By taking equally energetic, clear stands regarding settlements and the definition of refugees, the international community can lay the groundwork for the resumption of serious negotiations on two states for two peoples, with these obstacles much reduced in their power to obstruct peace. Read more: Who is a refugee? | Ed Rettig | Ops & Blogs
The widespread perception among Israeli decision-makers of the European Union’s irrelevance is a perplexing conundrum of Israeli foreign relations. While one would think that a continent-sized institution representing Israel’s largest export market would somehow have more clout, the already limited capacity of the EU to play a constructive role contracts at an alarming rate. This
Dr. Hassan Barari, a Jordanian-born professor of political science at the University of Nebraska, has chosen a difficult, possibly dangerous academic path: he is committed to “peaceful coexistence and historical reconciliation between the Arabs and the Israelis.” In a step unusual among his Arab colleagues, he took the trouble to learn Hebrew “in order to
A familiar sinking feeling accompanies the news of a unity agreement between the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah leadership and the Islamist Hamas government of Gaza. Some informed observers suggest to AJC that this should not be taken too seriously. It is, they claim, mainly window dressing designed to facilitate the Palestinian attempt to bypass negotiations with
Words fail, following the stabbing murders at the settlement of Itamar. The victims were Ruth and Rabbi Udi Fogel and three of their children, Yoav (eleven), Elad (three) and Hadas (four months). What was the terrorist thinking as he slit the throat of a baby? What were the feelings of the 12-year-old daughter who arrived
Many say that the peace process is at a standstill. This is mistaken, since nothing stands still in the politics of the Middle East. A more accurate formulation is that the peace process is in retreat. Among the Palestinians, the Abbas-Fayyad government continues to work on building infrastructure for statehood, but its leaders look across
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced he will not run again for president. Of course, with the apparent cancellation of Palestinian Authority elections in January it’s clear that no one will run against him either. And so we are left with two Palestinian governments, in Ramallah and Gaza, both illegal under Palestinian law and running
Last week Jerusalem and Ramallah vividly displayed their respective dysfunctions. The Knesset passed a law requiring a referendum on withdrawal from Jerusalem or the Golan Heights, areas that have been legally incorporated into Israel. Not to be outdone, the Fatah party’s Revolutionary Council (described as its highest “legislative” body) issued yet another provocative declaration rejecting
We appear to be on the cusp of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Years ago, a moment like this would have seemed pregnant with hope and excitement. Today, responses to the news coverage vary between gray and blasé. At this moment it may be worthwhile to recall something of the spirit of
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, at heart, a battle of identities. We are not just two nations competing for land, but, more significantly, two competing narratives of national liberation. That is what makes compromise so excruciating and explains the zero-sum view that so many advocates worldwide take. It also helps explain why this relatively diminutive standoff,
JERUSALEM – The Federation of American Scientists is an organization concerned with the ethical responsibility of scientists to inform and help shape national discussions of science, technology and government policy. It is endorsed by 84 Nobel Prize laureates. Founded by Manhattan Project researchers after World War II, it runs a program opposing the abuse of
The New York Times recently carried an op-ed by former National Security Council staffer Robert Malley and Oxford don (and Palestinian negotiator) Hussein Agha, entitled “The Two-State Solution Doesn’t Solve Anything.” This, incidentally, was the same Malley-Agha team did much to confuse the issues around the failure of the 2000 Camp David conference. Their sympathetic portrayal of
The Bethlehem Fatah conference—the first in twenty years—provides one more illustration of the need to reevaluate the Middle East peace process.Somewhat confusingly, Fatah understands that the goal of the process is two states, but refuses to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people and appears to claim all of Jerusalem for the future
JERUSALEM – New reports must be read with care, especially in our region. Often, events that did not even take place—such as the Jenin “Massacre” of April 2002, which even Fatah now concedes never happened—fire the imagination of the media.Sometimes the opposite is true: significant developments are barely reported. For those of us trying to
In 2001 I wrote this article about a fundamental misunderstanding of the conflict that Palestinian negotiators brought to Camp David. Has this changed?
