World | Middle East

How central is an independent police force to democracy? In Israel, the politicization of the national police is seen as part of the hard-line government’s revived judicial overhaul.

Following 13 attempts to elect a president, Lebanon’s parliament has sworn in army commander Joseph Aoun as the head of state. Mr. Aoun is the preferred candidate of the United States and Saudi Arabia.

For Palestinian families forced from their homes by 15 months of war, the temporary shelters they have constructed are no match for Gaza’s winter. Infants are especially vulnerable.

For more than a year, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched long-distance missile and drone attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping. After Israel largely subdued its Iran-allied enemies closer at hand, it is struggling to deter the Houthis on its own.

In a Damascus suburb, remaining Jews can again visit one of the world’s oldest synagogues where people throughout the region once came to pray.

As Syrians seek to recover from decades of a brutal dictatorship, they want to learn what happened to missing loved ones. For many, the first stop is a notorious prison.

First Hamas, then Hezbollah, now Syria. As key components of Iran’s anti-Israel/anti-U.S. “Axis of Resistance” are sidelined or incapacitated, what is left of Tehran’s regional strategy?

The end of the Assad dictatorship opens the way, perhaps, to a more peaceful and stable Middle East. Will regional leaders take that opportunity?

For years Turkey and Qatar backed what had been written off as the losing side in Syria’s civil war. With the Assad regime’s fall, they are geopolitical winners. The Mideast axis of power is shifting, but it still runs through Syria.

As the barriers to movement into and inside Syria have come down, Syrians are racing to reunite with loved ones and visit their former homes, or what is left of them. It is an emotional time, and the destruction they are finding is often vast.