You don’t have to love everything that the U.S. Secretary of State will present in his 'framework’ paper - but there is too much at stake not to support a chance for peace.

There’s a kind of hush in the peace camp as Secretary of State John Kerry prepares to issue the “framework” for continued Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. And unlike Karen Carpenter's saccharine song, this hush is not intended to make room for the sound of lovers in love. It’s a hush of inhibition, the silence of the skeptics who have known too many past disappointments.

APN's daily news review from Israel

Monday March 24, 2014
 

Quote of the day:

"The right wing says you can't talk to [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas. Maybe without the ruckus of the tractors building settlements you could hear him better?"

--Merav Galili, host of 'State of the Nation' Israeli comedy talk show, interviews Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.**

This week, Alpher discusses why Israel is hesitating to release another group of Palestinian prisoners this week; the Hamas connection; if the US-sponsored two-state talks will be extended; the upset in Israel-US relations by Israeli statements and actions, mainly regarding Iran; and whether there is an Iranian parallel to Yaalon's challenge to the current international effort to reach a nuclear agreement with the Rowhani government.

As the Obama administration prepares to kick its efforts to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations into higher gear, the government of Israel is advancing plans to build 2,372 new housing units in West Bank settlements.

News of this new round of settlement construction plans was publicized yesterday by Americans for Peace Now's Israeli sister-organization, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now).

Americans for Peace Now joins Shalom Achshav in condemning the new plans for construction in settlements, many of which are east of the "Separation Barrier," in areas that are almost certain to come under Palestinian sovereignty when a two-state peace agreement is achieved.

On March 18, 2014, J Street U hosted Lara Friedman (Director of Policy and Government Relations, Americans for Peace Now) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a talk on the APN's work and the current status of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

See photos and quotes from the event below: