Just in time for President Obama's long-awaited trip to Israel, perennial Israeli-Palestinian policy strategist Dennis Ross has published his 14-point plan to achieve Middle East peace. Ross claims that by following this plan, Israelis and Palestinians can "chip away at the sources of each side's belief about the other's commitment to a genuine two-state solution."
If I were the freshly re-elected prime minister of the State of Israel or the re-elected president of the United
States, I would pay attention to a lovely piece of public art in downtown Ramallah. It features the ethos of a
reformed Palestinian society.
Benjamin Netanyahu Failed With His Most Pandered-To Crowd
How did Benjamin Netanyahu do in West Bank settlements?
Considering his party's pro-settlement policies and the staunch pro-settlement positions of its leading Knesset
members, you'd expect Netanyahu's Likud-Beiteinu list to perform better among West Bank settlers than it did in
Israel proper. It didn't.
Jo-Ann Mort is vice chairperson of Americans for Peace Now and CEO of the New York City-based strategy firm ChangeCommunications.
(This essay first appeared in fathomjournal.org on January 31,
2013)
This election was a failure for the sitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his young guard in the Likud,
especially Education Minister Gideon Saar and Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, both of whom took leading roles in
the campaign. It was an astounding success for former journalist Yair Lapid and his centrist Yesh Atid party, and a
resounding comeback for the Zionist-left, especially the Meretz Party.
On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama will be inaugurated for his second term as the 44th president of the United
States of America. As this day nears, it seems inevitable that he should be thinking about the legacy that he wants
to leave after eight years at the helm of this great country. In the Israeli-Palestinian arena, the arc of history
has dealt him a clear, binary choice: he can go down in history as the U.S. president who fought for and saved the
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or he can go down in history as the president on whose
watch the two-state solution was lost, at the cost of the vital interests of both Israel and the United
States.
The Israeli Peace Now movement (Shalom Achshav) today released an explosive report detailing the
record of Prime Minister Netanyahu's government on settlements over the course of its full term in office (April
2009-present). The report, based on official Israel government statistics, reports, and Peace Now field
research, documents how over the past four years, the Netanyahu government has used settlements as a tool to
systematically undermine the chances of achieving a viable, realistic two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite Netanyahu's rhetorical embrace of such a goal.
The full report is available in English, here.
In recent weeks it has been fascinating to watch defenders of the Netanyahu government and the
settlement enterprise engaging in logical and rhetorical contortions to try to justify the Netanyahu
government's pro-settlement policies. What has emerged is simultaneously the most disingenuous and in some ways
the most honest discussion of settlements in years.
The ADL came out last week with its Top 10 list of "Issues Affecting Jews in 2012,"a list that conspicuously
omits mention of many of the most troubling issues affecting Jews this past year. Below is a list of the most
glaring omissions.
Recently, the European Union adopted harsh new Iran sanctions, strongly supported by Israel. Shortly thereafter, Israel announced new East Jerusalem settlement construction. The EU's top official Catherine Ashton, who was about to visit Israel, condemned the announcement in measured terms; Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, publicly told her, in effect, to shove it. Imagine if in response, Ashton had indefinitely postponed her trip. Imagine that Israeli ambassadors in EU capitals were summoned to the local foreign ministries and read the riot act. Imagine that Israeli press had been alerted, leading to headlines about how Prime Minister Netanyahu and Lieberman were squandering the friendship of the EU and European support on Iran for the sake of settlement expansion.