War between a democracy and a terrorist organization is not symmetrical

Shajaiya neighbourhood encapsulates the challenge Israel faces in the Gaza conflict: It is crisscrossed with an elaborate network of underground bunkers and tunnels containing equipment for the manufacture of rockets, storage facilities for rockets and other weapons, and launching sites from which the rockets were fired at Israeli towns. It was a civilian area where Hamas embedded its most important military capabilities, precisely to encourage condemnation of Israel should the IDF be forced to fight there. How can Israel defend itself without being accused of violating the principle of proportionality?

Law of the sea

Israel and Lebanon are quarelling over maritime borders -- at stake: billions of dollars of natural gas.

Birth of a nation

Hundreds of Sudanese and other African asylum seekers and migrants gathered in a southern neighbourhood of Tel Aviv to celebrate the independence of South Sudan.

Goldstone Report finding reversed

Richard Goldstone has come to the conclusion that in the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict it was not Israeli policy to intentionally target civilians, reversing a key finding of his United Nations report. "If I had known then what I know now," he has written in an article in The Washington Post, "the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

Israel has called for the report, which accused Israel of war crimes, to be withdrawn. "Everything we said has been proven true," said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. "Israel did not intentionally harm civilians .... The fact that Goldstone backtracked must lead to the shelving of this report once and for all."

Current affairs

A financial disagreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is the cause of electrical shortages in Gaza.

Legal settlement

One can argue that Israel's establishing towns in the disputed territories after 1967 obstructs diplomacy, but one cannot accurately declare the settlements illegal. Eric Rozenman reviews their international legal status.

Deceptive quiet

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 called for the disbanding and disarming of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias. That's not happening. Hezbollah, Israel says, has more than restored its arsenal to the levels of before the war in 2006.

High school, high-tech

Israel's high-tech industry is in a deep slump, but high school robotics is booming. Young Arab students, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Ethiopian Jewish refugees are building robots.