Israel: Troubled Talks | Newsweek Scope

ISRAEL
Politics Takes a Right Turn in Jerusalem
Lally Weymouth 2/28/2009 12:00:00 AM
Israel's Prime Minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, sat down last week for a long interview with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth—his first with the foreign media since he was asked by President Shimon Peres to form Israel's next government. Currently, it looks like he'll have to cobble together a narrow right-wing coalition, after opposition leader Tzipi Livni refused to join him in a broad national-unity government. Excerpts:
LETTERS
A Bloody Battle
2/7/2009 12:00:00 AM
The deadly clashes in Gaza drew impassioned responses from readers on both sides of the issue. Arguing that Hamas is not solely at fault, one said, "Gaza has been made a prison by the Israelis." Another defended Israel's action, saying, "There is no moral equivalent between terrorism and self-defense."
INTERNATIONAL
‘We Believe We Can Achieve Something’
Lally Weymouth 1/31/2009 12:00:00 AM
During the World Economic Forum at Davos, tensions that have been brewing for weeks between Israel and Turkey broke out into the open. After fiercely debating the Gaza offensive with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan stalked offstage, vowing never to return to Davos. NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth spoke with Erdogan. Excerpts:
AFTER THE GAZA WAR
Israel Has Fewer Friends Than Ever, Even In America
Rod Nordland 1/24/2009 12:00:00 AM
Israel has never been more isolated. Its best friend, the United States, had vetoed 41 Security Council resolutions condemning Israel in the past three decades, but was about to vote for the Jan. 8 resolution denouncing the attack on Gaza when President Bush intervened, at the behest of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Still, in the face of unprecedented global criticism, the U.S. didn't dare veto, but merely abstained. Europe, never Israel's close ally, erupted in near unanimous outrage over Gaza, with fits of anti-Semitic violence in France, Sweden and Belgium.
MIDDLE EAST
Bring In the Diplomats
Richard N. Haass 1/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
It is more a question of when than if there will be another ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Even as fighting raged late last week, the outlines of one were clear. Hamas will agree to stop firing rockets into Israel; the Israelis will pull back their forces from Gaza. New measures will slow but not stop the smuggling of arms from Egypt into Gaza.
MIDDLE EAST
The Dangerous Lives Of Doves in Israel
Kevin Peraino 1/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
Only a few weeks ago, Ehud Barak's political prospects were a joke. When he appeared in late December on the Israeli equivalent of "Saturday Night Live," the defense minister drew the loudest guffaws when he suggested he might actually win the upcoming election for prime minister. It would have pained the Jewish state's founders—who thought of Barak's Labor Party as the epitome of the secular Zionist ideal—to see their heirs ridiculed. But the party, once influenced by Karl Marx and still the political anchor of the Israeli left, has long been in decline. This past November the dovish novelist Amos Oz declared, with a Hegelian flourish, that Labor had "completed its historic role."