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The commentaries are rolling in regarding Israel's new "unity government":

Unity Deal Provides A Great Opportunity For Israel

Kadima's entry into the government puts Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of a broad coalition of 94 Knesset members. That gives him almost complete freedom of action over the remaining year and a half of the 18th Knesset's term. The parliamentary opposition has been dwarfed and neutralized, while coalition factions will have trouble threatening to topple the prime minister from power.

Rivals Back Netanyahu In Deal That Could Mandate Strike On Iran

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, has cancelled snap elections and formed a national unity government with the largest opposition party in a dramatic deal that would give the hawkish premier a commanding mandate should he choose to strike against Iran.

The surprise deal with Shaul Mofaz, leader of the centrist Kadima party, comes two days after Mr Netanyahu called early elections for September, and puts the Prime Minister at the helm of one of the largest and broadest governments in Israel's history, with a 94-seat majority in the 120-member Knesset.

But crucially, it gives him a powerful political mandate at a time of heightened tensions with Iran, potentially making it easier for him to convince voters of his credentials to lead Israel in a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, should he choose to do so.

Some analysts noted that Israel's national unity governments have formed in the past at a time of war, and hinted there could be an understanding with Mr Mofaz, a former army chief of staff, regarding a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The Israeli leader and his Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, are widely believed to favour such an attack despite opposition at home and abroad.

The article below contains a lengthy list of commentaries relating to the new unity government for a deeper review.

Analysis And Opinions On Israel's New Government By Haaretz's Top Writers

A Brutal Crackdown May Be Coming For Russia's Renewed Opposition

Despite the Kremlin’s efforts to convince the Russian people - and the international media - that the protest movement that followed December’s fraudulent Duma elections was just a flash in the pan, protestors and the revived opposition have made it clear that they are not going away. The growing sense of intractability on both sides could be why yesterday’s protests saw more altercations between police and protestors than previous post-election protests: both sides sense that they are now in for a protracted standoff.

If the opposition can survive the likely imprisonment of key leaders, resist the siren song of Kremlin money and power, remain united under a broad platform of reform and convince key elites to join their cause, a crackdown could be much harder to sustain, and Putin could find himself in a very difficult position. That is no small feat, and the situation looks likely to get worse before it ever gets better. Indeed, there’s no question that Putin retains the monopoly on power in Russia - but his “managed democracy” isn’t likely to stay under the same management forever.

Syrian Refugees Begin To Overwhelm Jordan

Jordan is beginning to become overwhelmed by the influx of Syrians fleeing the growing civil war in their country.

The number of refugees crossing the southern border into the Hashemite Kingdom this month has reached 14,500, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The state-run news agency quoted Mafraq officials as saying the influx of refugees had also placed an additional strain on the area's health and water sectors.

Mayor Mohammad Oweidat said his municipality's environmental staff has been “stretched to the limit” as sanitation crews were “incapable of dealing with more than 200 tons of garbage left daily by the local community and a refugee population that has swelled to over 20,000.

The Genocide That Obama Refuses To Prevent

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Obama unveiled an “Atrocities Prevention Board” to, in his own words, “prevent and respond to mass atrocities”. The “Atrocities Prevention Board” is notable mainly for what it is not and his speech was notable for the topic that it avoided. Genocide.

Yet Obama ignored actual genocide, and defiled the Holocaust Memorial Museum by using it as a stage for whitewashing one of the world’s worst ruling mass murderers.

Obama was equally unwilling to call out Iran’s mass murdering thugs, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, by name. He briefly mentioned that his administration would continue to apply diplomatic pressure on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but refused to make the connection to the events of the day.

Instead of using his stage at the Holocaust Museum on Holocaust Remembrance Day to confront and address this genocidal shadow over the Jewish State, Obama used it to unveil an Atrocities Prevention Board, headed by Samantha Power, who had discussed invading Israel with a mammoth force while warning with a chuckle that it might alienate a “domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import”.

It was the kind of talk you might have expected from a Nazi propagandist, not an official whose job it was to prevent genocides from taking place. But the Atrocities Prevention Board had shelved genocide prevention, watering it down to atrocities prevention, a vague term that made opportunistic wars like Libya possible. And it has no interest whatsoever in preventing the one genocide that has been brewing in the region since the days of Mohammed.

Iran has made it clear that it wants to exterminate millions of Jews, and it is not alone in that desire. From the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which drew organizational inspiration from the Nazis, to Al-Nahda in Tunisia, and the AKP in Turkey, the Muslim world is licking its lips at the prospect. But this would-be genocide is described as a “conflict” in need of more peace negotiations, much as Bashir’s genocide was dismissed by Obama with the same language.

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