On July 10, 2014, APN's Executive Assistant Katherine Cunningham and intern Hannah Ehlers interviewed our Palestinian intern Hamze Awawdeh, a Palestinian from the West Bank who works in Tel Aviv for an Israeli-Palestinian peace organization. Hamze, who participates this year in APN's joint internship program with the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP), explores in this interview the sometimes tense dialectic between the national narratives of Israelis and Palestinians and the efforts that young Israelis and Palestinians are making to write a new chapter, a chapter of peace, in their peoples' national history.

Americans for Peace Now – like millions of Israelis and Palestinians, and others worldwide – is anxiously hoping that Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip will follow Israel’s suit and accept the Egyptian-proposed ceasefire agreement. The agreement was proposed Monday night. Israel’s government welcomed it last night, and officially accepted it today at a Cabinet meeting, and held its fire by 9:00 AM local time (2:00 AM Eastern time), but a barrage of rockets from Gaza continued. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad intensified their rocket fire, arguing that Egypt announced the ceasefire without consulting with their leadership. In response, Israel too resumed fire and continued bombing the Gaza Strip.

We hope that Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip will accept the ceasefire, stop its rocket attacks on Israel and thus prevent further escalation.

Washington, DC – Americans for Peace Now (APN) welcomes news of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, brokered by Egypt’s government.  APN urges both Israel and Hamas to adhere to the ceasefire and to find ways to prevent future security escalations such as the current one. APN further urges Israelis, Palestinians and the Obama administration to resume diplomatic efforts to return to the negotiating table in order to achieve a viable, lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement with security for both sides.

APN's President and CEO Debra DeLee said: "Once again, following unnecessary bloodshed, destruction, terror and pain, Israel and Hamas chose diplomacy - the same kind of diplomacy that we at APN have been urging. This devastation, and the long-term impact it has on Israelis and Palestinians alike, can be obviated if both sides choose diplomacy now to pave the road for future Israeli-Palestinian peace.

This week, Alpher discusses whether Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza is winding down; what the two sides' conditions for a ceasefire are; why Israel doesn't want to remove Hamas from power; what are the alternative strategies that Israel could invoke; whether Hamas' strategic aim is to kill Israelis; and some perspective, looking back and looking forward on Operations Cast Lead in 2009-10, Pillar of Defense in 2012, and now Protective Edge.

I would like to bring your attention to an article featuring APN’s summer intern Hamze Awawdeh, a young Palestinian from Dura, just outside of Hebron which ran in The Forward and was picked up by Ha’aretz.

Hamze is spending the summer with us as a part of our Joint Internship program with the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) . While we host a Palestinian intern, ATFP hosts an Israeli intern. For the past five years, through this program, Israeli and Palestinian students have worked jointly and forged close personal relationships.

Professor Matti Steinberg, an expert on Palestinian politics and political ideology briefed APN on July 11, 2014, focusing on Hamas. Steinberg analyzed Hamas’ strategy, its ideology, and how they relate to its launching of rockets and missiles into Israel.

by APN's summer intern Hannah Ehlers

Israel is no stranger to blaring sirens and rockets soaring overhead, crashing violently or intercepted in repeated close calls. Israel also is no stranger to fear—a genuine, existential fear that does not subside even when the rocket fire goes away. Every reasonable person wants peace and knows that violence is not the way to achieve it. But do enough people, Israelis and Palestinians, believe in the possibility of peace to make it happen?  

Update:

Having urged a ceasefire for the past week, APN was excited at the news of an agreement Monday night, and then deeply disappointed when Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip rejected it and intensified their rocket fire. Now that the Egyptian ceasefire initiative has collapsed, We must redouble our efforts to urge for a credible ceasefire agreement to prevent further bloodshed and devastation and to clear the path for leaders to pivot from war to peace talks.

We therefore ask once again for our supporters to write to President Obama and ask him to use his influence with other world leaders to continue to work for a ceasefire – one which will lay the groundwork for resumed negotiations leading to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

These are difficult and painful times. Fear and violence have overtaken both Israelis and Palestinians. Rockets from Gaza are threatening Israelis in every corner of the country, sowing terror and anger; intentional attacks on Israeli civilians by Gaza-based Palestinian terrorists should rightfully be condemned. Israeli military retaliation, irrespective of its intended targets, is causing destruction, death, and injury across Gaza, including the deaths (so far) of scores of innocent civilians, among them many children.

In the face of this crisis, all of us who care about Israel feel terribly powerless. Powerless to stop the violence and suffering. Powerless in the face of the simplistic, false narrative that military force - combined with a metaphorical Iron Dome - can provide Israel real security. Powerless, when we know that the only thing that can provide Israel security is a negotiated agreement that ends the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But we are only powerless if we choose to be. I urge you: Do not be powerless – Take action. We can and must tell the Obama Administration: Work for a Ceasefire NOW.

Please join us on Friday at 1:00 PM (EST) for a briefing call with Dr. Matti Steinberg, an Israeli expert on Hamas, on Palestinian politics and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A former senior adviser to the heads of the General Security Services in Israel and a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Steinberg is one of Israel’s leading experts on Palestinian affairs. He is the author of the award-winning book “Unending Quest: The Development of Palestinian National Consciousness, 1967- 2007 (Hebrew).

Peace Now has just announced that in the last few days, following the killing of the three Israeli teens, there have been alarming developments on the ground in settlements: Three new (serious) outposts were established and a new road to Givat Eitam outpost was paved, in addition to other several protest tents and other developments that the settlers put up in different places in the West Bank.

The settlers are taking advantage of the killing of the three teens in order to set facts on the ground that they wouldn't dare to do before. We don't know if they got a green light from the government (although such a green light could not have made the acts legal, short of planning procedures), however, those developments will be judged by the government's reaction.

On July 1, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu eulogized the three Israeli yeshiva students murdered in the West Bank. “A deep and wide moral abyss separates us from our enemies,” he said. “They sanctify death while we sanctify life…”

When 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was kidnapped and murdered in East Jerusalem a few days later, Netanyahu’s words — and words like them — framed the story. Indeed, an unbiased consumer of media reports about Abu Khdeir’s killing would likely conclude that while the perpetrators turned out to be Jewish Israelis, they might just as likely, or more likely, have been Palestinians.