Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

This week, Alpher discusses the Israeli Air Force's alleged attack on a Syrian missile plant deep in Syrian territory; whether this is Israel's only new security front; Israel's internal security; why the Border Patrol's theatre of action is a new security front; what Hamas is doing in Lebanon; the "front" of expanding global strategic reach; and what happened to the conventional Arab military challenge to Israel.

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived

1. Bills, Resolutions & Letters
2. Hearings

Shameless self-promotion: Please check out these two op-ed by FMEP’s Lara Friedman, published during the congressional recess. The first challenges the arguments behind the Taylor Force Act and suggests that a broader policy agenda is in play (to which many supporters of the bill are probably oblivious). The second looks at the pending “Israel Anti-Boycott Act,” using Lara Friedman as a case study to examine whether, indeed, the legislation would undermine constitutionally-protected free speech.

Go HERE for an archive of past versions featuring Israelis such as Shabtai Shavit, Yuval Diskin, Yitzhak Rabin, Meir Dagan, Tzipi Livni, Shomo Gazit, Rabbi Michael Melchior, and more....

Update: this action, now closed, ran in September 2017.  

Last week, any remaining pretense of US leadership in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was dealt a serious blow when State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert declined to recommit the United States to a two-state solution to the conflict. Strikingly, Nauert rejected the vision articulated by successive US administrations since 2002, Republican and Democratic, by suggesting that endorsing a two-state solution would "bias one side over the other."

Two members of Congress, David Price (D-NC) and Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA), released a statement in response calling on the Trump Administration to "stop equivocating on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and imploring it to "reaffirm the United State' support for a viable, lasting, and mutually-agreed upon two-state solution and to make this support clear in public and private statements."

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

This week, Alpher discusses UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres's statement during his visit to Ramallah that there is “no plan B to the two-state solution"; examples of "plan B's"; Guterres's statement that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is one of the most dramatic he has seen, and that the punitive siege should be removed; whether the new language in UNIFIL's renewed mandate will make a difference as the clock ticks on conflict between Israel and Iran/Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Syria.