Palestinian President Abbas’s plan to seek statehood status at the UN next week has spurred new crisis-diplomacy efforts, but political pressures on all sides could make a deal hard to come by, says …

Gerald M. Steinberg, an Israeli expert on military and diplomatic affairs, says behind the stepped-up fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon is the Israeli perception that Hezbollah is a "proxy" for Iran…

Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria, says the recent U.S.-Syria meeting produced little because of the ongoing U.S.-backed probe into the killing of Lebanon’s former prime minister.