Ira Sharkansky

By Ira Sharkansky  JERUSALEM–Only a day after the fire, and in the midst of haggling over responsibility, another sack of something plopped onto our table. When I first looked at my computer screen this morning, the article in the most prominent upper left hand corner of the New York Times web site was headlined “U.S.

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM —  Inertia is a force in government as well as physics. It took World War II to create more than 100 new countries and rearrange the forces most important. Germany and Japan were the big losers. Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal were not far behind. The next big

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–The fire is not yet under control. The weather is changing, aid has come from numerous countries, and the prospects are positive. Now the noise of politicians and activists blaming one another is taking over the media that had been devoted to on the scene action and human interest. The weekend reminded

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–While the macro picture widely purveyed is global warming, the micro weathers determine who gets what. Europe is reporting record cold and snow, but it is still summer in this corner of the Middle East. Daily temperatures are ranging above 20 C (high 60s low 70 for Americans out of sync with the rest

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM –The latest session of my seminar on public policy was devoted to “Israel in Comparative Perspective.” After noting that Israel is the lone country with a majority of Jews and the western democracy with outlays on security more than twice those (as a proportion of national resources) of the next most

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–There is a lesson for the Middle East in the latest incident on the Korean peninsula. The lesson is indirect, and deals more with general principles than the details of what seems to have happened. I begin with the admission that I am a confused outsider on Korean issues. So–with respect to

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–You want soap opera in real life?  It is far from politically correct to be cynical in the presence of charges about sexual harassment and rape, but who wants politically correct in the presence of these stories? The initial inquiry into a leading candidate for the job of national police chief has

By Ira Sharkansky  JERUSALEM –Among the platitudes being promoted here and elsewhere is that the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party SHAS is one of the extremist elements keeping the Netanyahu government from acting with good sense. The conventional line is that Israel must leave the West Bank to Palestine, in compliance with the views expressed by right

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Let’s start with the bad news. For the good news, you’ll have to look elsewhere. A week ago things were looking pretty good. The prime minister reported that the Americans were offering, as an inducement for a 90-day construction freeze in the West Bank, 20 F-35 advanced military planes, free of charge,

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM– That seven hour meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary of State Clinton in Washington D.C. produced a lot of talk, but less by way of clear documents. There are questions about the promise of 20 advanced military planes, whether the Americans are clear about excluding Jerusalem from the 90-day settlement

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Prime Minister Netanyahu has recommended that his government accept an American offer to provide advanced military planes worth $3billion　without payment, and to support Israel’s position in the United Nations, in exchange for a 90-day extension of the building freeze that will not apply to neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The deal is attractive not

By Ira Sharkansky Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–There was a seven-hour meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Secretary of State Clinton. It closed with mutual declarations of commitment to a peace process, fuzzy definitions of what was agreed, and no assignment of blame for the impasse to one side or another. The New York Times reported that