An estimated 250,000 people took to the streets of Tel Aviv last Friday to celebrate the city’s 21st annual Pride parade. The event is one of the few Pride events in the Middle East outside of Israel, and is the eighth largest in the world. The parade marked the culmination Read more…
Israel is undoubtedly a pioneer in the region of LGBT rights in the region with leading LGBT members of the Knesset such as Labor’s Itzik Shmuli playing a prominent role in public life. Similarly, Tel Aviv pride, which takes place this week, has grown from a few dozen protesters to Read more…
Israel will go to the polls on 17 September – less than six months after Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to win April’s general election – following an unprecedented political stalemate. As the midnight deadline to negotiate a new coalition approached last Wednesday, the Knesset voted by 74 to 45 to dissolve Read more…
LFI Focus provides a periodic analysis on Israel-Palestine, providing an in-depth view of the issues that affect the region. This edition focuses on the fall-out from Israel’s election in September 2019. You can read it here. There is also an accompanying analysis of the competing parties. Click here to read Read more…
Israel appears to be edging towards a general election – less than two months after Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected on 9 April. With the deadline to form a new coalition government fast approaching on Wednesday night, the prime minister’s effort to secure a Knesset majority appears to have stalled. For Read more…
The German parliament last week passed a motion condemning as antisemitic the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. The motion was the joint initiative of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and centre-left Social Democrat party, and was backed by the Greens and the centrist Free Democrats. Entitled “Resist the Read more…
Israelis and Palestinians have already paid a high price for the mounting tensions between Iran and the United States. According to The Times this week, “a key meeting” was recently held in Beirut between Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Al-Quds Brigade, and Ziyad al-Nakhalah, leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Read more…
A weekend of violence – in which nearly 700 rockets, missiles and mortars were fired from Gaza towards Israel, purposefully targeting Israeli civilians – has given way this week to a tense ceasefire. Four Israeli civilians were killed and 142 were injured, including four in critical condition. Palestinian medical officials reported Read more…
“Small country, big dreams” read the sign affixed to the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet, which last month entered lunar orbit before crashing during its attempted landing. Despite the failure to land on the moon, Israel still became the seventh – and by far the smallest – country in the world to bring Read more…
With the dust settling on Israel’s fractious and tumultuous election for the 21st Knesset, albeit with the horse-trading of coalition building still in progress, it is valuable to examine the structure of the election and see how it influenced the result. The Israeli electorate are given the choice of a Read more…
Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes of entering the history books and becoming Israel’s longest serving prime minister appear close to realisation after yesterday’s general election. Netanyahu’s Likud party and Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White alliance each emerged from the closely fought contest with 35 seats. But, with counting almost complete, the Read more…
Shortly before he was inaugurated as president in January 2017, Donald Trump said of Jared Kushner: “If you can’t produce peace in the Middle East, nobody can.” Pulling off the “deal of the century” – peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world – would have been a large task for Read more…