Unfortunately, there was little time to relax. On 11 November, the Israeli army assassinated one of Hamas’ field commanders outside Khan Younis. The response from Hamas was swift. In one day, Hamas fired more than 400 shells at nearby Israeli towns, resulting in heavy retaliatory shelling by Israel.

In her poem, Tatour praises the Palestinian resistance against Israel. She does not live in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip; she was born in a village near Nazareth, northern Israel. The poem not only criticizes the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, it also questions Israel’s legitimacy. For example, she calls for an ‘Arab Palestine’.

Many failed to realize that Haftar amassed a large base of support among former members of the Libyan army who had fought against Gadafi in 2011 and who felt threatened as the Islamists began to “purify” the state of elements of the “old regime.” Haftar portrayed himself as Libya’s saviour (“Libya’s Sisi”) from Islamist organizations spreading chaos.

Israel has always proudly described itself as the sole democracy in the Middle East. A strong pillar of a healthy democracy is freedom of the press. Yet members of the foreign media have been summoned to a Knesset hearing on the foreign press and put on the defense to explain an apparently skewed reality. Is the Israeli government clamping down on the press, both international and domestic?

Marwan Muasher is the former deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Jordan. In the lectures he delivers and the debates he takes part in, Muasher criticizes the slow pace of reform, politically, economically, and socially, and he recently criticized the deterioration of higher education in the kingdom.

On 11 July 2016, the Israeli Knesset passed a law requiring non-governmental organizations that receive more than half of their funding from ‘foreign political entities’ to disclose this in all official publications. The so-called NGO bill affects 27 organizations, of which 25 are human rights NGOs that identify with the Israeli left.

Civil society in Israel has been undergoing a growing conflict that mirrors broader trends taking place in Israeli society, namely the conflict between the rising conservative nationalist social forces and the dwindling liberal and humanist camp represented by human rights organizations (HROs).

Yaalon (1950) was born into a working-class family affiliated with the Labour Party, and grew up on a left-leaning settlement. The combination of a distinguished military career, promises of tackling the real issues in Israeli society, support of officers who speak their mind and Netanyahu’s waning popularity will prove to be a successful formula for Yaalon’s attempt to win the next election.

According to human rights organizations, including the African Refugee Development Center, deportation to a third country is not a tenable solution. In some cases, they say, the returnees have their travel documents stolen, experience arbitrary arrest, demands for bribes and even torture. However, the policy is aligned with the current trends in the Trump administration against immigrants and Islamophobia in Europe.

So while Jordan remains an island of relative calm in the region, its fragile stability could be shattered by a number of factors, including an escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, worsening or stagnant economic conditions and a continued stalling of real political reforms.