All Policy Analysis by David Makovsky

If the Trump administration wants its peace plan to have any chance of success, it must announce soon that it will oppose any unilateral steps toward annexation.

In the Israeli elections scheduled for April 9, the old left-right fault lines will no longer apply. They have yielded to a center-right split, mirroring an increasingly conservative electorate, with recent data suggesting 63 percent of Israeli Jews identify with the political right. This makes the path for the centrist

Sadat and Begin gambled everything, and the bet continues to pay off despite the dearth of normalization between the two societies.

Even if Netanyahu somehow prevails in the April election, prospects for a grand deal with the Palestinians will likely remain dim.

A new political merger has distilled the campaign into a two-faction race, and each side is already crafting its message accordingly.

Various political, personal, and legal factors make Benny Gantz a formidable challenger to Binyamin Netanyahu, but the prime minister may nevertheless welcome a potential two-man race against the general.

For now, he is sticking with the tried-and-true formula of emphasizing his security pedigree, but looming indictments could change his campaign narrative and coalition-building strategy.

Candidates need to be asked how they will deal with thorny issues such as Russian blowback in Syria, Hezbollah missile threats, Gaza reconstruction, and Iranian nuclear resurgence.

He seems to have calculated that keeping his coalition together is the best way to rebuild public support for the Gaza ceasefire policy, but his political margins are narrowing.

Netanyahu’s government has splintered following a new round of violence, raising questions about the utility of escalation versus reinstating the ceasefire with incremental infrastructure improvements in Gaza.

He’s 83, with no successor and no state, but he still seems to believe that defiance is a worthwhile end in of itself.

Israeli-Palestinian peace is elusive because all of the parties, including the United States, have made a series of damaging but preventable errors.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Oslo Accords, a panel of Americans, Palestinians, and Israelis offered an inside look at what went right and wrong with the negotiations depicted in a new film.

Plenty of good actors remain on both sides of the Green Line, and by partnering with them, Washington can build on what has worked since Oslo and discard what has failed.

Hamas refuses to disarm, but outside pressure could help strengthen the PA.