After six weeks of wrangling, on Wednesday night a deal was done that looked set to pave the way for Israel’s 33rd government.

The coalition negotiations have taken a tortuous path, and the fact that they have gone all the way to the 42nd and last day of the mandated time allotted does not speak well of the ability of the erstwhile political partners to work together in the future.

Sadly, there was nothing unique about Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment last week that Zionism is a “crime against humanity”.

As US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Egypt last week, the country was hit by a massive swarm of locusts —an eerie echo of the eighth of the Ten Plagues just weeks before Pesach.

As Jerusalem prepares for US President Barack Obama’s visit on March 20, Israelis have one burning question — what will the prime minister’s wife wear?

President Obama’s nominee for Defence Secretary, former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, has been confirmed by the Senate, ending several weeks of deeply acrimonious hearings in Congress.

Despite guarded optimism and the promise of two more rounds of talks in March and April, the latest tranche of nuclear diplomacy between Iran and six world powers, which ended on Wednesday in Almaty, Kazakhstan, offered nothing new.