At the present time, preparations are moving ahead for establishing a new settlement near the Palestinian village of Nahla (south of Bethlehem and east of the settlement Efrat). Establishing this settlement would bisect the West Bank and seriously damage the chance for a two-states solution (as would the plan to expand Maaleh Adumim westward to area  “E1”, east of Jerusalem), and for this reason we call this plan E2. The plan is for 2,500 housing units on an area of about 1,700 dunams (i.e.170 hectares or 425 acres).

Q. The obvious opening question is, will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

A. At this point in time, barely a week after the ceasefire agreement and several weeks before talks on substantive issues are scheduled to begin in Cairo, three scenarios appear possible.

Washington, Jerusalem -- Americans for Peace Now (APN) joins its Israeli sister organization, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), in strongly condemning the Israeli government’s decision to take over a large swath of West Bank land to expand Gva’ot, a settlement-in-the-making west of Bethlehem, as well as neighboring settlements.

APN's daily news review from Israel

Monday September 01, 2014
 

Quote of the day:

"How will Abbas explain to his people the disregard and aggression of the Netanyahu government towards him?"
--Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer slams the Israeli decision to appropriate almost 1000 acres of land in the West Bank.** 

The Civil Administration declared 4,000 dunams (990 acres) as State Land near the settlement of Gva'ot west of Bethlehem. As far as we know, this declaration is unprecedented in its scope since the 1980's and can dramatically change the reality in the Gush Etzion and the Bethlehem area. For an explanation about state land declaration see here.

Gva'ot was established in 1984 as a Military Base between the Palestinian villages of Al Jab'a and Nahhalin. During the 90’s, the soldiers were replaced by Yeshiva students that occupied the 30 caravans on site, and in 1998 the site was included within the official Municipal Borders of the settlement of Alon Shvut, which is located 3 km away. Recently, some 10 families moved in Gvaot and established an education institution on site.

APN's daily news review from Israel

Sunday August 31, 2014
 

Quote of the day:

“(We discussed) what to do when students say ‘Death to Arabs’– which they do frequently – and we gave each other the benefit of our experience."
--Rani Hazon Weiss, a teacher at the Givat Gonen High School in Jerusalem, met with other teachers to talk about how to battle anti-Arab racism in Jewish Israeli schools, post Gaza war.**

Washington, DC – Americans for Peace Now (APN) today issued the following statement:

APN welcomes the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was implemented yesterday. We hope fervently that this ceasefire holds, sparing both Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip further terror and bloodshed. We know, however, that unless the underlying causes of this conflict are addressed, this ceasefire will be nothing more than a prelude to the next round of fighting and misery.

Haim Oron, former leader of the left-wing Meretz party, fears that continued control of the territories will spell the end of Zionism, but isn't yet ready to give up hope.

On a recent Saturday, former leader of the left-wing Meretz party Haim Oron and his wife, Nili, spent hours at Sheba Medical Center, in Ramat Gan. They sat by the bedside of their grandson, Adi Zimri, from an elite unit of the Engineering Corps, who was seriously wounded in the fighting in the Gaza Strip. Hit in the leg by a rocket-propelled grenade while searching for Hamas tunnels, he saved his own life by applying an arterial tourniquet to staunch the blood.

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