This week, Alpher discusses the flurry of high level discussions and agreements between Israel, Greece and Cyprus, with Egypt also mentioned as an economic and military partner, seemingly directed at isolating Turkey regionally; more Edward Snowden revelations of far-reaching electronic monitoring by the US and UK, and whether Israel is alarmed at its friends’ spying; if there is any chance of success trying to end the slaughter in Syria, via the convening of yet another high-level meeting in Geneva to try; how do Israelis react to more and more instances of regime-led siege warfare against Syrian civilian villages, leading to starvation; his reaction to French FM Fabius calling for an international peace conference and threatening that if it fails, France will recognize a Palestinian state.

Let’s take a moment for a thought experiment. I do this days after more Palestinian attacks on Israelis, including the horrific murder of a mother of six children; soon after Israel announced the expropriation of another 370 acres of land near Jericho; and after Majed Faraj, the Palestinian security chief, announced that Palestinian security forces had intercepted 200 potential terrorist attacks against Israel. The thought experiment focuses on whether the “Plan B” for the Israel-Palestine dispute should be Israel’s annexation of the territories it occupied in 1967 and the extension of full citizenship rights to the Palestinians in those areas.

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The strength of organizations working to end the occupation and their supporters is greater than we think.

One day the occupation will end. It will probably happen in one fell swoop. And when it happens, it will suddenly emerge that everyone was against it. That the politicians had actually worked to end it, that the journalists strove indefatigably to expose its injustices, that the cultural institutions condemned it courageously and that Israeli academia was a center of persistent resistance, from which the struggle drew ideological and moral backing. In short, everyone was part of the Resistance.

This week, Alpher discusses why he has had so little discussion on issues related directly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and prospects for new negotiations recently; whether, even if that’s the case regarding the PLO in the West Bank, we can ignore assessments regarding Hamas and Hezbollah activity there, alongside predictions regarding violence emanating from Gaza, extremist inclinations among the Israeli Arab community, and even a high-level forecast of ISIS activity against Israel; the angry Israeli reaction to US Ambassador Dan Shapiro's statement that Israel exercises a legal double standard in its approach to Israeli settlers as opposed to Palestinians in the West Bank; and whether Israeli-Turkish negotiations regarding normalization of bilateral relations hold out any hope for a better situation in Gaza.