Lebanon is bracing itself. The U.N.-backed court set up after the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is expected to announce indictments of Hezbollah members before the end of the year.
The Egyptian government has publicly rejected U.S. demands — and President Obama's personal request — for monitors to observe Sunday's parliamentary elections and for adherence to international standards of transparency and fairness.
Israel on Wednesday approved the withdrawal of troops from the northern half of a village that straddles the border with Lebanon — a step that would end its four-year presence in the volatile area.
Iran kicked off five days of air-defense war games Tuesday to display the country's capabilities in protecting its nuclear facilities from possible attack, state television reported.
Israelis are not accustomed to having so much going so well for their tiny country - and no one seems to expect it to last. This 62-year-old nation, after all, has never really known a prolonged stretch of peaceful prosperity; something inevitably takes a turn for the worse. Unspoken but widespread is a strange sense that the proverbial "other shoe" will drop, whether it be with Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria or, worst-case, a nuclear Iran, with the only question being when.
The day after the U.S. midterm elections, President Obama acknowledged "a shellacking" and promised a domestic midcourse correction.
Plastic surgery has long been popular in Beirut, known for wild parties, beautiful people and political instability. In the past few years of relative calm, it also has become one of the country's hottest tourist attractions.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin may be remembered fondly by some of the Israeli people for his military exploits, but his accomplishments as prime minister and a negotiator were less noteworthy ("Ultimate price for peace," Oct. 22, Geopolitics)
"To the End of the Land," Israeli author David Grossman's latest novel, is a story of parental love in war - and of coping with life's demands in the absence of explanations for war's persistence and cost.
