YOU can help reclaim Israel's future by understanding the importance of Recognition & Narratives. Here are actions you can take right now:

• Spread the word. Two of the greatest obstacles are apathy and ignorance. Challenge both. Here are some easy ways:
  • Watch and share APN's Interview with Palestinian Intern, Hamze Awawdeh.
  • Read APN's "Price Tag Escalation Timeline," a timeline of major "Price Tag" attacks as reported by Israeli sources since January 2011, documenting a clear escalation in attacks, and the increasing spread of attacks inside the Green Line
  • Read and share the "Do the Palestinians exist?" and the What about refugees? chapters from APN’s landmark publication, “They Say, We Say”.

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• Watch APN's Interview with Palestinian Intern, Hamze Awawdeh.
• Read APN's "Price Tag Escalation Timeline," a timeline of major "Price Tag" attacks as reported by Israeli sources since January 2011, documenting a clear escalation in attacks, and the increasing spread of attacks inside the Green Line
• Read and share the "Do the Palestinians exist?" and the What about refugees? and the "God Wants the Jews to Have All the Land" chapters from APN’s landmark publication, “They Say, We Say”.
• Read and Share Articles from APN:

  APN resources:

  • Lara Friedman, Haaretz: What Israeli Palestinian mutual recognition really means (March 31, 2014)
  • Lara Friedman, APN Blog: The Demand for "Recognition-Plus" -- Bibi's New Pretext for Not Pursuing Peace(April 19, 2009)

   

  Other recommended reading:

  • Yitzhak Lior, Haaretz+: Abbas, don’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state (March 30, 2014)
  • Zvi Bar’el in Haaretz+: A Jewish nation-state is for Israelis with identity anxiety(March 26, 2014)
  • Amos Schoken, Haaretz: The visible rejectionism of Ari Shavit(March 24, 2014)
  • Peter Beinart, Haaretz+: Before Abbas recognizes the Jewish state, Israel must define it(March 19, 2014)
  • Hussein Ibish, Haaretz+: How many times must the Palestinians recognize Israel?( March 13, 2014)
  • Chemi Shalev, Haaretz+: Israelis: Peace with Arab world more important than recognition as Jewish state( March 12, 2014)
  • Donniel Hartman, Times of Israel: A Jewish state: It’s our problem, not theirs(March 11, 2014)
  • Hussein Ibish, NOW: The real impact of Israel's "Jewish state" demand(March 11, 2014)
  • Reuters: 'Jewish state' recognition adds new Israeli-Palestinian trip wire(March 5, 2014)
  • Matt Duss, Think Progress: Is Palestinian Recognition Of Israel As A ‘Jewish State’ An Insurmountable Obstacle?(March 5, 2014)
  • Yoav Hendel, YNet: When will Israel recognize the Jewish state?(Feb. 17, 2014)
  • Efraim Halevy (former head of the Mossad), YNet: Israel, beware 'Jewish statehood' trap(Feb, 26, 2014)
  • Haaretz: Peres: Palestinian recognition of Jewish state 'unnecessary'(January 22, 2014)
  • Brent Sasley, Haaretz+: Israel needs borders, not therapy(January 15, 2014)
  • Jodi Rudoren, New York Times: Sticking Point in Peace Talks: Recognition of a Jewish State(January 2, 2014)
  • Haviv Rettig Gur, Times of Israel: The nature of peacemaking according to Netanyahu(October 7, 2013)
  • Times of Israel: Netanyahu blames Mideast conflict on refusal to recognize Jewish state(October 6, 2013)
  • Tal Becker, WINEP brief: The Claim for Recognition of Israel as a Jewish State: A Reassessment(February 2011)
  • Hussein Ibish, Foreign Policy: Should the Palestinians Recognize Israel as a Jewish State? (May 25, 2011)
  • The Geneva Accord: “Affirming that this agreement marks the recognition of the right of the Jewish people to statehood and the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, without prejudice to the equal rights of the Parties' respective citizens”(October, 2003)

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Some Hard Truths about Recognition & Narratives

• The demand that the Palestinians not only recognize Israel - something they have done repeatedly, starting in 1993 - but that they recognize Israel as “a Jewish state,” or some similar wording, is relatively new. No such demand was made of Egypt or Jordan, nor was it mentioned in the Oslo agreement or subsequent Israeli-Palestinian documents. It made a brief appearance in the Annapolis talks of 2007, but only as a marginal issue. Only in 2009 did it truly come into play, courtesy of Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Netanyahu’s decision to introduce the issue into the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating dynamic seemed to be a cynical one.  Facing a U.S. president determined to forge ahead with peace and a Palestinian president who embraced the two-state solution, rejected violence, and was actively cooperating to fight terrorism, Netanyahu was left scrambling for a pretext to argue that Israel had no Palestinian partner for peace, as cover for his own anti-peace, pro-settlement policies. Thus was born the “recognition-plus” demand, which today is accepted by many Israelis and supporters of Israel as a condition for any peace agreement, and even as a precondition for continuing to sit at the negotiating table with the Palestinians.
• While the introduction of the “recognition-plus” demand into the political debate was cynical, the demand has nonetheless resonated deeply with many Israelis and supporters of Israel – including many who support peace and the two-state solution and who are not seeking a pretext to avoid or derail negotiations.   
• It resonates, at least in part, because it taps into two popular Israeli sentiments that relate to peace with their neighbors. One is desire to see the Jewish-Zionist narrative embraced – the longing of Israelis to not simply be tolerated in the Middle East, but to be accepted as a legitimate, indigenous nation, consistent with Israel’s founding narrative of the return of the Jews to their historic homeland. The other is the Israeli anxiety that even after a peace agreement, Palestinians will not be content with a state in the West Bank and Gaza, but will continue fighting to “liberate” all of Palestine, believing that it belongs to them and not Israel.
• For Palestinians, rejection of the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state (or some similar formula) is a function of their own historical and political narrative. According to this narrative, Palestinians are an indigenous people living for generations in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, unjustly expelled or occupied as the result of the creation of Israel and subsequent disastrous wars.
• Israeli insistence that the Palestinians adopt an Israeli-dictated formula of “the Jewish state of Israel” or similar wording is understood by many Palestinians as requiring them to in effect renounce their national narrative and repudiate their own history, suffering, and grievances. It is viewed as asking them to recognize, in essence, prior Jewish claims that erase their own, both in terms of lands lost and as refugees.
• Moreover, this demand is seen by many – on both sides of the Green Line – as requiring Palestinian President Abbas to “sell out” the more than one million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, sabotaging their own efforts to play an effective role in influencing the future character of the state of Israel and break down the barriers to equality inside Israel.
• The demand for “recognition-plus” and its rejection thus go to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They embody the shared desire of Israelis and Palestinians for self-determination in their own countries, and for acknowledgment of their core narratives.  Recognizing what this argument is really about opens the door for Israelis and Palestinians to start grappling with the challenge of finding a recognition formula that addresses the needs, and respects the sensitivities, of both sides. 
• Such a formula will require not just recognition of the fact of Israel’s existence, but some element of recognition of Israel as a home for the Jewish people in their historic homeland, alongside explicit recognition of the rights of non-Jewish citizens of Israel.
• On the flip side, such a formula will require not just grudging acceptance of a Palestinian state as the outcome of negotiations, but some element of recognition of the suffering and sacrifices that Israel’s creation and 46 years of occupation have wrought on the Palestinian people.
• Israeli and Palestinian leaders, negotiating in good faith to achieve a two-state solution, can certainly agree on a recognition formula – as was done by negotiators in the 2003 Geneva Initiative, which affirmed that the agreement marked, “the recognition of the right of the Jewish people to statehood and the recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, without prejudice to the equal rights of the Parties' respective citizens.
•   Conversely, if Israel and Palestinian leaders don’t start dealing with this question seriously – respectful of the nuances and sensitivities involved for both sides – then the recognition question will haunt us all, and ensure that an agreement is likely never reached.

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Please join us on Friday at 1:00 PM (EST) for a briefing call with Dr. Matti Steinberg, an Israeli expert on Hamas, on Palestinian politics and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A former senior adviser to the heads of the General Security Services in Israel and a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Steinberg is one of Israel’s leading experts on Palestinian affairs. He is the author of the award-winning book “Unending Quest: The Development of Palestinian National Consciousness, 1967- 2007 (Hebrew).

Peace Now has just announced that in the last few days, following the killing of the three Israeli teens, there have been alarming developments on the ground in settlements: Three new (serious) outposts were established and a new road to Givat Eitam outpost was paved, in addition to other several protest tents and other developments that the settlers put up in different places in the West Bank.

The settlers are taking advantage of the killing of the three teens in order to set facts on the ground that they wouldn't dare to do before. We don't know if they got a green light from the government (although such a green light could not have made the acts legal, short of planning procedures), however, those developments will be judged by the government's reaction.

The APN ad (scroll down to read) was on the front page beneath President Obama's "Peace is the only path to true security for Israel and the Palestinians."