Today is the 19th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. PM Rabin had the courage and the vision to sign  a peace agreement with Jordan. He also signed an agreement with the PLO that, if carried out would have paved the way to a two-state solution. 

Brigadier-General (Res.) Israel Baharav is one of 105 retired Israeli generals and top-tier security establishment officers who on November 3 2014 sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to engage both with the Arab world and with the Palestinians to push a new diplomatic initiative for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and improving Israel's standing regionally and internationally. In this interview with APN, he talks about his motivation for signing the letter and comments on why Israel's security elite is typically more supportive of diplomatic moves than its political leadership.

To listen to the interview with Brig. Gen. Baharav click below:

Americans for Peace Now joins its Israeli sister organization, Israel’s Peace Now movement, in strongly condemning the Israeli authorities’ decision to proceed with an East Jerusalem construction project that has triggered deep disapproval among the international community, including in Washington.

This week, Alpher discusses whether last week's shooting of Israeli Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick and the subsequent, nearly unprecedented closing of the Mount for a day indicates that we are on the brink of a holy war or new intifada; where the potential is for further geographical expansion of the Jerusalem tension; whether Netanyahu is cowardly in his decision-making; and if the Netanyahu-Obama relationship "stands to get considerably worse after the November midterm elections."

Several thousand people turned out for the 19th annual Rabin memorial rally Saturday night, including President Reuven Rivlin and Rabin’s son, Yuval Rabin. Former president Shimon Peres gave a fiery speech, noting, "“I say clearly today: Those who have given up on peace are the delusional ones. Those who gave up and stopped looking for peace. they’re the naive ones, the ones who are not patriots....The State of Israel would be giving up on its future if it pursues the status quo and remains without peace."

On October 31, 2014, Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann and APN Policy and Government Relations Director Lara Friedman briefed us, from Jerusalem,  on the tense situation in the city. 

Please join us for a briefing call with Jerusalem expert Danny Seidemann, executive director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, and Lara Friedman, Americans for Peace Now's director of policy and government relations. Lara is currently in Jerusalem, and will join Danny for an update on the heightened tensions there. The call will take place tomorrow, Friday, October 31, at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.

Americans for Peace Now joins its Israeli sister organization, Peace Now, in strongly condemning the assassination-attempt of Rabbi Yehuda Glick, an extreme right-wing activist who advocates for Jewish prayer in Jerusalem's Temple Mount, and for re-building the Jewish Temple at the site of al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site to Islam. 

 This piece will be featured in the Nov. 3 print edition of The Boston Globe.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has come to epitomize the Israeli school of thought that dismisses peace with the Palestinians as being not only impossible but undesirable.

Ya’alon laid out his worldview last week during a four-day visit to the United States. He has become the most salient spokesperson for those in Israel who think that the only way for Israel to conduct its relations with its neighbors is through periodic wars and counterterrorism campaigns, referred to in Israeli security jargon as “mowing the lawn.” In short, he believes in conflict management rather than conflict resolution.

With tensions in Jerusalem and beyond rising to a boiling point, Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of his cabinet have initiated a series of highly inflammatory steps and have been using incendiary language in recent days.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) is angered and alarmed at the brazenness of Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent provocative moves, and joins the Obama administration in warning the Israeli government of the potential consequences of these measures.

APN's President and CEO Debra DeLee said: "During the past few days, in the midst of a violent flare-up of demonstrations in East Jerusalem – one of the longest and most violent waves of riots in recent history – Netanyahu seems to be eager to fuel the fire rather than extinguish it.