There were only a handful of Israeli settlers beyond the Green Line in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson became the first American president to express opposition to settlements in the West Bank. Now, despite protest from every subsequent administration, there are more than 350,000 Israelis living in the West Bank and 200,000 in East Jerusalem. President Johnson’s prediction that settlements would “prejudice a peace settlement” has come true, as the dramatic rise of the settler movement—in both numbers and political power—has complicated repeated efforts to achieve a two-state solution.

In this panel at J Street's 2015 conference, APN's Lara Friedman, together with other experts on American and European policy explored what steps can be taken to halt further settlement growth and entrenchment, and discuss the political and policy implications of American and European initiatives—from discouragement of Israeli settlement subsidies to the labeling or boycott of settlement goods.

Watch to see  Lara Friedman, together with Michael Cohen of the Boston Globe and Alon Sachar of the US State Department, with Steve Krubiner, J Street's Chief of staff,  moderating.  Aviva Meyer, Deputy Chair of APN, introduces the participants. Session begins at 10:35.

This week, Alpher discusses lessons learned by Israel's center-left following its defeat to Netanyahu; Low likelihood of a Netanyahu-Herzog unity government; The state of US-Israel relations following Netanyahu's statements on the two-state solution and on Arab citizens' voting. 

Update: this action, now closed, ran in March 2015. 

The recent Israeli elections definitively unmasked the real Benjamin Netanyahu.

• Netanyahu cynically campaigned as an adversary of President Obama
• Netanyahu brazenly ruled out a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians
• Netanyahu flagrantly incited racism and intolerance in the Israeli body politic
• Netanyahu shamelessly stoked divisions within the American Jewish community
• Netanyahu recklessly turned Israel into a partisan issue in Congress

Tell President Obama:  Stand up to Netanyahu.

On March 18, 2015, the day after Israel's general elections, Israeli political expert Yossi Alpher was APN's guest on a briefing call analyzing the election results.

Washington, DC – Israel’s general election results are a disappointment for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans. They will undoubtedly make our objective even harder to attain.

Pre-election polls and the overall atmosphere in Israel preceding the elections provided us with hope for a government that would embrace the policies and values that we support. It now seems like Israel’s next government will provide us with more of the same, if not worse.

Moments like this are not new to us. Yes, they disappoint us, but we do not succumb to the disappointment. We know that our fight to secure peace for Israel and its neighbors is a long-term fight.  We care too deeply about Israel’s future as a democracy and a Jewish state to cede the struggle over Israel’s future character to the bullies and the bigots, the racists and the ultra-nationalists. We know that the only way for Israel to be loyal to the vision of its founders, to be both a secure, morally sound Jewish state and a democracy, is to end the occupation and reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians and the Arab world. Together with our Israeli sister organization, Peace Now, we will therefore redouble our efforts to advance this objective, serving as a bulwark against the rejectionists and the zealots, true to our core values.