“The Palestinian leadership has all but lost faith in the American-led peace process — causing them to instead pursue a strategy that’s dramatically different than anything they’ve attempted in the past 20 years,” writes Zack Beauchamp.

The Israeli prime minister’s surprising announcement that he will address a joint meeting of Congress in early March is straining relations between Israel and its closest ally. “The bilateral relationship is unshakable,” said a source close to [Secretary of State John] Kerry. “But playing politics with that relationship could blunt Secretary Kerry’s enthusiasm for being Israel’s primary defender.”

“Netanyahu is not the first prime minister to be aided by the American political system on his way to the polls,” writes Nahum Barnea. “It’s wrong and it harms the purity of the democratic process, but it’s the reality. There are pressing interests on both sides, and there is a lot of temptation. One can only take comfort in the fact that in most cases these attempts fail.

“But Netanyahu is taking it one step further this time. There has never been a deal like the one struck here: The American Republican Party is intervening in our elections, and in return an Israeli party is intervening in their politics. They are helping Netanyahu beat his rivals here, and he is helping them humiliate their rival there. It’s dangerous. It’s poisonous. It’s not so amusing anymore.”

Fuming Democrats accused Republicans on Thursday of breaking protocol by inviting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress without consulting them, challenging Israel’s assertion that the invitation was extended by both US political parties. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said the invitation to Netanyahu by Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner was “hubris.”

The rules of the Israeli political game entail that we may not know the identity of the next prime minister even after all of the votes are counted. Identifying the largest faction—the first-past-the-post winner in the U.S. sense—is not nearly enough. In 2009, the “winner” was ostensibly Kadima, then led by Tzipi Livni, which received 29 seats, compared to the Likud’s 28, but Netanyahu was tasked with forming the next government, given that he had wider support within the new Knesset as a whole. The key, as always in Israeli politics, is the arithmetic of coalition building.

In an extremely unusual step, the Mossad issued a statement on Thursday denying the intelligence agency was lobbying US lawmakers against stiffer Iran sanctions and saying that such legislation may lead to a collapse of talks with the Islamic Republic. The statement came as the climax to a bizarre series of events that ended with Mossad head Tamir Pardo contradicting a public statement made by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

In a bid to remain relevant with an increased electoral threshold, the three Arab parties and Communist party Hadash are to run on one list in the March 17 elections.

Despite huge ideological gaps, Arab parties in Israel are trying to form a joint list for the election, but their traditional voter base might not follow.