Washington, DC –  The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas today ended a seven-year rift by reaching a historic reconciliation agreement.

Americans for Peace Now welcomes the agreement. APN holds that unity between the Palestinian political factions and between the West Bank and Gaza is vital for empowering the Palestinian leadership to more credibly conduct negotiations with Israel and to more efficiently implement a future peace agreement.

APN’s President and CEO Debra DeLee said: “The new Palestinian agreement is good news, and should be regarded as such by the Obama administration and by the government of Israel. A Palestinian interlocutor who credibly represents all the Palestinians is much better positioned to make hard decisions around the negotiating table and is much better positioned to deliver when the time comes to implement a peace agreement. This reconciliation agreement can and should empower and legitimize Mahmoud Abbas as a leader of the Palestinian polity.”
 
“We urge President Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue interacting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and to determine the future relations of the U.S. administration and the Israeli government with any Palestinian government based on that government's positions and actions alone.”

Washington Jewish Week - April 17, 2014
APN's Alana Suskin's letter to the editor in reply to criticism of her op-ed
http://washingtonjewishweek.com/11678/whose-side-are-we-on/

Israel Hayom - April 14, 2014
Peace Now: New settlemnent in Hebron threatens to derail peace process
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16857

The Minister of Defense has approved the creation of a new settlement inside the Palestinian city of Hebron, making it the first settlement in the city since the 1980s.
 
The impact of the settlement is remarkable: a large building, 4000 square meters,  that can hold more than 20 settler families (more than 120 people) and on a strategic and pivotal location: relatively distant from the other settlements inside Hebron, and on the route that connects Hebron to Kiryat Arba settlement.

Al-Monitor - April 2, 2014
APN's Lara Friedman comments on possible congressional repercussions of PLO's UN move
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/palestine-un-aid-cuts-peace-talks-abbas.html#

Israeli peace activist Ron Pundak, a trail-blazer of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, died today in Tel Aviv after a battle with cancer. He was 59.

Dr. Pundak, together with his friend and academic colleague Yair Hirschfeld, established the now well-known “secret channel” with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which led to the signing of the Oslo Agreement in September 1993. Recently, he published a book that documents the pre-Oslo efforts, titled "Secret channel: Oslo – the full story."