Remembering and Celebrating: Yom HaZikaron and Yom Haatzmaut

On Monday, May 5, Israel marked Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day), a day in which life comes to a halt to commemorate Israelis – soldiers and civilians – who died in Israel’s many wars and terrorist attacks. On this somber day, Americans for Peace Now stands with our brothers and sisters in Israel in paying tribute to the fallen and in recommitting to fulfill our mission of securing peace for Israel, peace that will end the endless wars and bloodshed.

And when the sun sets, in an abrupt shift of emotion, Israelis start the festivities of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut (Independence Day), flooding the parks and the public squares to rejoice in the 66th birthday celebrations of their country.

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Press Release: APN Appalled at Conference of Presidents Vote to Exclude J Street

Americans for Peace Now (APN) is appalled and deeply disappointed at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization's failure to accept J Street, an important player in the pro-Israel arena, into its ranks.

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Peace Now: Summary of the 9-Months Talks: Unprecedented Settlement Development


During the 9 months of Secretary Kerry’s efforts in the region, the Israeli Government promoted plans and tenders for at least 13,851 housing units in the settlements and East Jerusalem - an average of 50 units per day and 1,540 units per month.

 
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Shibley Telhami briefing call on the state of the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort

On Monday, April 28, Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institute briefed APN on the consequences of the pause in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

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Hard Questions, Tough Answers with Yossi Alpher: April 28, 2014

This week, Alpher offers an assessment of where the American-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace process stands now, with the nine-month period allotted for the process expiring officially this Tuesday and what next; what happens if there is Palestinian success at forming a unity government; or if there is not; What sort of unilateral move might Israel now invoke; will there be another American initiative; and what kind of unexpected possibilities should we expect?

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Press Release: Potential Benefits of Pause in Israeli-Palestinian Talks

fatah-hamas-recon2-320x265Washington, DC -  Commenting on the status of ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, Americans for Peace Now's President and CEO Debra DeLee issued the following statement:

"APN's position is clear: Negotiations are the only route to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the only resolution to this conflict will be a mutually agreed-on two-state solution.  However, the past nine months of peace efforts, led with admirable commitment and energy by Secretary of State John Kerry and his team, have failed to bring the parties closer to a two-state outcome.  The current state of this peace effort exposes three structural weaknesses in the current process: the manifest bad faith of the Netanyahu government; the profound weakness of the Palestinian leadership; and the absence of adequate rules-of-the-game - and consequences for breaking these rules - put in place by the Obama Administration as the steward of these efforts.

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APN Welcomes PLO-Hamas Reconciliation Agreement

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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.”

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Peace Now: Minister of Defense approves new settlement in Hebron, first time since the 1980s

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.

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Goodbye to Israeli peace activist Ron Pundak

Pundak-Ron320x265Israeli 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." 

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My Passover message: It would be immoral to give up

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soupGrowing up, Passover was my favorite holiday. I loved the Passover story about the Jews being saved from the evil Pharaoh in Egypt. I loved the miracle of the parting of the sea and survival crossing the desert (as a kid raised in the Arizona desert, I felt a special kinship with those early Israelites). I loved the Seder — especially the part where we dipped our fingers in the wine as we enumerated each plague. And I of course loved the food, particularly my mother’s matzo balls (sinkers, not floaters) and the red horseradish that always made me sniffle and sneeze — and which, invariably, somebody spilled on the tablecloth to leave a permanent beet juice stain.

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