On Sunday, I interviewed the former Prime Minister and current Defense Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak. We spoke about Israel's settlement activities in the West Bank and the degree to which they may jeopardize future discussions with the Palestinians about the creation of  a Palestinian state.

Here's a transcript of our discussion:

Fareed Zakaria: You ordered, this week, the removal of a settler family from Hebron over the prime minister's objections because you believed you had to uphold the law.

But yet, there is a similar situation going on with settlers in the Beit El community, where a court has ordered that the settlements be evacuated and yet the government, the prime minister has told the attorney general to find some other solution. Why would you not uphold the law and a court order in that case, as well? FULL POST

Sunday at 10am and 1pm EST on CNN's GPS, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak discusses a range of issues including the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran.

In the excerpt below, Barak addresses the issue of Israel's settlement building.

Fareed Zakaria: The Palestinians are sending you a letter, though, arguing that if negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis must resume, Israel must stop building settlements - creating facts on the ground that will make it more and more difficult to create a two-state solution. Is there any prospect of that happening?

Ehud Barak: Fareed, I hope that it will happen. I think that most of the burden for the inability to move in the last three years happens to be on the Palestinians' shoulders, not on ours. FULL POST

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Obama a gift in Washington this week. It was a copy of the book of Esther, which tells the tale of a benevolent king who saved the Jewish people from an enemy who wished to destroy them - a Persian enemy (not very subtle).

So where does the Israel-Iran conflict end? On Sunday, I had an excellent panel to talk about that and much more.

Daniel Levy is co-director of the Middle East Task Force of the New America Foundation.

Bret Stephens is the foreign affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Rula Jebreal is an Israeli-Arab journalist who has worked as an anchorwoman in Italy and Egypt.

Elliott Abrams was deputy national security advisor in George W. Bush's administration.

Here's a transcript of our conversation (video above):

FULL POST

By Elizabeth Mendes, Gallup.com

The large majority of Americans continue to view Israel favorably, while far fewer say they view the Palestinian Authority or Iran very or mostly favorably.

These data are from Gallup's annual World Affairs survey, conducted each February since 2001. The Feb. 2-5, 2012, survey asked Americans to rate a list of more than 20 countries. Iran ranked at the very bottom, the Palestinian Authority was several spots higher up, and Israel was much closer to the top of the list. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Robert M. Danin is Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former Director for the Levant and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the National Security Council. He writes the blog Middle East Matters at CFR.org.

By Robert M. Danin

While the “Friends of Syria” were meeting in Tunis last week, Hamas was separately taking its own steps to disavow the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. In a significant move, Hamas officials announced last Friday - in Egypt as well as in Gaza - its break with the al-Assad regime. Hamas’ strategic realignment affects the Middle East chessboard, both regionally and within Palestinian politics.Hamas’ abandonment of its long-time Alawite backers further deepens the Middle East fault line between the Sunni and Shiite worlds. Hamas has now aligned itself with its Sunni brethren already united against the al-Assad regime. Syria’s Middle East backers are now down to Shiite Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Iran.

Iranian officials are upset with Hamas, and it is not clear if Tehran will continue to supply Hamas with money and weapons. Iran’s leaders could not have helped notice that worshipers in Egypt, where the break was announced, responded by chanting, “No Hezbollah and no Iran. The Syrian revolution is an Arab revolution.” FULL POST

Editor's Note: Robert M. Danin is Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former Director for the Levant and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the National Security Council. He writes the blog Middle East Matters at CFR.org.

By Robert M. Danin – Special to CNN

Monday's Fatah-Hamas unity agreement announced in Doha marks the latest in a series of unimplemented accords between the two Palestinian adversaries. The two sides announced - again - their intention to unify their efforts and form an independent caretaker government to shepherd the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza to new elections.

In an innovation that apparently violates the Palestinian Basic Law, the two sides agreed that Mahmoud Abbas would serve as both president and prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Recall, the PA’s prime minister position was established in 2003 and Abbas was appointed to that post to reduce the absolute powers of the presidency, then in Yassir Arafat’s hands. Ironically, it is now Abbas as president who is seeking to claim back what he once tried to take away. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth is President of the United Nations Foundation.

By Timothy Wirth, U.N. Dispatch

As the eyes of the world are focused on the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations in New York, another troubling chapter is unfolding in Paris. The United States is on the brink of abandoning its decades-long leadership in several international organizations – a process that will fundamentally undermine American national security and economic interests.

At issue are two laws from the early 1990s that prohibit the United States from providing financial contributions to any United Nations entity that admits Palestine as a member. The laws are strict: if Palestine is admitted to a U.N. agency, the United States must stop paying its membership dues. The restrictions provide no authority for the president to waive these prohibitions even if it is in the national interest to do so.

With a clear majority of countries around the world prepared to back Palestinian ambitions at the United Nations, the United States is poised to lose its leverage over several U.N. bodies that advance American interests and promote our ideals.

FULL POST

Editor's Note: Daniel Gordis is president of the Shalem Foundation and senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His latest book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End, won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award.

By Daniel Gordis, Foreign Affairs

No one in Israel is calling the agreement signed for Gilad Shalit’s freedom a good deal. On many levels it is terrible. Israel is releasing more than 1000 prisoners, several hundred of them hardened terrorists, for one soldier. For the first time, the Jewish state essentially acquiesced as a terrorist organization dictated the list of prisoners to be released, including several responsible for mass deaths of Israeli citizens, a notion that would once have been unthinkable. Israel may well have given its enemies incentive to kidnap more soldiers. And the terrorists now being released are likely to attack and kill Israelis in the future.

Despite these facts, the deal for Shalit passed a cabinet vote by an overwhelming margin (26 in favor and only three opposed), and the vast majority of Israeli citizens support it. In agreeing to this prisoner swap, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli public chose to return to their roots, to revive a central tenet of old-time Israeli ideology: we do not leave our sons in the field. FULL POST

Editor's Note: Alon Pinkas is an Israeli diplomat, who most recently served as Consul General of Israel in the United States.

By Alon Pinkas, Foreign Affairs

The prisoner exchange deal that Israel struck with Hamas last week does not make sense in terms of the country's foreign and defense policy goals. A country that has been a victim of terrorism for decades - and that maintains that nations should never negotiate with terrorist organizations - has done exactly that, exchanging 1,027 convicted terrorists (550 of whom were directly involved in multiple murders) for one soldier, Gilad Shalit.

Although the government initially considered military action to recover Shalit, who was abducted on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip in 2006, it was never a feasible option. Gaza's dense and hostile population would have made any rescue mission messy and dangerous. Moreover, Israeli intelligence had never determined his precise whereabouts. Over time - and under immense public pressure - the Israeli government began to entertain the notion of a political deal, the basic contours of which were drawn as early as 2007. (Israel would free roughly 550 Hamas prisoners, Hamas would free Shalit, and then Israel would free another 450.) At the time - and when it resurfaced in 2009 - the administration of then-Prime Minster Ehud Olmert rejected the deal because the price was too high. Yet two and a half years later, both parties agreed to strikingly similar terms. FULL POST

Israel and Hamas leaders said Tuesday they have brokered a deal to swap roughly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Hamas more than five years ago. FULL POST