Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

The United States' foreign policy in the Middle East is one of the most misunderstood subjects in the world, according to visiting US foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead.

Five years after unveiling an ambitious vision for a reinvented Middle East, US President George Bush has adjusted his game plan to the region'?s rapidly shifting sands.

Time is fast running out to avoid a terrible dilemma with respect to Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Today's Update features a couple of pieces looking knowledgeably at the aftermath of the Turkish election last week, where the AKP party, which has Islamist roots, convincingly won re-election.

Following months of contradictory threats and hints of willingness to open peace talks from Damascus, a few weeks ago, Israel PM Olmert reportedly sent a message to Syrian President Assad offering talks and pledging Israel would evacuate all of the Golan Heights in exchange for comprehensive peace.

Today's Update contains three pieces on the subject of Iran's regional ambitions and the means of containing them.

On the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, many journalists and commentators revisited the war and its consequences. While much coverage was reasonable, unfortunately many rewrote history, unfairly attacked Israel's occupation or claimed that the war damaged peace prospects.

It surprises many people who know Israel mostly from the news headlines (and even some Israelis) but Israel remains one of the happiest countries in the world.

Hamas' victory over Fatah in six days of fighting - a second Six Day War - serves as a clarifying moment for the Middle East, a pivotal event that is characterised not only by dark clouds but also by potential silver linings.

The violent victory by Hamas in Gaza and brutal decisive break with the Fatah-controlled West Bank profoundly divides the Palestinian landscape and further complicates Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects.

The Sharm el-Sheikh Summit on Tuesday, hosted by Egyptian President Mubarak, and including Israeli PM Olmert, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and Jordan's King Abdullah, is the subject of this Update.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert is currently at a Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, along with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, where they will discuss what Israel and Fatah, which still controls the West Bank, can cooperate on. While we will have more on the aftermath of this Summit in future, this Update deals with th

TODAY marks 40 years since the start of the Six Day War. We are told constantly that Israeli "occupation" of the West Bank is the reason there is no Arab-Israeli peace.

FORTY years ago, three Arab states provoked war with Israel, determined, in the words of the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, to throw the Jews into the sea.

Today's Update leads with two pieces dealing with both sending messages to Iran, and understanding what they are telling us in reply.

Today's Update features two analyses that tie the crisis in Iraq to the wider Middle East situation from world-renowned Middle East scholars.

Today's Update focuses on some of the discussions of the wider security problems Israel faces which have been exposed by the Winograd report into last year's Lebanon war.

Could Arab attitudes to the Holocaust be changing? "Not so fast," says Robert Satloff ... author of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (Public Affairs, 2006). But he says there are positive signs.

Arab League summits have become rather marginal affairs in recent years, but hopes were high for the March 28-29 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for two reasons.

The Review spoke to Ambassador Dennis Ross in May 2001, a bare six months after he was a central player in the US Clinton Administrations last-ditch attempt to create an Israeli-Palestinian peace in December 2000. At the time, he remained the unflappable diplomats diplomat, controlled and punctiliou