  Israel-Palestine conflict

The Israeli government is currently considering controversial plans to annex areas in the occupied West Bank. US President Donald Trump gave the green light for the move at the beginning of the year with his peace plan. Soon after, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the annexation would begin in the summer. His government's coalition agreement sets July 1 as the date.

In the effort to provide balanced commentary on the Middle East crisis, the Swiss daily Le Temps is publishing four very different points of view starting today - coinciding with missile attacks from Gaza against Israel. We publish excerpts from the first two texts.

Europe's journalists are preoccupied with the escalation of violence on the border between Gaza and Israel, where at least 60 Palestinians have died in an Israeli military operation against Palestinian demonstrators and Hamas targets. Among the most recent press voices is an article on Palestine's "victim myth" and criticism of Hamas for exploiting Palestinian civil society.

In May 1948 David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the founding of the State of Israel with the Declaration of Independence. The 70th anniversary has been overshadowed by the conflict with the Palestinians and domestic problems. Is this the state its founders dreamed of seven decades ago?

For the Palestinians 15 May 1948 marked the beginning of the Nakba - the Arabic word for "catastrophe". On this day they traditionally commemorate the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homeland as a result of the war waged by Arab states against the newly founded Israel. Journalists take the opportunity to look back on the past.

Soldiers shot at Palestinians during protests near the Gaza-Israel border and killed at least 17 people. In the run-up to the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel and the inauguration of the US embassy in Jerusalem European commentators fear the violence will escalate and call for moderation.