Ishaan Tharoor wrote in the Time magazine: “Two years later [today], Turkey’s vaunted soft power looks more soft than powerful… Erdoğan, too, cuts a smaller, humbler figure on the world stage… His overwhelming support for the Syrian opposition is not mirrored by the majority of the Turkish public, and his reliance on other foreign powers to push the diplomatic envelope has resulted in something of a loss of face.”

About 500 foreign journalists arrived in Israel over the weekend to cover Operation Pillar of Defense, the Government Press Office reported on Monday. The GPO said the new arrivals are joining some 1,400 members of the media in the region to cover Israel and the Middle East.

The FIFA World Cup, ICC World Cup and many other world championships have worked visibly towards global harmony... In 1999, they established the International Olympic Truce Foundation and the International Olympic Truce Centre to promote peaceful principles – using sports to establish contacts between communities in conflict and to create windows of opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation.

Israel’s brand used to be a producer of conflicts and bad news. ...he thought Israel should focus on building a relationship that is meaningful to both the country and consumers by broadening the conversation beyond conflicts and finding ways through research to better communicate Israel’s assets such as creative spirit and innovation.

Instead of assuming the inevitability of conflict, it is possible to see water scarcity as an opportunity for cooperation, with states and communities realising the mutual benefit available to them through working together rather than competing.