The 2009 elections have created ambivalent results that have great implications for Israel’s politics and the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process. While it is true that the “Left” was smashed, the Right, while returning to power after disastrous showing in the previous election, did not really win: the ideological split between Likud and Kadimah was reaffirmed when Livni refused to joined Netanyahu, thus forcing Netanyahu in his “second coming” to rely on his ideological/political rivals in Labor. So although the Right has assumed power formally, in reality it lost its main struggle, the struggle for “Greater Israel” (or the eventual annexation of the West Bank & Gaza). The loss of the big ideological battle (on the “inside”) was confirmed (on the “outside”) when the Obama Administration came out in a stronger way than most observers have expected for a Two-State Solution and a complete termination of Israel’s settlement activity. The Obama position negated the Right’s long-term goal (annexation) and short-term tactics (aggressive settlement activity). Conceptually, we can refer to what has been happening to the Israeli Right as “Losing Despite Winning”. While the Right might have won tactically (that is, its head became the Prime Minister), it has lost strategically (that is, in achieving its main policy goals). What I once called the “Territorial Imperative” (Barzilai and Peleg, Journal of Peace Research, 1994) has become weaker, not stronger. The process at hand will be assessed from three different perspectives: a) historically, the “Right” has been retreating from the vast territorial ambitions of Jabotinsky and Begin, and even Shamir and Netanyahu I (1996-9), to an official and public acceptance of a Two-State solution, probably in about 80% of Western Palestine; b) ideologically, the retreat of the Right is even more pronounced—while the Left and the Center have always accepted the principle of territorial compromise and partition (1937, 1947, 1949-67, post-1967), the Right always opposed it; Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech could thus be interpreted as admitting defeat or realizing that the Right’s ideological purity cannot be sustained; c) culturally, the forthcoming withdrawal from the Occupied Territories is linked to the effort to maintain Israel as a “Jewish State” (or strengthening the “Ethnic Imperative”), as emphasized by Netanyahu’s speech. The paper will argue that, given recent developments, even this modest goal is unlikely to be successful.

The 2009 election campaign of the Arab political parties in Israel has accentuated trends in Arab politics that have been taking place for about two decades, primarily the rise of Palestinian national politics within Israel. Whereas the 1950s and 1960s saw subdued Arab politics in Israel and the 1970s and 1980s witnessed Arab mobilization through the Communist Party, which advanced a socialist agenda, the last two decades have seen the growth of national Arab parties that have been making demands in the name of Palestinian nationalism in Israel. This paper discusses the recent trends and their manifestations through the rise of Palestinian political parties, ethnically based civil society organizations, and more recently the publication of the Future Vision documents. Following an analysis of the Palestinian demands in Israel, the paper will proceed to explain the origins of their emergence, paying particular attention to grievances, elites, and broader changes in state-society relations in Israel. It is argued that the 2009 elections, with the incursion of the Israeli army into Gaza in the background, serve to highlight the extent to which Palestinian national consciousness has become a prominent feature of Arab political activism in Israel. The analysis is largely based on interviews conducted with leaders of the Palestinian Arab community in Israel.

Since the end of the Summer 2006, Second Lebanon War between Israel and the Hizbollah organization, Israel-Syria relations, and Israel's relations with the entire Arab World, have fluctuated between concern over the outbreak of a confrontation and hope for renewing the peace process between the Israel and Syria and Israel and the Palestinians, with possibly achieving a breakthrough. Indeed, in April 2008, half a year after the Israeli attack against the Syrian nuclear reactor in Northern Syria, Damascus announced renewal of contacts with Israel, albeit as indirect talks with Turkish mediation. Syria thereby signaled its preference for a political option. However, as is well known, this step was not enough to generate a genuine political process between Damascus and Jerusalem. Thus in light of the difficulty of advancing a real political process between Israel and Syria, the two continue to invest their efforts in preserving the fragile calm that seemed especially tenuous in the wake of the Second Lebanon War and was re-established following the Israeli attack in Syria on September 6, 2007, though one may assume it will be tested again in the foreseeable future. Indeed, Israeli-Arab relation came under a test with the eruption of the current circle of violence in Gaza in late December 2008. It is still too early to forecast or even assess what might be the long run implications of the Israeli operation, however it seems that the alliance of the moderates in the region survived, and that the radical camp suffered a severe blow, although was nor defeated. Thus, the region is waiting for the Obama's administration to consolidate its policy towards the regional problems, as well as for the results of the February Israeli general elections and to the forming of the new Israel government to see whether the peace process can be resumed or there will be a long halt, which will give once gains rise to radical forces in this troubled region. This paper will, in part, be based on interviews with members of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Israeli security community

This paper will begin with an analysis of possible changes in Iran's regional policy and internal dynamics following its June 12, 2009 election. It will then analyze possible changes in Israeli foreign policy following the Israeli election of February 10, 2009. The third section of the paper will examine the amount of cooperation on Iran between the Obama Administration, which has called for engagement with Iran, and Israel, which sees Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons as an existential threat. The final section of the paper will evaluate the possible scenarios given the new governments in the United States and Israel, and a possible change in the presidency of Iran. The paper will, in part, be based on Iranian and Israeli electronic and written media, a research project that is in progress, and ongoing interaction with the Israeli academic and research community. This paper will view Iran as a regional player which strives for hegemony in a changing region. Through that prism, the paper will analyze the tough issue of Iran's nuclear capacity. Since its secret nuclear program was revealed in late 2002, Iran has been seen by successive Israeli leaders as an increasing danger to Israel. At the same time 2009 has ushered in some new developments—the January 2009 Gaza War, internal dynamics in Iran and Israel, the coming to the fore of Turkey as a regional power, and the more assertive European stand in regard to the Middle East—all of these should have a profound influence on the research agenda when dealing with the Israeli-Iranian equation.