יום שבת, י״ב תמוז תשפ״וSaturday, June 27, 2026
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Prof. Hillel Frisch is a professor of political studies and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
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U.S. pressure against the Atarot housing project north of Jerusalem was likely meant to keep the two-state option alive.
The effect of visuals has often plagued the West in its war against terrorism. Now, the visual material from Afghanistan is coming to haunt the Islamists in the Middle East. Hamas cannot wax enthusiastic over Taliban when “the man in the street” in Kabul shows such a grim face.
Israeli concessions in Jerusalem led to the recent outbreak of serious fighting, but insisting on the flag parade led to relative calm. Will the new leadership of Bennett and Lapid take this to heart, or will Israelis pay the costs of a misguided belief in concessions?
It took only hours for Israel’s conciliatory moves during Jerusalem Day to trigger an avalanche of rockets and missiles from the Gaza Strip and mass rioting by Israeli Arabs against their fellow citizens.
Hamas and others are threatening violence if Mahmoud Abbas cancels the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council scheduled for May 22. However, Google Trends data on the declining popularity of both Hamas and Fatah suggest that an eruption of violence is unlikely.
The possible ICC probe into Israel’s behavior in Gaza will likely renew interest in the 2014 Hamas-Israel confrontation. There is much evidence to suggest that the number of Palestinian fatalities was exaggerated and that most of them were terrorists, not civilians.
A spate of attacks on Arab Christians in and around Bethlehem should have merited investigation by the many “human rights” organizations in the area, but they weren’t interested. This is not surprising, as their focus is almost entirely on promoting lawfare against Israel, not exposing human rights violations committed by Palestinians against other Palestinians.
The Palestinian Authority’s decade-long plan to take control of the West Bank’s Area C is being implemented successfully. This is a historic game-changer in the 100-year-old conflict that requires an immediate and massive Israeli response.
In 2013, Mahmoud Abbas proclaimed that henceforth the Palestinian Authority would be called the “State of Palestine.” It is worth noting how successful he has been in popularizing the phrase, and among whom.
President Joe Biden regards himself as a champion of decency. He is equally committed to reengaging with international institutions. Assuring decency toward Israel in United Nations fora would be a good way to demonstrate both.
The United States does not have to appease the Europeans over Iran in order to cement the trans-Atlantic alliance. Instead, it should press the Europeans to increase their military spending to merit the close relationship, especially in the face of a Russia that poses a greater threat to Europe than it does to the US.
Contrary to the views of Israel’s many detractors, the growing indifference of the wider Arab world to the Palestinian issue is a long-term phenomenon.
The skewed reporting of housing demolitions in the West Bank is yet another tool with which the EU engages in blatant discrimination against Israel. But does it help the Palestinians? Readily available information on such demolitions suggests that the EU’s bias hurts them more than it benefits them.
The lack of protest against the Israel-UAE breakthrough is a sign of political maturity as Arab and Muslim populations clamor for reform at home rather than destructive ideological visions.
The early Zionists had plenty of will but few means with which to achieve their goals, yet they changed the course of Jewish history. Israel today possesses the means to take the opportunity presented by President Trump’s vision, but does it have the will?
True to form, liberals are hopeful that the Beirut explosion, Macron’s visit to Lebanon, and the youthful demonstrations against the country’s Hezbollah-dominated government herald a new popular unity and a better day for all Lebanese citizens. Neither past nor present suggests that such a happy outcome is likely.
No one really knows when mass violence will erupt. The self-immolation of a Tunisian peddler ignited a revolution in that country, but at least 40 similar acts in other Arab counties failed. The odds are against massive violence if Israel extends sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, but Israel’s security forces should nevertheless be prepared.
The wedge between Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the recent Gaza conflagration is a clear sign that Israel is deepening divisions between the two terror groups. Nevertheless, the payoffs to Hamas enhance its firepower in possible future rounds, meaning that Israel has to reduce the payoffs as much as possible rather than as the center-left suggests, show largess towards Gaza.
The lack of a reaction to the death of former Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi and the absence of religious demands by protesters in Algeria, Sudan, and Iraq suggest that political Islam is waning after the defeat of ISIS three years ago.
Israel’s inability to thwart Hamas on the Gaza front, even as it persistently worsens the lives of the 20,000 Israeli citizens who live in the “Gaza envelope,” is a national shame. Yet PM Benjamin Netanyahu is correct that this pain must be borne as Israel focuses on the Iranian threat and Israel’s northern front.
In an academic ranking of countries according to happiness level, the “Palestinian Territories” are far from the bottom of the list – something of a surprise, as the never-ending lamentations about the “Israeli occupation” would suggest a different outcome. The real tragedy is Tunisia, which achieved democracy but has not registered expected economic dividends. Its citizens are more discontented than the Palestinians.
The dual abilities of Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to arouse the ire of President Trump and spout antisemitic, anti-Israel messages with impunity have raised their profile well beyond that of other junior representatives and significantly boosted their popularity. Supporters of Israel, as well as those who care about the interests of the US, will have to strive to defeat them in the next Congressional elections.
Ever since a decision in January 2012, the EU has been expressly committed to the expansion of illegal Palestinian settlement in Area C in conjunction with the PA. This is in blatant disregard of the Oslo accords, which the EU purports to uphold. The object is to create continuous Palestinian settlement throughout the West Bank and thereby isolate and strangle Israeli communities.
How unusual was Israel’s refusal to allow Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to enter Israel to engage in hostile political activity? Not very, based on a comparison with the UK.
According to the BDS movement’s Palestinian branch, the impact of the movement “is increasing substantially.” Many pro-Israel sites and organizations agree with that assessment. But how accurate is this prognosis?
None of the three actors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – Hamas, the PA, and Israel – envisions peace in the foreseeable future. It is this very absence of the prospect of peace that makes the Trump economic plan so timely. Engendering economic well-being does not solve deep-seated political conflict, but it does contain the prospect that differences can be expressed in less violent ways.
The flight schedules of the major airports in the states of the Middle East provide an excellent window into regional politics. The absence of air traffic between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to Iran reflects the tacit alliance of the three, while the abundance of connections between Istanbul and Qatar and Iranian destinations reflects the counter-Sunni alliance. Flight data also help us to gauge the extent to which Assad’s Syria has been restored.
A week and a half ago, Hamas organized its weekly confrontation on the Gaza fence in honor of World Jerusalem Day, an event inaugurated by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979 and celebrated since then primarily by Iran and its Hezbollah proxy. This move reflects the organization’s defiance of the Sunni Arab states, especially those who plan to attend the Trump-sponsored conference in Bahrain.
It is a widespread belief that Palestinian hopelessness feeds terrorism and the prospects for peace decrease it. This has always been false. In fact, the opposite is true: when Palestinians feel hopeless, Palestinian terrorism declines; when they are hopeful of gaining the upper hand, Palestinian terrorism increases. An Israeli iron fist is necessary to save both Israeli and Palestinian lives.
Notwithstanding Hamas’s recent success at partially overwhelming Iron Dome, it has failed to accomplish one of its signal goals: nothing it has done has succeeded in galvanizing the Arab population in Ramallah and Hebron to rise up against either Israel or the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The prospects are high that a war will break out between Iran and its proxies against Israel. The war will be mutually destructive, but Israel has one advantage Iran doesn’t – a public that is firmly behind its democratically elected government.
At one and the same time, the PA indirectly encourages terrorism while pursuing extensive security cooperation with Israel to quell it. Israel accepts this contradictory framework and will probably continue to do so, even during the succession crisis that is likely to follow Abbas’s demise.
More important than achieving international recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the necessity of ensuring Israeli sovereignty over the city itself.
Israel must start preparing for another round with Hamas, a round in which Israel will, one hopes, replicate the cumulative deterrence it scored against the Arab States in 1973. This would mean subjecting Hamas to a threshold of pain sufficiently unbearable to induce it to stop fighting Israel altogether.
It is not Gaza’s economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence. It is the other way around: the endemic violence has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis.
Hamas did not achieve the goals it had in mind when it organized and set in motion the “March of Return” campaign. The organization would be wise to cut a deal with Gaza business community leaders and the civil bureaucracy that they administer the Strip while Hamas continues to police it, provided it refrains from fighting Israel.
The real test of Hamas’s March of Return campaign in Gaza lies in its ability to mobilize mass violence in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, and other parts of the West Bank. So far, most of the Arab inhabitants of those areas are content to watch the events on their screens rather than in the streets.
Mention the word “Jerusalem,” which is derived from the word “peace,” and anything but peace comes to mind. Yet the city of Jerusalem is safer by far than San Francisco, thanks to good policing and traditional life among both the Jewish and Arab populations.
Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital provoked dire warnings of imminent uproar--which never happened because the Islamic world is too mired in its own domestic problems to mobilize over Jerusalem.
June 26, 2026 
