Elliott Abrams

How to punish Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

A debased national movement at 70.

For more than 20 years, Saeb Erekat has been the main Palestinian negotiator in the “peace process” with Israel. This week (writing in the New York Times) he attacked the ability of the United States to be the “sole broker” or even an “honest broker” in peace talks between Israel and the…

The past week has seen widespread anti-government demonstrations in Iran, and the regime of the ayatollahs has responded with violent repression—including deadly force. Meanwhile there have been no demonstrations in Saudi Arabia, which is just as far from democracy. Why not?

President Trump on December 6 ended all hope of Middle East peace, recklessly encouraged terrorism, and ruined U.S. relations with all Arab countries.

What are the Saudis trying to do in Lebanon? They have clearly forced the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Do they want to destabilize the country? Destroy its government? Is the new Saudi approach another example of the often-alleged incompetence and overreach of the crown prince,…

President Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan shows considerable reflection among the president and his top advisers on many military questions but deep confusion on the issues of “nation-building” and democracy.

President Trump’s new strategy for Afghanistan shows considerable reflection among the president and his top advisers on many military questions but deep confusion on the issues of “nation-building” and democracy.

Among Israelis and Palestin­ians, there’s little optimism about renewed American efforts to negotiate a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. In Ramallah and Jerusalem, officials, journalists, and policy analysts have watched as industrious U.S. activity in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama…

Among Israelis and Palestin­ians, there’s little optimism about renewed American efforts to negotiate a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. In Ramallah and Jerusalem, officials, journalists, and policy analysts have watched as industrious U.S. activity in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama…

The recent campus rioting against unpopular or conservative political views is awful, but I have discovered the solution—by accident.

The Trump administration has had a rocky start. There was the defeat on Obamacare, staffing the departments has been far too slow, the National Security Advisor lasted only three weeks, there has clearly been infighting in the White House staff, and there have certainly been too many tweets.

What a difference an election makes. Benjamin Net­­an­yahu, for eight years scorned and insulted by the Obama administration, found himself warmly embraced in the Trump White House last week. No more name-calling, no more deliberate "daylight" between Israeli and American positions, no more…

What a difference an election makes. Benjamin Net­­an­yahu, for eight years scorned and insulted by the Obama administration, found himself warmly embraced in the Trump White House last week. No more name-calling, no more deliberate "daylight" between Israeli and American positions, no more…

This week, Israel's prime minister will visit Washington and meet with our new president. They will have a complex agenda.

In the Obama administration's waning days, global challenges to American interests abound. In Syria, which will be a bloody stain on the reputations of Barack Obama and John Kerry, the killing continues. The effort to free Mosul from ISIS is slowing. The rise of Iranian influence in the Gulf and…

For all eight years of the Obama administration, Democrats have made believe that Barack Obama is a firm and enthusiastic supporter and defender of the Jewish state. Arguments to the contrary were not only dismissed but angrily denounced as the products of nothing more than vicious partisanship.…

In 1953, a young Fidel Castro was tried for his armed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was a dismal failure, though its date—July 26—was later taken as the name of Castro's revolutionary movement. At the trial 24…

In 1953, a young Fidel Castro was tried for his armed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The attack was a dismal failure, though its date—July 26—was later taken as the name of Castro's revolutionary movement. At the trial 24…

While your attention was diverted to America's elections, a fierce debate was underway among Israel-bashers. The debate is over the precise parameters of the obviously essential boycott of Israel. And it took place, quite properly, in the pages of The New York Review of Books, where just how much…

I’m famous! Or, well, actually I'm completely obscure.

President Obama and his defenders are trumpeting the new aid agreement with Israel as proof that he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. In fact, it's a bad deal and should be treated the same way Obama treated prior agreements he didn't like: It should be forgotten by the next…

President Obama and his defenders are trumpeting the new aid agreement with Israel as proof that he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House. In fact, it’s a bad deal and should be treated the same way Obama treated prior agreements he didn't like: It should be forgotten by the next…

Tokyo

The party has nominated someone who cannot win and should not be president of the United States. We anticipate a landslide defeat, and then a struggle to take the party back from his team and his supporters and win the following presidential election. Meanwhile, we need to figure out how to conduct…

Bernie Sanders’s recent interview with the New York Daily News editorial board revealed gaps in his knowledge of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that suggest, at a minimum, he isn't paying attention. Instead he is relying on old Socialist memories of the Israel he visited decades ago.

On March 3, 2015 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the U.S. Congress to blast President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. From that day to this, Netanyahu's critics have claimed that his speech was a huge mistake that politicized the nuclear issue, offended Democrats, and reduced…

Secretary of State John Kerry has done it again: even more foolish and offensive statements about the terrorist attacks in Paris a year ago.

When UNESCO voted in 2011 to admit the "State of Palestine" as a member despite the fact that there is no "State of Palestine," the United States suspended paying dues to the organization. This was done in accordance with U.S. law, because Congress had forbidden paying dues to any UN organization…

News stories this week have brought attention back to the name Lori Berenson, and that was truly a blast from the past.

Speaking in Paris on November 17, Secretary of State John Kerry made what are already infamous comments about the fight against terrorists and terrorism. He spoke to the staff and families of the U.S. embassy in Paris, and his remarks deserve quoting at some length—because they display a deep…

In remarks a few days ago in Turkey, President Obama said this:

In his press conference in Turkey on Monday, President Obama called “shameful” the proposals to give special treatment to Christian refugees from the Middle East.  Here’s some of what he said:

The Yom Kippur liturgy, just followed in synagogues around the world, repeats several times references to God as one who rescues captives. The central daily Jewish prayer as well refers to God who “supports the fallen, heals the sick, sets captives free.” And throughout Jewish history, the…

The Palestinian press has been saying for weeks that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas would “drop a bombshell” when he spoke to the United National General Assembly today. In the event, the bomb did not go off.

News stories announcing that President Obama has the votes to protect his Iran deal from Congressional disapproval have led to debates here and in Israel over the campaigns against that deal by AIPAC and by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week President Obama sealed his legacy as the most divisive president in modern times, who will leave behind both worsened race relations and a set of arguments about Iran that will surely feed anti-Semitism. 

Would George W. Bush have negotiated and signed the JCPOA with Iran?  Even for those who (like me) worked in the Bush White House, that seems like a silly question. After all, who cares? Bush has been out of office for more than six years, and refrains from commenting on foreign affairs or from…

In the past I've wondered about the obsession with Israel by Human Rights Watch. Now I wonder again, due to the organization's new 74-page report entitled, "Ripe for Abuse: Palestinian Child Labor in Israeli Agricultural Settlements in the West Bank." Check out the HRW web site to see what subjects…

In an interesting story in Bloomberg entitled "Iran's Charmer in Chief Wins Again," Eli Lake discusses the "charm" of Iran's top nuclear negotiator and foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif.

When the revolt in Syria began in 2011, many policy analysts and former officials argued that the downfall of the Assad regime would be a major setback to Iran. I was one of them, and the claim was not complicated: Syria was Iran’s only Arab ally, provided its only ports on the Mediterranean, was a…

The crisis between the United States and Israel has been manufactured by the Obama administration. Building a crisis up or down is well within the administration’s power, and it has chosen to build it up. Why? Three reasons: to damage and defeat Netanyahu (whom Obama has always disliked simply…

Everyone knows that the coming Israel election, to be held March 17, is a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Ariel Sharon died one year ago today, on January 11, 2014. It seems that he’s been gone for much longer, no doubt because he was in a coma after January 2006.

Back in the late 1970s, when I worked for Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan, our office followed the changing data about the Empire State closely.  It was a habit of Pat Moynihan’s, indeed almost an obsession, to chart the state’s decline.

Imagine for a moment that you are a Saudi, Emirati, Jordanian, or Israeli. Your main national security worry these days is Iran—Iran’s rise, its nuclear program, its troops fighting in Iraq and Syria, its growing influence from Yemen through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon.

Today we learned that it has been impossible to reach an agreement with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. Even a short "framework" agreement or one-pager was beyond reach. And this, despite the extension of the talks from the original deadline last spring.

President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly touched very lightly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That alone is a step forward: in previous years, he has made it a central part of his speech and left the impression that it is the main issue in world affairs.

For the moment, the Gaza war of 2014 is over. Anyone trying now to figure out who won and who lost should recall the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Then, Israelis had a great sense of letdown because they had not “won.” They had not destroyed Hezbollah, and the organization loudly claimed a…

The Gaza war of 2014 will end in a cease-fire, just as the previous rounds between Israel and Hamas and the 2006 battle with Hezbollah ended. But the war will be won or lost less in the streets and tunnels of Gaza this summer than when the fighting is over. Israel must not only damage Hamas on…

The reluctance of Hamas’s “military wing”—a misnomer for the more extreme elements of its extremist leadership—to accept the cease-fire designed by Egypt is, well, logical. Let’s admit it. They do not wish to accept defeat, and the Egyptian terms are a defeat for Hamas.

The creation of a new Palestinian “national unity” government has raised a slew of questions in the United States. What should our policy be toward a government that has the support not only of the Fatah party but of the terrorist group Hamas as well? Should all aid to the Palestinians be…

The world’s attention was largely turned to Ukraine last week. To the extent that the Middle East was on the front pages, the focus was the new agreement between the PLO and Hamas, its implications for the “peace process,” and John Kerry’s comment about Israel as an “apartheid state.” 

Last night Martin Indyk, now the chief assistant to Secretary of State Kerry in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, spoke at length to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. One account of his speech appears here at the Times of Israel's web site.

In his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony last week, Secretary of State John Kerry blamed Israel for the breakdown in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He argued that an Israeli announcement of 700 new housing units for a neighborhood in Jerusalem were what did in…

Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson was a congressman and then senator from Washington state from 1941 until his death in 1983. Jackson was a traditional Democrat: liberal on domestic policy, strongly tied to the labor movement, and a hawk on national security matters. He was very much in the tradition of…

On the eve of the Netanyahu visit to Washington, President Obama gave a lengthy interview to Jeffrey Goldberg that shows a chief executive who has learned next to nothing about the world in his five years in office.

Jerusalem

What would Arik have done? The death of former prime minister Ariel “Arik” Sharon last week has evoked this question for Israelis, who face chaos and jihadists in Syria, Hamas in Gaza, instability in Egypt, and above all a potential nuclear threat from Iran.

When the history of the Obama administration is written, there will be a long and damaging chapter on its immense humanitarian and strategic failure in Syria. With three years of Obama yet to come, we have not even seen the full humanitarian disaster play out​—​nor have we yet confronted the…

Over a century ago George Santayana wrote that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

There’s a Washington think-tank variation on the board game Risk, and here’s how it goes: I give you a short statement about Obama policy in the Middle East, and you have to say who it’s from. 

Christian Whiton occupied several posts at the State Department during the administration of George W. Bush, all of them at the juncture where realpolitik meets ideology. Or would meet, anyway, if the department were able to recognize the importance of ideas in international politics. Whiton served…

In his speech today at the United Nations, President Obama continued his administration’s odd and somewhat schizophrenic policy with respect to freedom, human rights, and democracy. 

Americans watch our tragedy-of-errors Syria policy from the safety of houses and apartments in suburbs and cities 5,000 miles from the conflict. Israelis are next door, and two weeks ago​—​when an American strike and possible Syrian counterstrike at Israel seemed imminent​—​they were lining up for…

Jerusalem

Secretary of State John Kerry met with a group of key Jewish leaders this past week, and was accompanied by the administration's all-star team on "peace process" matters: Martin Indyk, Susan Rice, and Ben Rhodes.

This week the EU took a stance that it heralded as pro-peace, pro-"peace process," and anti-settlement. Henceforth, new guidelines require all 28 member nations to refuse any grants, scholarships, prizes, or funding to entities in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Or any part of Jerusalem that…

The spirited debate over suspension of aid to Egypt has given rise to a good argument over how to encourage progress in Egypt toward stable, responsible, and democratic government. We know what we would, as Americans, like ideally to see there: respect for civil liberties such as freedom of speech…

Grasping the realities of the Middle East is never easy. This is not primarily because they change quickly, but because so much time, effort, and money is spent to prevent reality from breaking through. Fifteen Saudis kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11, so the Saudis spend even more millions to persuade…

Today's New York Times carries a story about the President's "red line" on the Syrian use of chemical weapons: how that line appeared and how it disappeared.

The effort to build a modern Palestinian state that will live in peace with Israel suffered a great setback last week when pressure from both Fatah and Hamas forced the resignation of the Palestinian Authority prime Minister, Salam Fayyad. 

President Obama spoke to the Israeli people today, at the Jerusalem Convention Center. His remarks moved his administration toward the pre-Obama consensus views of the Clinton and Bush administrations, indeed at several points echoing Bush’s 2008 speech to the Knesset. But he presented a view of…

President Obama will make his first presidential visit to Israel in March, and Secretary of State Kerry will make his own trip even sooner. The White House is trying to dampen the inevitable speculation about a possible breakthrough to peace negotiations, and its spokesman has said the president’s…

During the hearings on Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be secretary of defense, it’s clear that the views of gay rights organizations will be heard. There the issue seems to be whether Hagel’s apology for previous remarks and beliefs was sincere, or motivated solely by self-interest. He had years to…

Denmark has long been regarded as one of the world's most attractive nations, for citizens and tourists alike. My own visits there, years ago as a student, were delightful. And the Danes have a wonderful history of civic virtue, not least during the Holocaust. As the United States Holocaust…

If the truce announced in Cairo last Wednesday truly brings the Gaza war to a close, it is not too soon to assess who gained and who lost from this conflict.

It is now two months until the inauguration in Washington, and it would be nice if the world went into a postelection recess for the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holidays. With Israel facing elections on January 22, there might once have been some hope for a brief respite. Alas, events…

It is now two months until the inauguration in Washington, and it would be nice if the world went into a postelection recess for the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holidays. With Israel facing elections on January 22, there might once have been some hope for a brief respite. Alas, events…

If the truce announced in Cairo last Wednesday truly brings the Gaza war to a close, it is not too soon to assess who gained and who lost from this conflict.

Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense, got considerable attention this week when, speaking in Norfolk, Virginia, he said American officials should make it clear to the government of Israel that "they do not have a blank check to take action that could do grave harm to American vital…

On September 27, the chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas (who is also president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Fatah Party) spoke to the U.N. General Assembly.

How America can stop what the New York Times calls “Israel’s March to War” is the hot topic this month. The issue—for the Times—is whether Israel is on the verge of bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, or can be persuaded to delay that decision and rely on the United States instead. This is what a parade…

August is supposed to be the time for vacations, but Israelis can’t relax this summer. Their Mediterranean beaches may be as inviting as ever, but when they look north, south, and east their world appears increasingly dangerous.

Scandinavia is boring. People living there apparently have little to do. And as European history teaches, when there is nothing much to do you may as well amuse yourself by attacking the Jews.

For 22 years, Bandar bin Sultan was Saudi Arabia’s influential, irrepressible ambassador in Washington. After years in eclipse, he has just been named as head of the kingdom’s intelligence service. What does it all mean?

Can Israelis be wistful? It is not the characteristic we usually associate with them; more typically they are said to be tough, sweet, angry, thoughtful, demanding—not wistful.

Very preliminary returns in the first round of Egypt's presidential election suggest that the official Muslim Brotherhood (MB) candidate, Mohamed Morsi, came in first, with Ahmed Shafik in second place. Shafik is a former Air Force general and was briefly prime minister as the old regime was…

The belief that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is inches away or perhaps only one long negotiating session away never dies. Not even 64 years after the birth of the state of Israel and 45 years after Israel’s conquest of Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem in 1967. 

President George W. Bush was back in Washington today, to mark the opening at his Bush Institute in Dallas of the “Freedom Collection.”

The debate over same sex “marriage” has engaged the heartfelt feelings and convictions of millions of Americans. Then there is Barack Obama.

On June 19, 1981 a vigorously healthy Justice Potter Stewart resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 66. “I've always been a firm believer in the principle that it’s better to go too soon than to stay too long. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I wanted to have an opportunity to spend…

The situation of the Palestinian Authority is grim. Its diplomatic offensive against Israel in the United Nations did not win it statehood, there are no serious negotiations with Israel because the PA refuses them, Hamas controls Gaza, and Palestinian elections keep getting postponed despite the…

As the United States and other members of the P5+1 commence negotiations with Iran, it is worth recalling the classic analysis of Iran’s negotiating style sent in from the U.S. embassy in Tehran on August 13, 1979. The author of the cable, political counselor Victor Tomseth, and the man who…

The chairman of the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas (who is also president of the Palestinian Authority), has drafted a letter to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for delivery this week.  What is apparently the current state of the draft is published by Times of Israel, a terrific new web site about…

The politicization of intelligence by the Obama administration continues apace. 

Today’s nomination of Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim to be president of the World Bank was a narrow escape. There was a chance that President Obama might select a really qualified person: Lawrence Summers, who was often viewed as the lead candidate. But he was obviously unfit: He is a former…

The Obama administration is politicizing intelligence on Syria. What does “politicizing intelligence” mean? Using intel, or more often partial intel, to produce an effect in line with White House policies rather than giving a full picture of a particular situation.

President Obama’s speech this morning to the AIPAC Policy Conference put the best spin possible on his record, and he had a good story to tell. Military and intelligence cooperation is excellent, and American diplomatic support for an isolated Israel was repeatedly (though not always, as he…

In October, an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C. was disclosed by the United States government. And as the means was to be a bomb in a Washington restaurant, it is reasonable to assume Americans dining nearby would have been wounded or killed. In November, a new IAEA…

Since President Obama arrived in the Oval Office three years ago there have been many efforts to explain his foreign and defense policy succinctly. Is there an Obama Doctrine? While many theories have been propounded, the recent State of the Union speech settles the matter.

On January 29, Israel’s cabinet approved new “housing benefits” for “national priority areas.” The exact application of these benefits to communities in the West Bank is unclear, to me at least, but the cabinet statement says, “The decision is designed to encourage positive migration to the…

The Cuban regime has just announced a prisoner release, at the very end of 2011. This is partly an effort to get some positive publicity before the scheduled visit of the Pope, and partly a cold-blooded move by the regime to release older prisoners who are a burden on their prison system.

The accession to power in Pyongyang of Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, is a unique achievement in world politics. How many other non-monarchical regimes have managed to retain power through immediate succession for three generations?

If you were an anti-Semite dedicated to spreading your hatred of Jews, what charges exactly would you make in 21st century America?

On November 29th the Icelandic parliament voted to recognize Palestine as a state. Yesterday, a ceremony was held in Reykjavik in the presence of the Icelandic and PLO foreign ministers.

The attack on the British embassy in Tehran came just days after the Iranian “parliament” voted to expel the British ambassador, and therefore reeks of official complicity. The attack—complete with an invasion of the grounds, looting, and a brief hostage-taking—is an always useful reminder of the…

This weekend marks another milestone in the history of intellectual dishonesty, for the so-called “Russell Tribunal on Palestine” meets in Cape Town, South Africa on November 5th and 6th.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. The only effect of a hard try to square the circle and make every contradiction disappear is a bad headache.

Bill Clinton today blasted Benjamin Netanyahu, blaming the Israeli prime minister for the lack of progress toward peace with the Palestinians.   

London—Several days of Middle East discussions in London have not contributed to any sense of optimism about the near, or for that matter medium-range, future on the Israeli-Palestinian front. It did not appear to the officials with whom I spoke that PA president Mahmoud Abbas can be persuaded to…

The United Nations report on the Mavi Marmara incident, entitled "Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident," is now public and largely exculpates Israel.  All the facts are as Israel contended and as the Commission notes "Israel faces a real threat to…

With the advent of the Arab Spring, several former Arab tyrannies (Egypt, Tunisia, now Libya, perhaps Syria next) have thrown off dictators and are, or will be, moving toward elections. And in Jordan and Morocco, the kings have announced new constitutional arrangements that move powers to elected…

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s confirmation hearing of Robert S. Ford, a first rate foreign service officer now serving as ambassador to Syria under a recess appointment, was held Tuesday, August 2nd. If the United States is to have an ambassador in Damascus, Ford is an excellent man for…

How is Obama’s policy in the Middle East working at this juncture, two and a half years into the president’s term? Two news items reveal the very dismal picture.

How is Obama’s policy in the Middle East working at this juncture, two and a half years into the president’s term? Two news items reveal the very dismal picture.

There is never a shortage of Middle East peace plans, and another has recently been proposed by a set of Washington luminaries—some with considerable Middle East experience and some with none at all. This new plan, dated June 23 and published in the New York Review of Books, appears to be a…

The week of dueling speeches by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu was great political drama, but a key character was missing from the scene: Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. While Abbas was absent, it was in fact his creation on April 27 of a unity government with the…

The news from Syria grows grimmer by the day—more peaceful protesters killed, ten thousand arrested in the past week, army units shelling residential neighborhoods. 

In what country is the Knesset? That sounds like a rhetorical question, akin to the one Groucho Marx would ask losers on his TV show so they would get a consolation prize: “who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?”

This Nakba Day was different because it fell amidst the many recent developments in what we call the Arab Spring. It is probably correct that Palestinians have been feeling left out, as the attention of the world and of their Arab brothers turns to reform, politics, revolts, elections,…

The agreement between Fatah and Hamas may not last very long. The last agreement, in 2007, failed and led to increased violence between the two groups—and finally to Hamas’s coup in Gaza. Hamas and Fatah militants have been killing each other for decades and reconciliation seems more a ploy for…

In April, the president decided to give non-lethal aid to the rebels seeking to overthrow the regime. No, not Libya. Not Obama. Not April 2011.

UPDATE: On Friday the Army made its decision. Mubarak was forced out. His Thursday speech was a disaster and it seems to have helped persuade the generals that they had, at last, to choose between Mubarak and the people. They made the right choice.

The Gaza flotilla incident is not over. American demands for some “international role” in investigating Israel’s conduct (but not, it seems, Turkey’s) and for a new system of getting humanitarian aid to Gaza will be imposed on Israel one way or another before the episode will be behind us. But…

At the United Nations, a lynch mob for Israel is always just a moment away.  The Islamic countries are a reliable source of venom, led by the Arab bloc; what we used to call the “non-aligned” are all aligned against Israel and happy to join the fun; and the Europeans can be counted on for…

Will proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority soon begin? While both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Abbas have said they hope so, the matter is no longer in the hands of the Palestinians but in those of the Arab League foreign ministers--who…

“Obama to Impose Terms on Israel” is the headline you didn’t read on David Ignatius’s column in the Washington Post today. The story ran under the title “Obama’s Mideast Plan,” which Ignatius describes as “proposing an American peace plan to resolve the Palestinian conflict.”

Peace in the Middle East has been on the Obama administration’s mind from the beginning. Two days after his inauguration the president traveled to the State Department to announce the appointment of George Mitchell as his Middle East peace negotiator. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described…

The Obama approach to world politics--engage, apologize, avoid friction, be humble, reach out to previously scorned tyrannical regimes--is being criticized nowadays on pragmatic grounds. A record of 10 months shows this modest approach has brought modest if any returns. Low costs, the president's…

Can anything else possibly go wrong for the Obama administration's Middle East policy? In the past ten days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has twice reversed herself publicly on her attitude toward the Israeli settlements. Palestinians have refused her direct request to rejoin peace talks with…

The appearance in Washington last week of Iran's foreign minister, while the blood is not yet dry from his government's continuing suppression of student protests, is a reminder of the disastrous foreign policy path the Obama administration has chosen. Not so long ago, proponents of a stronger U.S.…

There is an obvious compromise available to end the Honduras crisis--or there was, anyway, until Secretary Clinton rejected it on Thursday.

The Obama administration has been trying out a new policy toward Syria since the day it came to office. The Bush cold shoulder was viewed as a primitive reaction, now to be replaced by sophisticated diplomacy. Outreach would substitute for isolation. Thus there have been six visits to Damascus by…

Not the Obama administration. This week brought the odd juxtaposition of two seemingly unrelated events: the death of former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, and the visit to the United States of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. What links the two events is America's human rights policy--or…

In Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech today he took one major step toward the Obama administration, by endorsing a Palestinian state. In every other way, he resisted President Obama's pressure.

Repetition of failed experiments is not a sign of mental health or a path to scientific progress, nor is it a formula for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yet that is the road we may again take, unless the lessons of the Bush years are learned.

Jerusalem

What is to be done about Sudan? For 18 years, a devastating war has taken a horrifying human toll in Africa's largest country. Best estimates are two million dead, four million uprooted, out of a population of some 35 million. The government in Khartoum regularly bombs clinics, schools, and food…

Henry M. Jackson

THE FALL OF THE Institutional Revolutionary Party in Mexico's July 2 elections is a Latin equivalent to the end of the Soviet empire -- or even more. As one campaign adviser to the victorious Vicente Fox put it, "This is our first constitutional transition of power since the Aztecs." The PRI ruled…

SUDDENLY I AM SURROUNDED by a sea of Palm Pilots, Handspring Visors, Psions, Palmtops, and Microsoft Windows CE Personal Data Assistants. At every meeting these handheld computers lie on the table alongside people's pens and eyeglasses. Run into someone on the street, and he whips one out to check…

In light of the conclusion of the Senate trial of the president, the editors of THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked 22 writers, thinkers, and political actors the following questions: "President William Jefferson Clinton has been impeached and acquitted. What have we learned? What should we do now?"

In rhetoric not ordinarily heard from the business community, the new lobby known as USA*Engage warns that "two-thirds of the world's population" is now "threatened" by a novel form of "proliferation." The threat that alarms USA*Engage is not the proliferation of, say, ballistic missiles, but the…

Alan Dershowitz

Lawrence E. Harrison

BOSNIA WILL BE BILL CLINTON'S second military venture -- after Haiti. Fifteen months ago he sent 6,000 American troops there with the promise that they would restore democracy and then leave. What is the situation in Haiti as 1995 ends, and are there any lessons in it?