Just days ahead of Netanyahu-Obama meeting, builders start 20 Jewish homes in east Jerusalem
by Ronen Medzini
Construction in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah began
Sunday, just a few days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was
scheduled to meet with the US president.
YNET: "Peace Now denounces King's Garden plan in Jerusalem"
Jerusalem Post: "Peace Now urges longer settlement freeze"
AFP: "Settlers 'building in West Bank despite freeze'"
AFP: "Israel's Likud to back West Bank settlement growth"
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Americans for Peace Now welcomed what it said were
improvements to an Iran sanctions bill, but still opposed the proposed
law.
"Positive changes to the bill, which APN had called for, include the
addition of significant waiver authorities for the President throughout
the bill, even if in many cases that authority is highly
circumscribed," the group said. "These waivers are critical to giving
the President at least the minimally necessary flexibility in his
conduct of U.S. foreign policy, in particular vis-a-vis the critical
challenge posed by Iran."
by Hagit Ofran
Director, Settlement Watch project of the Israeli Peace Now movement
&
Lara Friedman
Director, Policy and Government Relations, Americans for Peace Now
While all eyes are focused these days on Gaza, around the corner awaits
another huge challenge to nascent peace efforts: the September 26th
expiration of the settlement moratorium.
Addressing criticism of the demonstration on June 6, Yariv writes:
All...agreed to say fully
that the demonstration was not a demonstration of hatred for the State
of Israel or the IDF but, rather, was a
demonstration that focused on the profound fear as to the place to
which the government was leading the State of Israel.
The root of this disaster lies in the failure of the policy, initiated
by Israel after Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and supported by the
international community, to block the free movement of goods and people
in and out of Gaza.
APN and Peace Now's statements are quoted extensively in this article covering initial responses to the Gaza Flotilla confrontation.
By TIA GOLDENBERG (AP)
JERUSALEM -- When Devorah Adler's children go to school, they pass underneath the gun-toting security officer who stands on their roof 24-hours a day, walk down a path dotted by surveillance cameras and get in a van manned by another armed guard.
by Justin Jacobs
Associate Editor
Ori Nir grew up in Israel, but now lives in the United States. He wrote for Israeli newspaper Haaretz, but is now the spokesman for Americans for Peace Now. When it comes to understanding the U.S.-Israeli relationship, views don't come more two-sided than Nir's.
"Israel's Palestinian Opportunity" by Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer
Anyone who continues to question whether Israel has a responsible
and strong Palestinian partner who has the capacity to sign a peace
agreement with us received a clear answer on Sunday on Channel Two News:
there is a government in Ramallah, there is a leader in the mukataa,
and there is a palpable possibility of ending the peace process with a
final status arrangement.
The latest assault on Israel's future comes from an unexpected source: Prominent American Jews are demanding that Washington not ask Israel to negotiate over Jerusalem. Nathan Diament's article is one example.
Debra DeLee, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now,
published a statement in response to Wiesel saying, "Your ad in the
Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal brought tears to my eyes,
for more than one reason."
- Jerusalem Post: "On W. Bank tour, Landau calls for legalizing two outposts"
- Ha'aretz: "Demolition near settlement likely to be delayed"
- Jerusalem Post: "G. Hayovel outpost status to be reviewed"
- Yedioth Achronoth: "Tearing Down the House"
Pogrebin is an author, past president of Americans for Peace Now, and reflects on her participation in APN's recent Fact-Finding Trip to Israel and Palestine
------------------------------------
Before I arrived in Israel a few weeks ago, I'd read that Israeli President Shimon Peres had likened Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, to David Ben-Gurion, Israel's George Washington. So I was intrigued when, on my first night in Jerusalem, the conversation at my Israeli friends' Sabbath table was about the impressive speech Fayyad had delivered to the princes of Israel's security establishment at the recent Herzliya conference.
by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, founding editor of Ms. magazine and the author of 10 books, and a past president of Americans for Peace Now.
"From now on, I can never say I didn't know. This, thanks to Hagit Ofran, director of Peace Now's "Settlement Watch," who spends four hours schlepping us around East Jerusalem to see Palestinian properties that have been expropriated by the Israeli government or by Jewish settlers." We're a six-member delegation from Americans for Peace Now, the U.S. counterpart of Ofran's group, and we've come to assess the damage.
Data collected by Macro Center indicate main bulk of West Bank construction during Sharon, Olmert terms conducted west of separation fence in order to promote convergence plan. Yesha Council elements say data utterly groundless.
Following repeated violations of court orders in settlement of Kiryat Netafim, High Court justices criticize State's conduct, say no steps taken to enforce edicts, punish violators
By Aviad Glickman
An Israeli planning committee has pushed forward plans for 600 new homes in mainly Arab occupied East Jerusalem.
Dozens of followers will gather Saturday to mark 16 years to Cave of the Patriarchs massacre that left 29 Muslim worshippers dead. 'We come here every year to show the Left that suppressing the Right will be met with opposition,' says editor of book about Goldstein
By Shmulik Grossman
The Diaspora Affairs and Information Ministry recently launched a web site that the public is asked to visit in order to learn how to explain Israel overseas. The site's launching is being accompanied by an expensive, large-scale ad campaign, but a closer look at the site and its contents raises the worrying conclusion that the information minister has chosen to use the resources of his ministry to promote extreme right wing political positions under the guise of global PR.
By Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Iran watchers keep two clocks: One counts down to a nuclear Iran, the other counts down to a democratic Iran.
Neither clock is guaranteed to keep ticking all the way down.
Martin Bresler is the newly elected Chair of the Americans for Peace Now Board of Directors
The Israel Defense Forces, the country's binding institution, recently set up a unit to combat, not Palestinian terror or a regional threat, but violence by the country's own citizens - specifically Jewish settlers in the West Bank against both Palestinians and fellow Israeli Jews.
Ofran is the Peace Now Settlement Watch Director
Once again, even Americans can not stand up to a small group of settlers, who show - more often than not - that they have the last word on what takes place in the West Bank. This time, a small group of settlers insisted, and succeeded, to squash a plan for building a hospital for Palestinian children at "Oush Grab" ("the Crow's Nest") east of Bethlehem.
Even if you think this effort is a smart move, Ori Nir, spokesman for
Americans For Peace Now, says the strategy is being carried out
atrociously.
------------------------------
By Ben Harris · February 18, 2010
Mayor to implement sealing orders on illegal structures built by both Jews and Arabs in east Jerusalem...The Peace Now movement said that "the Jerusalem mayor has turned into a
collaborator with Israel's most extreme right-wing organizations."
by Ronen Medzini Published
In a statement Friday, Debra DeLee, president of Americans for Peace
Now, urged that the bill be modified when members of the House and
Senate meet to reconcile their respective versions of the legislation.
by Ali Gharib
WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (IPS) - In a surprisingly swift move on Thursday
night that could have wide-ranging implications, the U.S. Senate passed
a bill containing broad unilateral sanctions to punish foreign
companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand its domestic
refinery capabilities.
By SHEERA FRENKEL
McClatchy Newspapers
EFRAT, West Bank -- Efrat, 10 miles outside Jerusalem, has become known for its Anglo-Saxon population.
Nearly 30 percent of the town lies on Palestinian land that was confiscated from the nearby Arab village of al-Khader, according to a survey completed by Peace Now. New York Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and Israeli Moshe Moskovics jointly founded it with money donated by Florida businessman Irving Moskowitz.
If there were any doubt of Benjamin Netanyahu's commitment to the settlement enterprise, he dispelled it this week.
by Gershom Gorenberg
"No Entrance To Bibi's Freeze Inspectors," reads the long, professionally printed banner hanging at the eastern entrance to Ariel. Ariel has a reputation of being a relatively moderate settlement. Its residents are mostly secular suburbanites; its eternally re-elected mayor belongs to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's mainstream right-wing Likud. The Ariel finger -- the heavily settled strip of land joining Ariel to Israel -- is one of those blocs that centrist Israeli politicians insist will stay in Israeli hands under a peace agreement.
by Stewart Ain
Staff Writer
The Israeli cabinet's vote Sunday to pour money into 91 outlying West Bank settlements has touched off a fierce debate here about the propriety of funneling resources into settlements that may be abandoned in a peace treaty.
"Any resources you add to the outlying settlements are an obstacle to peace either now or down the road," according to Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, a group that has long opposed continuing settlement in the West Bank. "Those settlements have to be removed in order for a Palestinian state to come into being."
APN said it can't support the current sanctions measure without sweeping
revisions "to focus the legislation on smart, targeted sanctions rather
than on 'crippling' sanctions that inflict widespread suffering on the
Iranian people."
NOTE: APN is a signatory to the 'McDermott-Ellison' letter
--------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Two letters circulating in the U.S. House of Representatives address the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
One letter, initiated by U.S. Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), asks President Obama to press Israel and Egypt for "immediate relief" from the blockade of Gaza in place since Hamas' takeover in 2006, and intensified following last winter's Israel-Gaza war.
This is time for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to re-engage, to take
advantage of the leadership that this committed U.S. American
administration is offering and to do what it takes to bring peace to
their peoples.
By Ori Nir, APN Spokesman
Special to WJW
Rightist reestablished rabbinical body says agreement to free hundreds of terrorists for kidnapped soldier is treasonous. Their recommendation: Another war against Hamas, threat to kill prisoners if captive is not returned to Israel
Kobi Nahshoni Published: 12.09.09, 15:42 / Israel Jewish Scene
"If Gilad Shalit, Heaven forbid, is executed or not returned in peace, prisoners will be executed immediately," ruled the court of the reestablished "Sandhedrin" organization, in a ruling published last week on the backdrop of the negotiations to release the captured Israeli soldier.
The measure is "akin to using a chainsaw when a scalpel is in order,"
said APN President and CEO Debra DeLee. "The threat posed by Iran
cannot be bludgeoned away. It calls for a careful and delicate
approach."
Times Online (UK): "West Bank settlers carry on building as new freeze is proposed"
YNET: "Yesha Council: West Bank construction freeze illegitimate"
IPS News: "MIDEAST: Settlements "Moratorium" Still Short of Freeze"
Yedioth Ahronoth: "Freeze on a Low Flame"
Yedioth Ahronoth:"Settlers Lay Mock Foundations"
Jerusalem Post: "Peace Now: Settlement freeze 'a historic decision in the right direction"
JPost.com Staff
Peace Now on Thursday voiced support for the settlement construction freeze which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday, calling the move "a historic decision in the right direction."
Richard Goldstone is an antisemitic Jew, Turkey has long since become an Islamic state, the Russians are a disappointment, the Chinese are confused, the Indians are wrong, the Swedes and Norwegians are always against us, and the Americans -- we can do without them.
Like a car going against the traffic on a motorway, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sees all drivers coming at him as going the wrong way.
by Ofer Petersburg -- Officials in the Housing Ministry heard the
voices from Washington against the construction in Gilo, and
understood: This is not the time to be confrontational. The issuing of
tenders for 1,500 housing units in Pisgat Zeev and Har Homa is being
reexamined until the storm blows over. "We can't be provocative and
defiant," explained a senior Housing Ministry official.
APN's Lara Friedman: "it will require the investment of serious political capital to stop."
-------------------------
The White House, which is trying to foster peace talks, says it is 'dismayed' by an Israeli housing panel's approval of a plan to build 844 new homes in a part of Jerusalem claimed by Palestinians.
By Richard Boudreaux, Reporting from Jerusalem
by Adam Dickter Assistant Managing Editor
As a retired administrative assistant, Joyce Hawtof doesn't have a lot of money to invest.
But this week, she was considering paying into a fund with other pro-Israel activists to buy a $28,000 mobile home for a West Bank outpost.
Peace Now secretary-general Yariv Oppenheimer slammed soldiers from the
Right who of recent are disobeying more and more orders for political
reasons, which is not the wont of the Left, according to Oppenheimer.
by Yaakov Katz and jpost.com staff
By DAVID LAZARUS, Staff Reporter
MONTREAL -- "Every brick" added to existing or new settlements in the "occupied territories" is a "message to Palestinians that Israel is not serious about peace," says the head of Peace Now's Settlement Watch.
By DAVID LAZARUS, Staff Reporter
MONTREAL -- "Every brick" added to existing or new settlements in the "occupied territories" is a "message to Palestinians that Israel is not serious about peace," says the head of Peace Now's Settlement Watch.
(translated from Hebrew by Noam Shelef)
Turning the IDF into an "Orange" or "Blue" army that is only willing to implement orders that meet its worldview is a sure recipe for the crumbling of the army and the society.
The talk and the press reports over the last few months about settlement construction and a settlement freeze have left many confused.
If you listen to the Americans, well, you don't learn much, since they aren't leaking anything about their talks with Netanyahu, Barak, Molcho, and Herzog. So all we know for sure is that it is still the US policy to oppose all settlement activity and that the US expect Israel to stop the settlements. So far so good.
Another strategy would be to pitch peace in Israel not as a foreign
policy issue but as a U.S. national-security issue. President Obama
should approach peace as President Bush would approach a war. Or, as
Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now puts it, as a "peace of
necessity."
By Christopher Beam
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A number of Jewish groups and rabbis joined an open letter backing President Obama's intensive efforts toward a broader Middle East peace.
Leaders of J Street, Americans for Peace Now and the Reconstructionist movement as well to former presidents of the Reform movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis signed the letter published Tuesday, saying that "we believe bold American leadership can help Israelis and Palestinians make the difficult decisions necessary to achieve lasting peace and hold the parties to account should they fail to honor their commitments."
By CHARLES LEVINSON
MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank -- Jewish settlers scuffled with Israeli peace activists in the West Bank on Monday hours after Minister of Defense Ehud Barak approved plans for 455 housing units in the territory, adding to the tension surrounding what has become the most contentious issue of the Obama-led peace process.
By REUTERS
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel approved on Monday the building of 455 settler homes in the occupied West Bank, a move opposed by its U.S. ally and Palestinians but which could pave the way for a construction moratorium sought by Washington.
"...other more reliably pro-peace organisations in the Jewish American community like Americans for Peace Now and J-Street have made support of Obama's stand on the settlements a centrepiece of their increasingly successful nationwide organising."
by Sofia Ron-Moriah -- Ostensibly, the prime minister is opposed to the demand to freeze construction in the Judea and Samaria settlements, but in practice he has yielded to it. This has now been confirmed explicitly by Likud ministers.
From Ynet: Peace Now appealed to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz requesting that
he open an investigation against the Land of Israel Faithful movement
and the Youth for the Land of Israel movement for their allegedly
illegal activities...
If George Mitchell, America's special envoy to the Middle East, wants an advance estimate on the reliability of Israeli promises to evacuate outposts, he may find the High Court of Justice discussion on the outpost of Migron helpful.
"The unfortunate decision of the theater managers to export the finest plays being staged in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beer Sheva to none other than the largest settlement built by Israel--caused a courageous group of artists and actors to stand up for their principles and refuse to perform in the territories."
8/23 
