On April 29th, J Street U at Northwestern hosted Ori Nir (Americans for Peace Now) and Ghaith al-Omari (The American Task Force on Palestine) at Northwestern University for a talk on the current status of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the need of a two-state solution, and the importance of campus discussion on these issues.
For more about the event see The Daily Northwestern: "J Street U speakers discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the 2-state solution"; and North By Northwestern: "J Street U Northwestern speakers speak on Israeli-Palestinian conflict".
--Justice Minister Tzipi Livni slams the Jerusalem municipality for confiscating 'beigeleh' breads from Palestinian street stalls at Jaffa Gate on Passover.**
Washington Jewish Week - April 17, 2014
APN's Alana Suskin's letter to the editor in reply to criticism of her op-ed
http://washingtonjewishweek.com/11678/whose-side-are-we-on/
Israel Hayom - April 14, 2014
Peace Now: New settlemnent in Hebron threatens to derail peace process
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16857
Washington, DC – The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas today ended a seven-year rift by
reaching a historic reconciliation agreement.
Americans for Peace Now welcomes the agreement. APN holds that unity between the Palestinian political factions and
between the West Bank and Gaza is vital for empowering the Palestinian leadership to more credibly conduct
negotiations with Israel and to more efficiently implement a future peace agreement.
APN’s President and CEO Debra DeLee said: “The new Palestinian agreement is good news, and should be regarded as
such by the Obama administration and by the government of Israel. A Palestinian interlocutor who credibly
represents all the Palestinians is much better positioned to make hard decisions around the negotiating table and
is much better positioned to deliver when the time comes to implement a peace agreement. This reconciliation
agreement can and should empower and legitimize Mahmoud Abbas as a leader of the Palestinian polity.”
“We urge President Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue interacting with Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, and to determine the future relations of the U.S. administration and the Israeli
government with any Palestinian government based on that government's positions and actions alone.”
--The amount of shekels that an anonymous donor will give to any Jewish settlement living “near enemy populations” to hold a fireworks display on Israeli Independence Day. One settler called it 'incitement.'**
-- Labor MK Omer Bar-Lev slammed the decision to impose more sanctions on the Palestinians.**
"Our government's policy of refusing to formally recognize Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem is difficult for many of our fellow members of the American Jewish community to accept. But recording someone's birthplace as "Jerusalem" rather than "Israel" in no way threatens our religious, spiritual, and historical attachment and claims in the city. In our hearts, 'Yerushalayim shel Ma'lah - celestial Jerusalem - is and will forever be Israel's capital. However, 'Yerushalayim shel Matah - mundane Jerusalem of daily life on the ground - poses extremely delicate and volatile foreign policy and national security challenges. These challenges cannot be addressed through heavy-handed Congressional declarations or legislation, and they cannot be resolved by the courts. They can only be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and a peace agreement that delivers a two-state solution to the conflict."
6/8/15: APN Press Release -- Press Release: APN Welcomes Supreme
Court Ruling on Jerusalem
7/25/13: APN Press Release --
APN Welcomes Court Decision on Jerusalem
11/7/11: APN Oped -- Why We Have
Taken a Stand with the US Supreme Court (Original Hebrew version here)
10/4/11: APN Press Release --
APN Files Amicus Brief Supporting Obama Administration on Jerusalem
10/4/11: APN Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court of the United States of America -- full text)
Washington, DC - Commenting on the status of ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, Americans for Peace Now's President and CEO Debra DeLee issued the following statement:
"APN's position is clear: Negotiations are the only route to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the only resolution to this conflict will be a mutually agreed-on two-state solution. However, the past nine months of peace efforts, led with admirable commitment and energy by Secretary of State John Kerry and his team, have failed to bring the parties closer to a two-state outcome. The current state of this peace effort exposes three structural weaknesses in the current process: the manifest bad faith of the Netanyahu government; the profound weakness of the Palestinian leadership; and the absence of adequate rules-of-the-game - and consequences for breaking these rules - put in place by the Obama Administration as the steward of these efforts.