APN's daily news review from Israel  - Thursday June 25, 2020

Quote of the day:

"Israel is the land of memorials. There are more memorials in Israel in relation to the population than in any other country; a memorial for every eight fallen in battle, on average. In Europe there’s a memorial for every 10,000 fallen. Nevertheless, one can hope that someday Israel will confront its past and find those who will dare to take down both the signs and heroes."
--Haaretz+ commentator Gideon Levy on the hope that Israel will one day be able to review its past as the US is.*

Zoom Webinar features:

• Ambassador Dr. Husam Zomlot, Head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK

• Ambassador (ret.) Ilan Baruch, chair of the pro-two-state Policy Working Group

• Shaqued Morag, Peace Now Executive Director

The panel will discuss the implications of unilateral – the anticipated political fallout in each nation and around the region, the expected developments on the ground, the question of international reaction and international law – and, just as importantly, how this dangerous unilateral move can still be prevented.

Thursday, June 25, 12:30 pm (Eastern)

REGISTER HERE

Co-sponsors: Americans for Peace Now, Meretz UK, and Partners for Progressive Israel.

APN's daily news review from Israel - Wednesday June 24, 2020

Quote of the day:

"Because this time, it was impossible not to see how his long strong hand stubbornly extended toward the depleted state coffers, how it reached there before the hands of other citizens - self-employed people, entertainers, senior citizens, students, disadvantaged people."
--Yedioth columnist Meirav Betito writes that Netanyahu's request - and its approval - for tax benefits at a time when many families are collapsing with no income due to the corona crisis exposes his indifference to the needs of the country's citizens.*

You Must Be Kidding: 
“The prime minster shouldn’t have to try to find a way to make it through the month."
—Netanyahu loyalist, MK Miki Zohar, argued in support of approving tax breaks for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.**

Israel’s peace camp this week lost one of its icons. Zeev Sternhell, one of the world’s leading scholars on fascism and one of Israel’s clearest anti-occupation and anti-settlements voices, died in Jerusalem at the age of 85.

Professor Sternhell was closely associated with Israel’s Peace Now movement and one of its first members.

In 2008, four months after winning the lucrative Israel Prize, he was the target of a violent hate crime. A pipe bomb planted at the doorstep of his Jerusalem home injured him. Next to the bomb and around Sternhell’s home, fliers were found promising a million shekels prize to anyone who would kill a Peace Now activist.

Years later, American-born Jewish terrorist Yaakov Teitel, now serving a life imprisonment sentence, admitted to planting the bomb.

In 2016, in a Haaretz op-ed, Sternhell publicly came to the defense of Americans for Peace Now and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem when he defended their appearance before the UN Security Council to talk about West Bank settlement construction and violations of Palestinian human rights.

APN's daily news review from Israel - Tuesday June 23, 2020

Quote of the day:

“It was the first time I had heard that there are antiquities there, and my family has been here for decades. My great-grandfather lived here.”
--Mahmoud Bisharat, a resident of a tiny West Bank village in the Beqaa Jordan Valley, was recently ordered by Israel to destroy some of his buildings, a well, olive trees and concrete casting around the structures that are on his property, because Israel suddenly declared they were on an archaeological site."

You Must Be Kidding:

In 2019, Israel issued 167% more demolition orders and warnings to Palestinians in the West Bank for structures built on what Israel claimed were archaeological sites than it had two years earlier. The initiative grew out of the right-wing Regavim movement.**

CLICK TO LISTEN

Part I - Oren Cohen: "Chauffeuring in Gaza"

Part II - Anat Saragusti: "Befriending a bomber turned peacenik"

Part III - Gideon Levy: "Collateral Maria"

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.

To analyze the state of affairs among the Palestinian public and its leadership as Israel moves to annex large swathes of the West Bank, join APN’s Zoom webinar with leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

Friday, June 26, 12:00 pm (Eastern)

REGISTER HERE

Pummeled by the Israeli occupation, Palestinian Authority diplomatic ineptness in the West Bank and Hamas governance incompetence in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian public is now facing the specter of West Bank annexation. Mahmoud Abbas’ PLO, utterly committed to two-state diplomacy with Israel, is hard-pressed to respond to this paradigm-changing move by the Israeli government.

This story by Oren Cohen, the former Palestinian affairs correspondent of the daily newspaper Hadashot, is a part of APN’s Virtual Dove series, a collection of stories told by practitioners in the field of Israeli-Palestinian relations, stories that highlight the human and the humanity in the conflict.

1. Bills, Resolutions, & Letters
2. Hearings
3. On the Record

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.