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APN Update: The Inaugural, Alpher vs. Stephens, meet Avi Buskila, our latest Pod-Cast, and more
--Army Radio reporter Khen Elmaleh wrote on her personal Facebook page - and was fired.*
This statement will be sent out to the media on Friday morning, shortly before inauguration:
Under normal circumstances, Americans for Peace Now (APN) would today be welcoming the inauguration of the new U.S. president, wishing him success and urging him to take action toward peace between Israel and her neighbors. Today’s circumstances are not normal.
Donald Trump, both as a candidate and as President-elect, has said that he would like to broker the “ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians. But this potentially encouraging sentiment has been overshadowed – trumped, as it were – by a series of alarming actions and statements that send a very different message.
Breaking News:
Oppose Moving the Embassy to Jerusalem
In 1995 Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, directing the president to move the U.S.
embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. That legislation gave the president the authority to waive the requirement to
move the embassy if he judged it to be necessary for U.S. national security.
Every successive U.S. president -- Republican and Democrat -- has used this waiver, recognizing that moving the embassy outside the context of a peace agreement would be provocative and would undermine U.S. credibility, threaten U.S. peace efforts, and harm U.S. interests.
Efforts to force the president to move the embassy, despite all of this, are misguided and counterproductive.
-- from APN's They Say, We
Say
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More Resources:
Lara Friedman in the Huffington Post on the far-reaching consequences for all Americans of rash actions by the Trump Administration 1/6/17: Think Trump’s Policies On Israel-Palestine Have Nothing To Do With You? Think Again
APN on Jerusalem, the embassy, and more: They Say, We Say
Danny Seidemann 1/6/17: Moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem: A Hard Look at the Arguments & Implications
Khaled Elgindy, Brookings 1/30/17: Why moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would be dangerous and unwise
Steven Cook, CFR, in Salon.com 1/29/17: Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is a bad idea for everyone — except Israeli hard-liners and their American friends
Dalia Dassa Kaye, Rand Corporation, 12/28/16: Hidden Dangers of Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem
Times of Israel Jordan 1/6/17: Moving US Embassy to Jerusalem is a ‘red line’
Gershom Gorenberg in the American Prospect, 1/11/17: Capital Offense
Haaretz 1/9/17: Why the Latest Palestinian Attacker in Jerusalem Was Not Deterred
Hussein Ibish in Foreign Policy 12/22/16: Want a Third Intifada? Go Ahead and Move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem
A large majority of Israelis were born into a situation in which their country is occupying the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. A new poll shows that many Israelis don’t know the basics of that situation – for example, that Israel has never annexed the West Bank, or that settlements like Ariel and Maale Adomim are not under Israeli sovereignty. Oded Haklai, a Canadian-Israeli scholar who conducted the poll demonstrates how the occupation-ignorance tipping point among Israelis is the age of 50, and explains why.
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.
This week, Alpher discusses four new or renewed treatments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ways to deal with it; the Bret Stephens’ January 9 Wall Street Journal argument against a Palestinian state solution; Dennis Ross' and Stuart Eizenstat's “Plan B”; the Paris Peace Conference; and the “Commanders'” provocative ad in the Israeli press and on billboards stating, in Arabic, “We’ll soon be the majority”; and the current corruption investigation against Netanyahu and what it could mean for the Palestinian issue; how you address the current corruption investigation against him and what could this mean for the Palestinian issue.
The number of children living below the poverty line in Israel has quadrupled over the past three decades, reaching 30.3 percent in 2015 – the highest rate among developed countries.**
Shalom Achshav Executive Director visits Washington
Shalom Achshav’s executive director, Avi Buskila, spent last week in Washington. He met
with administration officials, policy experts, APN supporters and activists, representatives of fellow
pro-peace organizations, journalists, as well as a group of Israelis living in the Washington area.
Feedback was excellent. After every meeting, Avi’s interlocutors told him that their conversation with him left them more encouraged and hopeful about Israel than they have been in a very long time.
Avi spoke mainly about his achievements in the nine months since he became Peace Now’s director, and about the organization’s plans going forward.
In addition to recruiting some 5,000 new activists in the past months, Shalom Achshav has activated branches in every important university campus across Israel. Crisscrossing Israel, Avi has had dozens of meetings with groups in community centers, campuses, and living rooms, with an emphasis on the periphery.
Avi reported that Peace Now is currently working on three major projects. One is a series of four courses for young opinion leaders, including Knesset staff, who during three and a half months will study the ins and outs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They will learn how to talk about the conflict, and how to effectively advocate for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Another project is the development of tools to use Facebook’s “live” function as an accessible, affordable platform for the pro-peace community to communicate inside Israel and beyond.
The third project that Avi mentioned was his plans for a series of public events across Israel around the June 50-year “anniversary” of the occupation, which will culminate in a mass demonstration in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, June 3rd.
--Former Mossad director Shabtai Shavit said at a press conference at the start of a new campaign to convince Israelis to support a two-state solution.**