All Policy Analysis by David Makovsky

By Peter Edidin One constant, in calls to the Middle East on Thursday and Friday, was the background noise of a television, set to a program that was reporting on the condition of Ariel Sharon. Whether the person being called was a Palestinian or an Israeli, to the left or

Former Israeli prime minister and recently resigned finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu won the Likud leadership primary on December 19, beating the foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, by a margin of 45 percent to 33 percent. Netanyahu returns to the leadership of Likud, which he vacated after his loss in the 1999

The recent decision by Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister, to bolt from the Likud party has shaken Israeli politics to its core, where Likud has dominated for 20 of the last 28 years. Now Palestinians and Israelis will be going to the polls within two months of each other in

Read Part I of this two-part series. Amir Peretz's decision to pull the Labor Party he leads out of its national unity government with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set Israel's new political calendar and precipitated Sharon's decision to bolt the Likud Party and consent to elections in March 2006. Peretz

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon dropped a political bombshell by leaving the party that he helped to form in 1973, shattering the political status quo in Israel. Mr. Sharon made the move because he wants his legacy to be that he shaped the borders of Israel in any two-state agreement

Read Part II of this two-part series. On Monday, November 21, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon announced that he is bolting the Likud Party and forming a new National Responsibility Party. The Knesset took a preliminary vote to dissolve itself. While wrangling may continue, a final date will soon be

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas returned to Ramallah from Washington last week having missed a key opportunity to spur President George W. Bush to reengage in the Roadmap. Instead, the October 20 joint press conference at the White House concluded with Bush acknowledging that his presidency may not witness the creation