Israel

TEL AVIV - Israel's highest-ranking female soldier says efforts to draft male ultra-Orthodox students into the Israel Defense Forces should not come at the expense of women's advancement in the army. Last year, the nation's Supreme Court determined that a legal exemption for the ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service was unfair, and the issue is a top legislative priority of the newly formed Israeli government. Orna Barbivai, 50, Israel's first female major general and commander of the army's personnel department, says the nation has come a long way in integrating women into meaningful military professions, including allowing them to serve as pilots and in a special combat battalion with 60% female members.

With President Obama's visit to Israel and the occupied territories now behind us, attention is likely to turn to how we might restart the peace process. But if the past is any indication, one crucial element will be largely ignored in the discussion: Palestinian politics. In contrast to the almost limitless deference shown to the pressures of Israeli domestic politics (as when Obama abandoned calls for a settlement freeze in 2010 because of the composition of Israel's governing coalition)

Re "Israel needs a new map," Opinion, March 21 Ian S. Lustick suggests that early Israeli Zionist goal of building a "modern secular democracy" that would eventually exist in an Arab region that had also become modern and secular hasn't been met. Anyone who studies the history of Israel knows that it was built by the exigencies of political brutality, not a plan. The Russian Jews escaping the pogroms and the European Jews escaping Hitler had only one plan in mind: survival.

Barack Obama's first trip to Israel as president seems to have thawed his frosty relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at least for public consumption. But it appears to have done little to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, curb illegal Jewish settlement-building or craft a unified strategy to keep nuclear weapons out of Iranian hands. It was a diplomatic mission with a strikingly unambitious agenda, Middle East experts say, and one that failed to exceed low expectations.

JERUSALEM - President Obama brokered a diplomatic reconciliation between key Middle East allies Israel and Turkey at the end of his visit to the Holy Land, thawing tensions that have complicated U.S. efforts to cope with regional issues including Syria's civil war. With Obama looking on, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally apologized Friday to Turkey over the 2010 killing by Israeli soldiers of nine Turkish activists aboard a...

Re "Obama's Israel visit," Editorial, March 19 Your editorial's subheadline says that "the U.S. must keep pressing for a two-state solution. " I agree, but 100% of that pressure should be on the Palestinians. There has never been a real "peace process" because the Palestinians' goal has been the destruction of Israel. This was the Mideast Arabs' goal (including the Palestinians') in 1967 before any "occupation" and settlements, in 1948 when Israel declared independence after the partition of Palestine (when the Palestinians refused to declare theirs)

JERUSALEM - Evoking the Jewish people's biblical struggle for freedom, President Obama called upon Israelis Thursday to sweep aside deep skepticism and embrace a Palestinian state as the only way to guarantee their nation's future. In a soaring speech in Jerusalem that was billed as the main event of his three-day Holy Land trip, Obama said in an auditorium of cheering university students that as the generation of Israel's founding fathers fades, it falls to them to write the young nation's next chapter.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just formed a new government in Israel. But nothing of substance will change. Peace negotiations will not resume; settlement activity will expand; war with Iran will still be threatened; and Israel will move even closer to becoming an international pariah. When President Obama speaks to the Israeli public, he will no doubt treat his counterpart cordially, but that won't mute the shocking honesty of what he has already said: An Israeli government led by Netanyahu cannot be a partner for productive peace talks.

President Obama arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday for his first presidential visit to Israel, hoping to reassure the Israeli people of his commitment to their security and to tend his personal relationships with key leaders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres were on hand at Ben Gurion International Airport for an official arrival ceremony that included a salute by the Israeli military. After the three leaders deliver remarks, Obama will visit a battery of the Pentagon-backed Iron Dome air defense system, which intercepts rockets aimed at Israel.

JERUSALEM - Opening his first presidential visit to the nation's closest Mideast ally, President Obama declared Wednesday that "peace must come to the Holy Land" during a red carpet arrival ceremony with Israeli leaders. In remarks after landing at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Obama described the U.S.-Israeli bond as “eternal,” the apparent theme of the three-day trip. The words "unbreakable alliance" are emblazoned on official signs, shirts, flyers and mugs all over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.