News stories by Analysis by Pierre Klochendler

A double-barrelled ‘coup de théâtre’ — advanced, then postponed, elections within days — has disoriented a polity accustomed to grappling passively with their Prime Minister’s backstage intrigues. But the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ played outwardly by the 'virtuoso of Israeli politics' conceals a deep need for stability.

A double-barrelled ‘coup de théâtre’ — advanced, then postponed, elections within days — has disoriented a polity accustomed to grappling passively with their Prime Minister’s backstage intrigues. But the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ played outwardly by the 'virtuoso of Israeli politics' conceals a deep need for stability.

A double-barrelled ‘coup de théâtre’ — advanced, then postponed, elections within days — has disoriented a polity accustomed to grappling passively with their Prime Minister’s backstage intrigues. But the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ played outwardly by the 'virtuoso of Israeli politics' conceals a deep need for stability.

The latest Work Bank report on the Palestinian economy fuels the row on institutional viability precisely as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas considers renewing his statehood bid.

The latest tit-for-tat confrontation which earlier this week pitted Israel against Islamist factions operating from the Gaza Strip follows a conditioning pattern which highlights the marginalisation in the international arena of the Palestinian aspirations to freedom and independence.

Intense consultations at the highest level between the U.S. and Israel on how to coordinate their respective strategies vis-à-vis Iran indicate that a strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, if launched by Israel, the U.S., or in tandem, wouldn’t occur this spring, probably not even before November.

Will Israel attack Iran’s nuclear facilities this spring? That is a question dominating the international agenda. Meanwhile, the grand project of a nuclear weapon-free Middle East is relegated to the utopian 'day after' a solution is found to the Islamic republic’s atomic programme.

A second meeting of Palestinian and Israeli negotiators took place this week in Amman, Jordan, and expectedly bore no tangible result — except for an agreed third round by month’s end.

After a 15-month collapse, Palestinians and Israelis have met only to agree on sitting down face-to-face publicly once more on Friday. So far there is no breakdown, but no breakthrough either.

Is his reticence vis-à-vis the Palestinians justified? Has his unsympathetic view of the convulsions gripping the Middle East conquered the world's leaders? Is he right about Iran's nuclear intentions?