pivotal Iranian role has unfortunately not been fully appreciated, and even downplayed in certain quarters.
The main recurrent motif in Arab cartoons concerning Israel is "the devilish Jew." This image conveys the idea that Jews behave like Nazis, kill children and love blood. The similarity with themes promulgated by the Nazis is evident. Many Arab cartoons praise suicide bombing or call for murder. The collective image of the Jews thus projected lays the groundwork for a possible genocide.
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