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 the National Union's (a faction of the Jewish Home party) plan for annexing all of the West Bank and either expelling or disenfranchising its Arab residents; what other right-wing members of Netanyahu’s coalition say on the issues of annexation and the subsequent rights of West Bank Palestinians; what advocates of more minimalistic annexation say; whether anyone in Israel wants to annex everything and give all Arab residents of expanded Israel full democratic rights; and the bottom line.

Each year at Rosh Hashana, we take stock of our actions from the past year. This year, we have additional reason to take stock as we head into the Days of Awe and the season of repentance: this is the 50 year of the occupation.

In Jewish tradition, the 50 year has special status. It is known as the yovel (Jubilee) year. In rabbinic writings the yovel is compared to Rosh Hashanah, with both set aside as time to reflect before beginning anew. The yovel consists of three major features: liberating slaves, setting free the land, and releasing all debts.

It is hard to conceive of a year in which yovel is more needed than the 50th anniversary of Israel’s rule over the West Bank and Gaza. Over this past half century, we have seen the occupation not only devastate Palestinians but also corrupt Israeli society. This past year alone, we have witnessed rising settler violence against Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, the Israeli military, and Peace Now and other activists, as well as land theft and vandalism.

The poison of occupation has metastasized to the highest levels of the Israeli political system. In order to bolster the occupation, Netanyahu’s government passed the Legalization Law, which retroactively legalizes Israeli civilian construction in the West Bank built on privately owned Palestinian land, in violation of both Israeli and international law. For the sake of stifling protest against the occupation, Netanyahu’s government passed the Entry Law, which bans entry to Israel by anyone who supports boycotts of either Israel or the settlements. This doesn’t just stifle debate; it is yet another step in the attempt to erase the boundary between Israel and the West Bank.

On September 14^th 2017, APN hosted Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, America’s former ambassador to Israel, for a briefing call on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Violence by settlers in the occupied territories has accelerated during 2017, marked by deeply troubling recent incidents. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documents that following a three-year decline, violence by Israeli settlers increased 88 percent in the first half of 2017 when compared with the level in 2016. During that six-month period, OCHA recorded 89 incidents which resulted in 33 Palestinian casualties (including 3 fatalities) and damage to Palestinian property. Significantly, these figures do not include incidents in which Palestinians were threatened or intimidated but did not suffer physical harm or property damage. The rising trend of settler violence appears to have continued unabated over the past couple of months.

Americans for Peace Now has always contended – and public opinion polls have always validated – that our policy positions on Israel much better reflect the sentiments and convictions of American Jews than the hardline positions of our American Jewish right-wing adversaries.

A current case in point is today’s American Jewish Committee poll, carried out late last month among a national sample of Jews over 18.

APN has signed on to a letter, along with 15 other organizations, calling on Congress to stand in the way of efforts by the Trump Administration to terminate or sabotage US participation in the Iran nuclear deal.

Read the letter here and below:

by Daniel C. Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt and professor of Middle East policy studies at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Remember the two-state solution as a means to achieve Middle East peace? It has been a pillar of American foreign policy, certainly since President George W. Bush announced U.S. support in 2002. But in three quick strokes over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has demonstrated it really is not very serious about pursuing a two-state solution.

The first shoe dropped when a team of presidential emissaries, led by Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, visited the Middle East to talk to the Israelis and Palestinians. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert was asked whether the Trump administration supports a two-state solution. Her response was shocking:

“We are not going to state what the outcome has to be. It has to be workable to both sides. And I think, really, that’s the best view as to not really bias one side over the other, to make sure that they can work through it. It’s been many, many decades, as you well know, that the parties have not been able to come to any kind of good agreement and sustainable solution to this. So we leave it up to them to be able to work that through.”

Nauert was following the Trump script, as he stated months earlier: “I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like.”

Nauert’s use of the word “bias” is highly misleading. She is hardly calling for a neutral, non-biased approach to the Middle East conflict. In fact, her words indicate that the Trump administration itself is extremely biased — in favor of hardliners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition who want the United States and Israel to abandon the two state outcome. These radicals cheered Trump’s comments in February and probably celebrated Nauert’s recent non-answer answer.

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This episode features two conversations. The first is an interview with Dr. Bashir Karkabi, a Palestinian Israeli physician, who is among the organizers of an event that will take place on September 14th in the Israeli Arab town of Kalanswa, bringing together Jewish and Arab activists to forge together a shared agenda for a joint political struggle.

Our second conversation is with Nadia Abuelezam, a Palestinian-American, who is the creator and host of a podcast that tells the stories of Palestinians in the United States. The podcast is called Palestinians' Podcast.