Like all Israelis of my generation, I remember the night of Nov. 4, 1995.

Having just heard from the news desk editor at Israel’s Haaretz newspaper that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot, I called Palestinian officials for reaction. I was Haaretz’s Palestinian affairs correspondent at the time and was on the phone with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat when I heard on Israel Radio that Rabin’s spokesman was about to make a statement. As Eitan Haber hushed the crowed, I started translating for Erekat: “The government of Israel announces in dismay, in great sadness, and in deep sorrow, the death of Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered by an assassin, tonight in Tel Aviv.”

This week, Alpher discusses whether the set of understandings between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority regarding the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif acheived by Secretary of State Kerry will end the violence; the overall effect of the mini-intifada of the past month; why Jordan’s King Abdullah couldn’t play a more active role, without recourse to Kerry; what we are to make of bewildering statements by Netanyahu, to a World Zionist Congress audience in a speech in English, that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, suggested to Hitler in 1941 that he annihilate the Jews (“burn them”) rather than expelling them and that as prime minister he has built far less in the settlements than his predecessors;

Saturday night’s Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) rally brought out thousands of people, Israelis sick of the status quo, to protest the Netanyahu government’s intransigence, its diplomatic inaction and its fomenting of violence and brutality.

Under the slogan “There is no Security without a Political Solution,” thousands of Israelis urged their government to choose dialogue over demagoguery and incitement, diplomacy over force and subjugation, to offer Israelis hope, and to lead Israelis toward peace with the Palestinians.

Jointly authored by Lara Friedman, APN (USA) and Hagit Ofran, Peace Now (Israel)

Defenders of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu have seized on a recent report in Haaretz to argue that Netanyahu’s record shows that he has, in fact, been less pro-settlements than his detractors (including Peace Now) have suggested. Their argument hinges on a single statistic raised in that story: the average number of construction starts in settlements per year, as counted by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS), across the 6 years Netanyahu has been in office, compared to that same number for previous prime ministers over the past 20 years.  But as is often the case when it comes to statistics, the devil is in the details, and a single statistic taken in isolation will always obscure more than it reveals.

Since the eruption of the current wave of horrific violence in Israel and the West Bank, we have issued a number of formal statements responding to the escalation. I've wanted to send you a personal message as well . . . but I've waited.

In times like this – when there are numerous attacks against civilians every day, when two thirteen-year-old boys are lying in the street bleeding, when Israelis and Palestinians are afraid to walk out of their homes, terrified that they will be the next victim of random violence – it is hard to write from the heart and not from the guts.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) welcomes the news that Secretary of State John Kerry will soon travel to the Middle East to try to address the terrible violence that is sweeping across Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Today, Israelis and Palestinians are increasingly locked in a dynamic of bloody escalation, with unbearable costs for both sides. Regrettably, it appears that their respective leaderships are incapable of breaking out of this dynamic.  In this context, we urge Secretary Kerry to use his visit to take concrete steps that can calm the situation: 

On October 13 2015, Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann analyzed the Jerusalem-specific causes for the current intensification of violence. Seidemann is a leading expert on Arab-Jewish relations in Jerusalem. He is the founder and director of Terrestrial Jerusalem.

This week, Alpher discusses the arguments that the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque are at the heart of the current wave of terror that began in Jerusalem and explains what happened; PM Netanyahu's banning both Jewish and Arab members of Knesset from visiting the Mount and, earlier, banning two of the extremist Israeli Islamist movements; why shouldn’t Jews who wish to do so be allowed to pray on the Mount; what Netanyahu’s options are; and sums up the characteristics of the violence now that we are two weeks into this wave and there is no sign of it letting up