News stories by Daniel Luban, page 5

Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank increased sharply in 2008, despite Israel's pledge at the beginning of the year to freeze all construction, according to a new report by an Israeli non-governmental organisation.

The president of the United Nations General Assembly was a last-minute no-show at the U.N.'s annual ceremony commemorating the Holocaust, following an intense lobbying campaign by pro-Israel organisations to have him removed from the programme.

President Barack Obama's inaugural address was in many respects an echo of his campaign rhetoric, offering nods to each side of the political divide in a way that elicited respectful praise from both sides but also deep uncertainty as to the speech's practical implications.

The three-week-old war in Gaza - halted Saturday by an Israeli ceasefire - has had a polarising effect on the U.S. Jewish community, resulting in a deeper and at times acrimonious split between dovish groups that are sceptical of the Israeli military campaign, and centrist and hawkish groups that have been broadly supportive of it.

The U.S. State Department fiercely denied claims made by Ehud Olmert about his influence over President George W. Bush, in an incident that has stirred up old debates about the role of the Israeli government and the so-called 'Israel lobby' in formulating Middle East policy in Washington.

As the war in Gaza approaches its third week, a chorus of influential voices in the U.S. media has cast the conflict as a proxy war in which the real enemy is not Hamas but Iran.

As U.S. President-elect Barack Obama settles into Washington and meets with congressional leaders about his stimulus plan, he and his incoming administration remain silent about the intensifying crisis in the Gaza Strip.

While lazier caricatures have always cast Vice-President Dick Cheney as the puppet-master pulling George W. Bush’s strings, it is the image of Cheney as master bureaucrat that provides the real key to understanding his power.