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Nearly a year after a devastating war, Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers appear to have formed an unspoken alliance in a common battle against the shared threat of jihadis aligned with the Islamic State group. While Israel and Hamas remain arch-enemies, both have an interest in preserving an uneasy calm that has prevailed since the fighting ended in a cease-fire last August -- a stalemate that is largely the result of a lack of options on either side.

Republican senators criticized the Bush administration Wednesday over its policies in Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian territories, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's first testimony on Capitol Hill in months exposed her to a tough grilling from some members of her own party. "I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think they're getting worse in Iraq, they're getting worse in Iran," Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., told Rice as she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rice also had a tense exchange with moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., over the pace of progress toward Israeli-Palestinian...

Over the past two decades Israel has managed to destroy its regional reputation. With our own hands, we have twice shown our neighbors they have little reason to tie their fates to ours. We are unreliable. In 1994, Israel betrayed the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza who had helped us fight against PLO terrorists for decades. Open season on our Palestinian allies officially began in July 1994 with the entrance of thousands of PLO terrorists – led by Yasser Arafat – into Gaza and Jericho. Arafat’s henchmen did not limit their murderous wrath to the Palestinians who saved countless...

Iran’s support for international terrorist groups remained undiminished last year and even expanded in some respects, the Obama administration said Friday, less than two weeks before the deadline for completing a nuclear deal that could provide Tehran with billions of dollars in relief from economic sanctions. The assessment offered a worrying sign of even worse terror-related violence to come after a year in which extremists in the Middle East, Africa and Asia committed 35 percent more terrorist acts, killed nearly twice as many people and almost tripled the number of kidnappings worldwide. Statistics released by the State Department on Friday...

It is one thing to hate Greeks or Turks, for want of example, and quite a different thing to hate Jews. Likewise, to hate this country or that one is not akin to hating Israel. The faultless logic of a felon explains all. Asked why he robbed banks Willie Sutton explained, “That’s where the money is.” Well, Israel is where six million Jews are, and Iran is not the only power that, day and night, aches to wipe them off the face of the earth. Clearly there’s more to hating Israel than meets the eye. By “more” I mean a...

TEHRAN — Women have been "forbidden" from watching Iran play the U.S. volleyball team on Friday night despite the government signaling it would loosen restrictions on females attending sports events. Earlier this month, Iran's Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Shahindokht Molaverdi announced that a limited number of women — mainly members of players' families — would be allowed at upcoming men's volleyball matches. In an interview with The Associated Press, Molaverdi said women could also now watch live basketball, handball and tennis. However, women would not be allowed to attend soccer, swimming and wrestling. Hardliners objected angrily to...

A Knesset Channel poll published Thursday indicates that almost one half of the Israeli public agrees with MK Michael Oren (Kulanu), the former Israeli ambassador in the US, who said this week that US President Barack Obama has “deliberately” caused a deterioration in US-Israel ties. […] “From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran,” wrote Oren. Obama abandoned the two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America, he accused. …

A Palestinian terrorist died in clashes with the IDF near Ramallah Sunday morning, after his attack on an army jeep backfired quite spectacularly. Abdallah Ghanayem, 21, died after being struck by the vehicle during clashes that erupted in the village of Kfar Malik following a dawn Israeli army raid, the Palestinian Authority sources said. An IDF spokesman confirmed to AFP that a Palestinian had died - after he threw an incendiary device at a jeep and the vehicle overturned on him. It was the second Palestinian terrorist killed in the past week,....

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey’s 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it...

Less than three weeks remaining to the June 30 deadline set for the P5+1 to reach an agreement with Iran in negotiations over its nuclear program, tens of thousands of Iranian exiles from across the globe rallied on June 13 raising their voice in protest to the regime in Iran. Over 600 prominent international dignitaries from 69 countries joined the gathering in Villepinte near Paris in support of Iranian opposition calling for regime change in Iran. The keynote speaker of this gathering was Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the umbrella opposition body composed of...

Paris – As the June 30 deadline approaches for a final nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, Iranians from all over the world overcrowded Villepinte Hall on Saturday June 13. They were Iranians from all walks of life with different tendencies, gathered in an annual meeting staged by National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The crowd wore Blue- colored shirts and stayed applauding the speakers for hours, featuring burning desire for freedom and democracy and demonstrating their desperate to topple the ayatollahs in Iran. Hundreds of figures and MPs from the US, Europe, Canada, Australia and the Middle...

olitics: The danger of foreign influence-buying through foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation is seen in millions of dollars of donations from Issam Fares, a Lebanese politician and billionaire enemy of Israel. In the case of Hillary Clinton, the adage that the past is prologue is both a truism and a warning of possible things to come. Just as Johnny Chung famously compared the first Clinton White House to a subway turnstile in which you put money to gain access, the Clinton Foundation is looking to be that turnstile on steroids, with dangerous implications for both American and Israeli security....

Hezbollah, a radical Islamist movement, is recruiting Druze, Christian and Sunni men to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Lebanese daily news website the Daily Star reported Wednesday. The recruitment process, which is taking place in east Lebanon, is reportedly still ongoing. The new recruits are offered weapons and trainings to “to counter the threat of ISIS and its affiliates.” Lebanon is engaged in a battle against jihadists from ISIS and the Nusra Front along its northern and northeastern border with Syria

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan isn’t the only loser in last Sunday’s elections. President Obama had made Erdogan a focus of his policy. The voters in that troubled NATO country voted against Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and in so doing, slapped President Obama. President Obama went to Ankara in April, 2009, for an early edition of his Apology Tours. He spoke to the Turkish Parliament assuring deputies there that “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” Every challenge that we face is more easily met if we tend to our own democratic...

Israel has often complained that UNRWA, the UN body dealing with "Palestinian refugees," merely exists to continue the conflict without resettling the people it treats as the UN does with all other refugees, but apparently the Palestinian Arabs are unhappy with the organization too - for not giving them enough, and for giving too much to their brethern in Syria's Yarmouk neighborhood. Residents of Gaza defined as "refugees," namely the descendants of Arab residents who left Israel in the 1948 War of Independence, are protesting against UNRWA after the latter transferred resources to displaced Palestinian Arab residents of the Yarmouk...

The leader of a powerful Iraqi Shiite militia that is operating against the Islamic State has threatened to attack the US after members of allied militia were killed in a blast in Anbar province over the weekend. Shiite militias have claimed that the US killed the militiamen in an airstrike, but US officials denied that aircraft were operating in the area when the blast took place. Akram Abbas al Kabi, the “secretary general” of the Harakat Nujaba, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia, blamed the US for a an explosion near Abu Ghraib last weekend that purportedly killed 10 members of the...

JERUSALEM, Israel -- What does the Presbyterian Church USA and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters have in common? They both support boycotting Israel, a sweeping movement that's trying to delegitimize the Jewish state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says a great struggle and international campaign is being waged against his country to "blacken its name." "It is not connected to our actions; it is connected to our very existence," Netanyahu said. "It does not matter what we do; it matters what we symbolize and what we are." Just this week, the CEO of French mobile phone giant Orange said he'd cut...

Rocket alerts sounded in Ashkelon and the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council on Saturday evening. Residents reported hearing at least one explosion. The Israel Defense Forces deployed Iron Dome missile defense batteries in several locations in the south this week following several incidents of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip toward Israeli territory.

â—¾Fatah is afraid that Hamas's chances of winning the elections, especially in the West Bank, are very high. Hamas is not willing to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip, certainly not to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, who were expelled from there in 2007. â—¾Each party cares only about its own interests, while at the same time lying to the world that it is all Israel's fault. Hamas continues to invest enormous resources in digging new tunnels, in preparation for a new war with Israel. â—¾All this is being done with the help of anti-Israel governments around the world, and...

President Obama and his administration continue to support the global Islamist militant group known the Muslim Brotherhood. A White House strategy document regards the group as a moderate alternative to more violent Islamist groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The policy of backing the Muslim Brotherhood is outlined in a secret directive called Presidential Study Directive-11, or PSD-11. The directive was produced in 2011 and outlines administration support for political reform in the Middle East and North Africa, according to officials familiar with the classified study. Efforts to force the administration to release the directive or portions of...