Peace

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

Democratic lawmakers are at odds about whether the president should declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a recognition he is expected to make Wednesday.

Donald Trump is confident he can get a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. As one diplomat in Washington recently put it, the president is more optimistic than anyone else for peace in the Middle East. Trump told Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority,…

The United States has experienced a tumultuous last decade. It's endured an historic financial crisis, prolonged government dysfunction, eroding trust in public institutions, a farcical presidential election, and Twitter. No society should have to suffer any of these. But gaze upon the world for…

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…

Speaking at a press conference at Camp David, President Obama said that he'd "welcome an Iran that plays a responsible role in the region." Watch here:

Later today Hillary Clinton will be inducted in the Irish America Hall of Fame. The former first lady "is being honored for her work on behalf of the Irish peace process," according to Irish America magazine, the sponsor of the award. 

Senator Rand Paul has an op-ed in Time magazine making the case for normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba as Barack Obama has proposed. It’s a reasonable objective for U.S. policy and there’s a good case to be made that the embargo on Cuba is anachronistic.

Secretary of State John Kerry has often spoken with some degree of optimism about the chance for peace between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East. Wednesday, however, in remarks after a meeting with European Union representative Federica Mogherini in Belgium, Kerry acknowledged that the…

Adam Kredo reports:

Over the weekend in Iowa, President Bill Clinton got caught on a hot mic at the Harkin Steak Fry agreeing that Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu can't bring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians:

Today the Palestinian Authority announced a joint interim government uniting Fatah and Hamas. West Bankers and Gazans cheer the move because the division between the two most powerful Palestinian factions has been a black eye for the Palestinian nationalist movement. Their rival religious and…

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.

The first question that national security types, including the president, supposedly ask in an international crisis is, “Where are the carriers?” Soon, that opening line will be rephrased to something like, “Where are the … oh, never mind.”

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…

Former President Jimmy Carter does not think much about Hillary Clinton's effort to bring about peace in the Middle East. John Kerry's efforts, on the other hand, are "notable," according to Carter. 

So the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are, predictably, collapsing. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry responded to the frustration of his manic peacemaking efforts by quoting an ancient complaint, "There’s an old saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Now it's time to…

It is a cliché at this point to remark that John Kerry is operating in a fantasy world. But sometimes there is no other word to describe the enormous distance between his perception of what is happening and what is actually happening.

To be outrageously iconoclastic among the Washington foreign-policy crowd is easy: Just suggest that the Israeli-Arab peace process is not merely pointless but actually damaging to America’s position in the Middle East and bad for both Israelis and Palestinians. Such a view is anathema not only to…

David Horovitz, writing for the Times of Israel:

David Ignatius has been writing from Israel recently. His column from late last week included the following passage illustrating why Israeli-Palestinian peace might "still prove insoluble":

President Barack Obama talked briefly about the Iran nuclear deal and said "give peace a chance." Via the pool report:

Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid Secretary of State John Kerry a backhanded compliment in a recent speech to the Union for Reform Judaism.

The full text of President Obama's address tonight on Syria:

John Kerry says he can get an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement within nine months that would lead to an independent Palestinian state. That’s ambitious to be sure, but Kerry’s optimism raises a key question: With Syria torn by civil war, Egypt in the midst of a meltdown that may lead to another…

Secretary of State John Kerry added to the already ample fanfare surrounding the launch of talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators by holding a press conference yesterday to introduce his new special envoy to the peace process, Martin Indyk.

President Obama has released a statement calling for Israeli-Palestinians "talks in good faith and with sustained focus and determination."

Secretary of State John Kerry will host "an Iftar dinner for Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni," according to a copy of his schedule released by the State Department. The dinner will also be attended by "Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat."

John Kerry tried to get the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to buck-up and smile. But he wasn't successful as he tries to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

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 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…

Two years after the self-immolation of a street vendor protesting police corruption in Tunisia, the promise of the Arab Spring remains unrealized. Instead of ushering in an era of stable self-determination, much of the Middle East remains in disarray. Syria is in flames, Egypt almost ungovernable.…

Gary Schmitt writes that Nobel Peace Prize committee snubbed NATO:

Jerusalem

The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the European Union (EU), was lauded by the Norwegian selection committee for having “contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Among various attainments, some decades in the past and others arguable, the…

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has given this year's award to the European Union. The committee explains in a press release:

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. 

In a statement released by the Pawlenty for President Exploratory Committee, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty offered advice for the president on his upcoming meeting with Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "President Obama should use his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu to…

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority claims that Iran has scrapped plans to send two warships through the Suez, but Tehran denies it and says those vessels are still on their way. Whether those ships make it to the Suez or not isn’t important right now, because it’s only a test, and not just for Egypt’s…

When Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize last week, the authoritarians in Beijing responded in their typical, iron-fisted fashion. The Foreign Ministry immediately called the award "blasphemy" and a "desecration," and characterized Liu as a common criminal. They cancelled…

An EU diplomat and diplomats from 10 European countries tried to deliver a letter of congratualtions from EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo at her home in Beijing. They were prevented from entering by guards.  Liu Xia is under…

Here are a few reactions to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8 to the writer and literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced in December 2009 to an 11-year sentence for “incitement to subversion of state power” for his writings about democracy and human rights and his association…

When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent dissidents, now serving an 11-year jail sentence, I could not help but think of a small, inspiring museum in Oslo called the Museum of Resistance. It tells the story of Norway’s courageous citizens who refused…

Senator Scott Brown writes in today's Wall Street Journal: