January 25, 2013

By Martin Sherman. JPOST

The election results indicate the Israeli electorate has become dangerously detached from real challenges the nation needs to address.
Netanyahu surveys Syrian border,

Yair Lapid, Tzipi Livni and Shelly Yacimovich join Netanyahu’s coalition without Bayit Yehudi and the ultra-Orthodox parties, Netanyahu will have no option but to follow the path of Begin, Rabin and Sharon and reach a painful agreement – Eitan Haber, Yediot Aharonot, January 23, 2013

It is still too early to fully assess the ramifications of this week’s election results, or to accurately identify what caused them.
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By Barry Rubin, PC MEDIA

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s remark, “What difference does it make?”–regarding how the motive of the terrorists in the Benghazi, Libya, attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and two CIA men isn’t important–will always be associated with her. She added that the only important thing was to punish those responsible.

Other than a number of obvious points, here are two things that deserve more consideration.First, the motive of an attack is always important. The Obama administration represented the attack as being in response to an anti-Islam video made by an Egyptian-American. If that were to have been true the implication is that the attack was the fault of American behavior.
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By Evelyn Gordon, JINSA

When the Palestinian Authority (PA) obtained UN recognition as a nonmember observer state in November, many Israelis feared the consequences for Israel: After all, PA President Mahmoud Abbas stated openly that he sought recognition primarily “to pursue claims against Israel” in international forums. Those fears may yet prove justified. But so far, the biggest victim of Abbas’s UN bid has been the PA itself.
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By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JERUSALEM POST

WASHINGTON – At John Kerry’s confirmation hearings Thursday to be the next US secretary of state, the Massachusetts senator said he hoped the Israeli elections would help restart the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.

“My prayer is that perhaps this can be a moment where we can renew some kind of effort to get the parties into a discussion, to have a different track than we’ve been on over the course of the last couple of years,” he told Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which he is the current chairman.

Kerry said he believed there was a possibility of Israelis and Palestinians reaching an agreement, which he described as “an incredibly important issue” that he would work hard on.
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Netanyahu, Lapid seek compromise deal to enable Bayit Yehudi, Shas, Livni and Kadima to join government.

By GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to the heads of all the Zionist parties in the Knesset over the past two days and invited them to coalition talks on the formation of the widest possible government.

Netanyahu hopes to form a coalition of at least 80 MKs to ensure that none of the parties in the coalition could topple him by leaving, including the 19-MK Yesh Atid faction.
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