President Trump says he wants to broker the “ultimate deal,” a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. But since taking office in January, he and his aides have failed to offer a framework for negotiations, have failed to assert positions that are vital for securing a peace deal, such as sternly opposing settlement construction, and have refused to endorse the only viable formula for a deal: the two-state solution. He won’t even say “two states.”

Sign our petition: Tell President Trump to Say Two States

Only the two-state solution – two states living side by side in peace and security, each exercising sovereignty and political independence in part of the land that both peoples claim as their exclusive national homes – is a reasonable, viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It is the only viable option for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because neither Israelis nor Palestinians will, nor should be expected to, give up their desire for self-determination in their own state and because neither side can, nor should force the other side to, relinquish its national aspirations.

Successive U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic, have recognized these basic facts. They therefore made the two-state solution America’s official policy – a key position guiding U.S. policy in the Middle East – for over 15 years.

The two-state solution has become a matter of consensus in the region and internationally. The parties, under their own successive leaderships, have committed to this vision and negotiated to realize it. Even Prime Minister Netanyahu, who heads the most hardline government in Israel's history, has explicitly endorsed it. For the Trump Administration to eschew it is disastrous.

Without a concrete vision for peace, negotiations are fruitless punctuations to perennial violence. Extremists on both sides have been trying to discredit the two-state vision since it was internationally adopted. Now they have a partner in the White House.

President Trump, don’t play into the hands of the anti-peace extremists. We call on you to endorse the two-state solution. Say two states!

The government of Israel is set to endorse a bill, which – if passed by the Knesset – would be the most dramatic, far-reaching piece of Israeli legislation on West Bank settlements in decades. The bill would annex to Jerusalem nine settlements located in the heart of the West Bank, including three of the largest West Bank settlements, creating a situation on the ground that would make the establishment of an independent Palestinian state all but impossible. Prime Minister Netanyahu said he will endorse the plan, and the Cabinet’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation is expected this coming Sunday to approve it and send it to the Knesset for a vote.

With the Israeli cabinet set to discuss a bill for the de-facto annexation of some of the largest West Bank settlements to Israel, Americans for Peace Now (APN) is calling on President Trump to immediately intervene and warn Prime Minister Netanyahu that the United States will block such a move.

According to Israeli news reports, Israel’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation is expected this coming Sunday to discuss a bill calling for the incorporation into Jerusalem of a collection of large settlements in the heart of the West Bank. The bill’s authors are presenting it as an “annexation bill.”

In December of 1988, during the last days of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the United States publicly agreed to an official dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization. This followed PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s renunciation of terrorism, acceptance of Israel’s right to exist, and endorsement of UN resolutions 242 and 338, after which the US accepted the PLO’s legitimacy. In effect, the PLO had conceded that 78 percent of what they considered to be historic Palestine was now Israel. They accepted that control of the “remaining” 22% — the West Bank and Gaza Strip — would be determined by negotiations.

The Palestinians had finally assented to the “land for peace” formula that had been adopted by the US, Israel, and the international community after the 1967 war. Now, almost 30 years later, this formula is being undermined by a figure who once would have seemed an unlikely culprit: the US ambassador to Israel.

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 issue with the Kurds, in a nutshell; how the Kurds got themselves in this mess and how Kirkuk figures so centrally in the Kurdish independence controversy; why the US is opposed to Kurdish independence and why it appears to be taking the side of Iran, Turkey and Iraq in this dispute; why Israel supports Kurdish independence; whether there is a Syrian Kurdish connection; and the argument that Israel is hypocritical because it supports Kurdish independence but thwarts Palestinian independence.

In a recent interview, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman – a long-time supporter of Israeli settlements – falsely claimed that Israel occupies “only 2 percent” of the West Bank.

In fact, with the entire West Bank under Israeli military law, 100 percent is occupied by Israel. Yet, when a reporter followed up with State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, asking what percent of the West Bank the Trump administration believes is occupied, she stated: “I don’t know that we have a map of that.”

We at Americans for Peace Now have good news for the State Department: Facts on the Ground 2.0 is coming soon.

Members of the right-wing majority coalition in Israel’s Knesset, particularly Knesset members from Likud and the Jewish Home Party, have been filling the legislature’s docket with populist, anti-democratic bills.

Such bills will be front and center on the Knesset’s docket as it opens its Winter Session on Sunday, October 22, 2017.

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

As we expected, President Trump decertified the Iran nuclear deal on October 17th but declined to kill it outright by imposing new sanctions. Instead, he dropped the fate of the deal in the lap of Congress, hoping to make lawmakers complicit in US violation of the terms of the JCPOA.

This would give Iran the green light to resume its nuclear program and increase the risk of escalation to an armed conflict with Iran. But that’s not all. It would mean that as the US and Israel seek to combat Iran’s nefarious activities in the Middle East we could be up against a nuclear-armed state. Further, the US would rupture relations with our allies and undermine our credibility, such that North Korea would have no reason to negotiate its nuclear disarmament.

We can’t let this happen. Tell Congress to preserve the Iran deal.

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 why the Netanyahu government’s response to the Cairo agreement has been so low key; how Trump's “decertification” of the Iran nuclear deal might affect Israel; how the US decision to leave UNESCO might affect Israel; and how escalation between the US and North Korea might affect Israel.

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