The Syrian Tipping Point

Project Syndicate, 20 July 2012 – During World War II, Winston Churchill famously drew a distinction between “the end of the beginning” and “the beginning of the end.” That distinction is equally applicable to the unfolding Syrian crisis. Recent events – the growing number of high-level defections from the regime’s leadership, the killing of three of President Bashar al-Assad’s most senior officials in a bomb attack, and the rebellion’s spread into Damascus itself – suggest that, after a long period of gradual decline, the Assad regime is now approaching collapse or implosion.

U.S. and Israel: A Recent History of Intimacy and Distance

Haaretz, July 3, 2012 

U.S. and Israeli administrations have found common cause as well as periods of difficult relations. But the U.S. itself is changing: When we celebrate the 4th of July with our American friends a decade from now we may be celebrating it with a different America.

Forging Syria’s Opposition

TEL AVIV – Syria’s crisis is now a year old, with close to 10,000 people, mostly civilians, dead and no end in sight. The country is at a stalemate: the opposition is unable to topple President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and Assad’s forces are unable to quash the resistance.

Testing the "Israel Lobby" Thesis

As Israel’s Ambassador to Washington in the mid-1990s, I worked closely with the now all too famous Israel lobby. But this was not the “Israel Lobby” described by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. At that time, the right wing of what they characterize as a “loose coalition” of pro-Israeli groups, organizations and individuals was dead set on undermining the peace policy conducted by the government of Yitzhak Rabin in concert with the Clinton Administration.

The Door has Closed on Syrian-Israeli Negotiations

The prospect of a Syrian-Israeli peace settlement looms over the Arab-Israel and larger Middle Eastern arenas as a potentially significant but ever elusive issue. On the eve of the Annapolis conference, the dormant Israeli-Syrian track seemed infused with new life; a few weeks later it appears blocked yet again.