New reports suggest that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached an agreement with the Obama administration regarding a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state along the green line, i.e. along the ’67 borders, i.e. along borders that would include the half million settlers currently living in the West Bank. The reports indicated that Palestinian [...]
Israel appears to have successfully called the Americans’ bluff. Hillary Clinton circa May 2009 was demanding an immediate freeze to all settlement activity. Clinton circa October 2009 now thinks that a settlement freeze shouldn’t be a precondition for peace talks. She even thinks the non-action Netanyahu is yapping about, e.g. temporarily suspending work on new [...]
In the annals of American media coverage of Israel/Palestine, yesterday’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart was a watershed. On national TV, Jon Stewart interviewed Anna Baltzer and Mustafa Barghouti, advocates for equal Palestinian rights. They got on TV, they argued for equal Palestinian rights, they advocated for security and democracy for both peoples, they responded [...]
Israel’s simple dichotomous choice can be framed in a number of related ways: Pariah state or not? Apartheid or democracy? And as this opinion piece argues in Yediot Ahronot today: Obama or Wallerstein? Dozens of countries, including some that used to be sympathetic to Israel, have spoken out against us recently and will continue to [...]
If there is one thing that I could get all Jews—really all humans—to sit and contemplate, to consider with the most profound sincerity we capable of, its the following quote by Arundhati Roy: “The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes [...]
The Promised Land blog has an excellent post today about the recent political attacks against Peace Now. These attacks include being called “a virus, which causes the state great damage” by Moshe Ya’alon, former IDF Chief of Staff and current Knesset member. They also include Peace Now’s director-general being banned from entering Israel’s parliament by [...]
Is it really that difficult for Israelis to accept responsibility for their actions, for even some of their actions? Today, President Shimon Peres went to a Jewish high school in the Western Galilee and said this: Commenting on the peace negotiations [sic] between Israel and the Palestinians, Peres said that “the problem is not on [...]