Israel Needs a New Lebanon Strategy

UNIFIL peacekeeping mission at the border between Lebanon and Israel, March 2025. Photo credit: PA Images via Reuters Connect.

Anti-tank missiles in garages and artillery stashed in children’s bedrooms. Weapons stockpiled in nearly every house. This was the scene one of us encountered, in village after village in southern Lebanon, during the October 2024 ground operation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against Hizbullah.  The IDF found Hizbullah’s battle plans for a massive invasion […]

Israel Applying Lessons Learned from October 7

Aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack in Kibbutz Beeri, southern Israel. Photo credit: REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura.

Israel’s defense and security establishment has completed a series of internal investigations into the intelligence, strategic, and tactical failures of October 7, 2023. The findings are beginning to reshape the Israel Defense Force (IDF) approach to dealing with the terrorist armies on its borders. Among the findings: the concept of deterrence (originating in Cold War […]

A Cold Peace in Peril?

Egyptian tanks at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo credit: Gehad Hamdy/dpa via Reuters Connect.

Israel-Egypt peace was carefully constructed in the 1979 treaty and has weathered numerous regional storms: the 1982 Lebanon War, two Palestinian intifadas, the upheaval of the 2011 Arab Spring, and even sixteen months of conflict in Gaza. Throughout, Israel and Egypt have sustained generally productive military and economic cooperation (despite persistent anti-Israeli sentiment in the […]

Trump’s Gaza Plan: Change of Narrative

Gaza City, February 2025. Photo credit: Majdi Fathi via Reuters Connect.

Washington’s Middle East experts were gathered for dinner in the ballroom of the Ritz Carlton Georgetown, hosted by a prominent think tank. It was May 19, 2019, and they had come to hear Jared Kushner talk about the forthcoming Trump peace plan. Mr. Kushner described both an economic vision for the Middle East and a […]

The Upside Potential of Postwar Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine, January 2025. Photo credit: Eugen Kotenko via Reuters Connect.

Post-war Ukraine will offer enormous commercial opportunities and powerful people-to-people connections. American businesses and research institutions will benefit from a rich pool of knowledge and skilled workers. This upside potential awaits a Trump administration seeking a  conclusion to the war now entering its third year. Ukraine’s policymakers will face an immediate postwar economic challenge: finding […]

Beware Trump’s Wrath Over a Failed Ceasefire Agreement in Gaza

Hamas hands over Doron Steinbrecher, a hostage who had been held in Gaza since the October 7 2023 attack, to members of the Red Cross, January 19, 2025. Photo credit: REUTERS.

This week’s release of three Israeli female hostages and 900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, primarily women and children, is the first step in what is expected to be a long process of bringing home Israel’s hostages and ending the war with Hamas. The agreement provides for three phases, the first two of which involve more […]

After the Gaza Ceasefire, Watch the West Bank

Palestinian gunman in Nablus, January 2025. Photo credit: Nasser Ishtayeh / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect.

Hamas has plans for the West Bank. Now that there is a ceasefire in Gaza, Hamas wants to use the war it launched against Israel to bring itself more power and influence in the West Bank. It seeks to gain popularity through the prisoner releases secured in exchange for Israeli hostages – between thirty and fifty Palestinian […]

Israel’s Dilemma in Lebanon

Photo credit: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa via Reuters Connect.

The 60-day ceasefire in Lebanon will end on January 26, six days after President Trump takes office. While Hizbullah suffered heavy losses during the two months of fighting from late September to late November, it has been slowly, stealthily rebuilding in the Shi’ite villages of southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s government has new leadership with friends in […]

Lawfare Against Israeli Soldiers

Soldiers visit the site of the Nova Music Festival. Photo credit: REUTERS/Hannah McKay (Photo is used as a representation and does not depict anyone involved in the article.)

Israeli tourist Yuval Vagdani had to escape for the second time. On October 7, 2023, he survived the Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival near Gaza. Then in the first week of January 2025, he escaped Brazil ahead of a court-ordered investigation into his service as a military reservist in Gaza. He was vacationing […]