Mahmoud Abbas, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Peace. Donald Trump met Mahmoud Abbas, in Bethlehem today, a twofer for a President intent, as the national-security adviser, H.
R. McMaster, put it last week, on visiting “homelands and holy sites” and expressing “his desire for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians.” Middle East reality check: Israel won, and so can the Palestinians if they give up victim status. Israel won.
That sums up the more than half a century conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. They won the wars, they won the peace, and they won the prosperity. So, it’s time for them to act like it, and more importantly it’s time for the Palestinians to accept they lost. Don’t let Israel silence the boycott movement. The Israeli government response to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been predictable.
Being incapable of engaging in any reasonable form of self-criticism, Israeli leaders have turned their wrath on their accusers and their victims. In recent years, several entities have implemented boycotts or are considering other punitive actions in an effort to force a change in Israeli behaviour. European governments are moving to require Israel to label products originating in West Bank settlements so as to distinguish them from exports from Israel. Some US churches and pension funds have decided to divest from businesses that support the occupation. The legacy of the six-day war: Why Israel needs a Palestinian state. THE victory of Israel over the Arab armies that encircled it in 1967 was so swift and absolute that, many Jews thought, the divine hand must have tipped the scales.
Before the six-day war Israel had feared another Holocaust; thereafter it became an empire of sorts. Awestruck, the Jews took the holy sites of Jerusalem and the places of their biblical stories. But the land came with many Palestinians whom Israel could neither expel nor absorb. Was Providence smiling on Israel, or testing it? Israel-Palestine: the real reason there’s still no peace. Scattered over the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea lie the remnants of failed peace plans, international summits, secret negotiations, UN resolutions and state-building programmes, most of them designed to partition this long-contested territory into two independent states, Israel and Palestine.
The collapse of these initiatives has been as predictable as the confidence with which US presidents have launched new ones, and the current administration is no exception. In the quarter century since Israelis and Palestinians first started negotiating under US auspices in 1991, there has been no shortage of explanations for why each particular round of talks failed. Among the most common refrains are that extremists were allowed to set the agenda and there was a neglect of bottom-up economic development and state-building. Bloomberg. When it comes to Middle East policy, usually all roads don’t lead to Rome.
But President Donald Trump has good reason to visit the pope on the same circuit as his peace mission to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump’s plan, which has a small but not trivial chance of success, depends on creating a grand anti-Iran alliance running through Jerusalem and Riyadh. 'I Belonged Nowhere': 'Salt Houses' Is A Story Of Displacement, From A Novelist Who Knows. Hala Alyan is the author of three poetry collections.
Salt Houses is her first novel. Beowulf Sheehan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hide caption toggle caption Beowulf Sheehan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Hamas Zaps Some Life Into the Peace Process - Bloomberg View. As U.S.
President Donald Trump prepares to meet Wednesday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, it appears the two-state solution isn’t dead after all. Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, in a modestly surprising move has said it would accept a Palestinian state in pre-1967 borders. The motives for the announcement, which also came with the group’s distancing from the Muslim Brotherhood, are complex. 'Apartheid' furor comes amid 50 years of Israeli occupation. AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Labeling Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as “apartheid” is like flinging a burning match into spilled gasoline — so combustible are the passions on both sides.
Rima Khalaf did just that when a report commissioned by her U.N. agency accused Israel of having established an apartheid regime designed to dominate the Palestinian people as a whole. In a swift outcry, Israel slammed the 65-page document as anti-Semitic. The U.S. demanded its removal and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres ordered it quashed, saying it did not reflect his views. Rather than comply, Khalaf resigned as head of ESCWA, a Beirut-based agency with 18 Arab member states and one of several U.N. regional bodies dealing with economic and social issues. Behind bars, a famed Palestinian leads his people in a prison hunger strike. He has long been viewed as a future president of a Palestinian state, even as he is reviled by Israelis as a terrorist who is serving multiple life terms in prison for murder.
This week, Marwan Barghouti resurfaced in the public eye in a way that put Israel’s government on the defensive and seems likely to burnish his credentials among Palestinians. Barghouti began leading more than 1,000 fellow Palestinian inmates in a hunger strike to demand better conditions in Israeli prisons. We are lifelong Zionists. Here’s why we’ve chosen to boycott Israel. Steven Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard University. Glen Weyl is an assistant professor of economics and law at the University of Chicago. The Man Whose Dream Became Israel. Theodor Herzl was a man with an idea that once seen to fruition would change the world dramatically. But his reasons for creating the modern Zionist movement were never as black and white as people made them out to be. History tries correcting the tricks memory plays on us—while respecting memory’s power. On Flipboard. Why a Controversial Palestinian History Class at Berkeley Was Canceled, Then Reinstated.
US delivers stinging rebuke to Israel over West Bank home plan. In an unusually strong rebuke, the US accused Israel of breaking its trust over plans for a new West Bank settlement. Yasser Arafat Museum Focuses On Palestinian Leader : Parallels. A photograph of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hangs outside a door leading to the small bedroom where he spent his final years, a display at the new Arafat Museum in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images A photograph of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hangs outside a door leading to the small bedroom where he spent his final years, a display at the new Arafat Museum in the West Bank city of Ramallah. We are lifelong Zionists. Here’s why we’ve chosen to boycott Israel. Without two-state solution, Middle East faces 'perpetual violence' - U.N. Daily Life in the West Bank Is More Than Just Protests and Tear Gas. Ben Ehrenreich. Photo by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos Identical twins who swap identities to keep their double out of jail; an Israeli settler caught in his own razor wire, too proud to allow himself to be helped down by a Palestinian; a little blond girl who defiantly raises her fist at soldiers twice her size—Ben Ehrenreich brings a novelist's touch to anecdotes that are often stranger than fiction in his new book The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine.
His carefully curated stories, gleaned from years of reporting, provide a symbolic window into the West Bank. Andrew Cuomo Would Have Blacklisted Muhammad Ali. Israel wants a peace process – but only if it's doomed to fail. NPR in Gaza, A Photographer's Journal. Discussing—and Combating—BDS at the U.N. General Assembly. Copy BDS tactics, pro-Israel activists told at UN conference. The war of succession brewing in Palestine. Netanyahu reportedly agrees to Arab peace push, wants it to supplant France’s. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls in Jerusalem, May 23, 2016. Palestinian reality show underscores democracy woes. Israel, Palestinians Court Egypt’s Sisi as Broker in Peace Talks. Jewish Home 'killing hope' of a Palestinian state - Inside Israel. Why History Matters: The 1967 Six-Day War. South African Nobel Laureate John Coetzee on Israel and apartheid, 'Draw your own conclusions'
DC meeting between Israel and Saudi Arabia marks end of Arab Peace Initiative and two-state solution. Steven Van Zandt’s Israel gaffe: Musician gets basic facts wrong in Twitter rant. It is apartheid — South African activists agree. How the Curse of Sykes-Picot Still Haunts the Middle East. U.S. acknowledges Israel’s unlawful killings, excessive force, torture, discrimination against Palestinians. The Democratic Debate: A Surprising Exchange on Israel. Ignore the smears: Bernie Sanders is right about Israel’s heinous atrocities in Gaza — he just got the numbers wrong. Before Zionism: The shared life of Jews and Palestinians. Can Israelis And Palestinians Change Their Minds? : Parallels. A Palestinian Takes A Different Road In His Fight : Parallels. “Israel is occupation-addicted”: Israeli journalist Gideon Levy blasts U.S. support for “apartheid” & rise of fascism.
Are we seeing Palestine’s spring at long last? Israel’s Other Existential Threat Comes From Within. In The West Bank, A Rough Start Doesn't Deter New Arab TV Channel : Parallels. Israel, Palestine, and the End of the Two-State Solution. UN resolution to impose 18-month deadline on Palestinian state talks. When occupation becomes apartheid. The United States should recognize the state of Palestine. Israeli court approves demolition of Palestinian village. Cultivating Peace in Palestine. In Israel, the silence is broken but many abroad are still deaf. World soccer faces brutal fight as Palestinians ask Israel suspension from FIFA. For Israel, Soccer Becomes A Geopolitical Football : Parallels. Netanyahu cancels controversial 'apartheid' buses plan, but there have been segregated West Bank buses for years.