Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
From the category archives:
After nearly six months of pleading with Abbas and the PA to talk to the Israelis while they continue the settler colonization of their future state…
After months of pressuring the Arab League to provide a way for Abbas to sit down to said talks without losing the final shred of credibility he (arguably) has left…
After [...]
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According to the most recent report on settlements by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a Washington-based think tank, “the main operational effect of the settlement moratorium announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 26 has been to increase the pace of authorized new settlement housing construction above historical averages.”
At present, “close [...]
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A number of my readers have asked me about the difference between a settlement and an outpost. This distinction is typically made, in the minds of Israelis, as the difference in formal recognition by the government versus the informal establishment of small caravans, often by the most radical fringes of settler society.
This [...]
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Sometimes numbers are worth a thousand words. And if the numbers aren’t enough, the selection of maps on this website (which can be found under the Resources tab) can provide another couple thousand words worth of images.
Length of the West Bank-Israel border: 196 miles.
Projected length of West Bank wall: 437 miles.
Projected proportion [...]
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It is a truism that the US and Israel have had an extraordinarily close relationship since the 1960s. This fact makes Israel’s right-wing government’s gloating over Obama’s political troubles all the more. . . . well, troubling.
The Republican upset in the race for the U.S. Senate seat held for nearly half a [...]
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No Israeli leader has ever called for—much less offered—any peace deal to the Palestinians that would be reasonable for the Palestinians to accept. All such proposals have always undermined a number of the most fundamental characteristics of any sovereign state, such as control over borders, airspace, resources, etc, and therefore failed to provide Palestinians [...]
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There have been a couple excellent op-eds in the Israeli press recently, which examine the social psychological structures that allow Israelis to accept their little apartheid regime.
Here I want to summarize one of them, by the journalist Yitzhak Laor in Ha’aretz. First, he describes Israeli reactions to the recent High Court injunction to desegregate [...]
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This gem of a news item has a little bit of something for everyone.
If the environment and environmental justice is your thing, you have a story about Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s effort to turn the Palestinian neighborhood of Anata, Jerusalem into a construction waste site. If your goal is the acceleration of [...]
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Yesterday, Israel announced the construction of another 692 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem. You hear that, Obama? Netanyahu is essentially pissing on your stated desire to see a halt to settlement construction. You must be furious. Now what are you going to do, what are you going to say?
Enter [...]
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