Western diplomats participating in the Baghdad talks that began on Wednesday were upbeat about the possibility of reaching a deal which would limit Iran’s uranium enrichment programme.

The new Netanyahu-Mofaz coalition got off to a rocky start this week with major disputes over a new law on national service for yeshivah students and the future of settler outposts in the West Bank.

One of the most experienced and respected security analysts in the United States has produced a comprehensive study of all the material released so far on Iran's nuclear programme.

In Rethinking Our Approach to Iran's Search for the Bomb, Anthony Cordesman concludes that Iran is irrefutably developing an atomic weapon.

The presidential elections in Egypt, scheduled for the end of this month, may be postponed following a renewed outbreak of political turmoil in Cairo in which 14 Egyptians have been killed and hundreds arrested.

Israeli security officials have warned that the growing anarchy could boil over the border.

The political earthquake that shook Israel in the middle of the night this week has sent shockwaves well beyond the confines of the Knesset.

Benjamin Netanyahu is now one of the most powerful prime ministers ever to lead Israel, and many commentators are wondering if he is now sufficiently empowered to alter the course of Middle East history.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Shaul Mofaz's closest political advisers spent last weekend putting together teams to fight an election campaign over the coming summer - at the same time as they were fleshing out a deal to form a national-unity coalition.

While the two leaders were receiving updates on the talks - which included an agreement to postpone elections by over a year - they continued to behav

A column last week in an Israeli newspaper by a French Jewish leader has caused a furore in Paris over what is being seen as a tacit Jewish endorsement of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Richard Prasquier, head of Crif, French Jewry's umbrella body, wrote in Ha'aretz about the challenges facing the Jews of France under a new president.

Benzion Netanyahu, the pre-eminent historian of Jewish medieval Spain, who died on Monday at his home in Jerusalem, aged 102, was the man who most influenced the political outlook and ideology of his son, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Born in Warsaw in 1910, Benzion Mileikowski was the son of a Zionist rabbi and writer who moved his family in 1920 to Jerusalem, where Benzion went on to stu

A meteoric, 13-year parliamentary career which twice brought Tzipi Livni to the brink of Israel's premiership, came to an end on Tuesday, when the former leader of Kadima announced she was resigning from the Knesset "but not leaving public life".

In a press conference at the Knesset, she said: "I respect the decision of the Kadima voters and I wish Shaul [Mofaz] good luck.

Iran's leadership has repeatedly said over the past couple of years that the destructive Stuxnet computer worm was easily vanquished and caused little damage to the centrifuges carrying out uranium enrichment.

On announcing that it was terminating its contract to supply gas to Israel on Sunday, Egypt's Natural Gas holding company immediately claimed that the decision had been made on a purely commercial basis.

However, the move was pounced upon by the country's presidential candidates as yet another opportunity to burnish their national and anti-Israel credentials.

For over a hundred miles between the heavily guarded Suez Canal Bridge and the main town in northern Sinai, El Arish, the road is deserted at night. No-one is stopping cars or checking documents at the roadblocks and the guard posts are empty.

Only on the final approach to El Arish can the first signs of a military build-up be seen.