Israel Policy Forum is shocked and appalled by the column published in the Atlanta Jewish Times by its owner and publisher Andrew Adler calling for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States policy includes its helping the Jewish state obl
In an ideal world, if we were writing this up as a scenario we would say let’s put this all on hold, and everyone stays away happily and nothing changes for the worse, and we pick it up perhaps when everyone is stronger. But status quos are not status quos and people know that. They either get better – or more commonly – they actually get worse because they are left neglected. I fear that this status quo, over the next 10 or 11 months if there isn’t some very significant policy activity, will deteriorate into violence.
Although the Obama administration's efforts to resume the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have not, as yet, produced tangible results, the prospect for a breakthrough in negotiations may be closer today than it has been in many years. Notwithstanding the inherent skepticism about the prospect of real progress, the conversion of certain regional and international developments have altered the political dynamic and created a new set of opportunities for a negotiated settlement.
Ynet reports that Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, sent a postcard to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon saying "We said that we will not place stumbling blocks in front of any effort to achieve an independent Palestinian state in the 4 June 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital."
During his recent meeting with Egypt's President Mubarak, President Obama expressed cautious optimism about the progress being made in the Arab-Israeli peace process. While both presidents noted that there was "movement in the right direction," eight months of American direct engagement in the Arab-Israeli conflict has produced few tangible results.
co-editor of bitterlemons.org; former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 8:48am
The roadmap seemed to have been stillborn in 2003 when it was introduced by the Quartet after extensive negotiations with Israel and the PLO. The principal obstacle to implementing it back then was leadership on all sides: US, Israel and the PLO.
The Pulse recently interviewed Colonel (res.) Dr. Ephraim Lavie. He is Director of the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, Head of the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation and a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.
Pulse: In your opinion, what were the main accomplishments of the Fatah convention?
Lavie: Fatah's sixth general convention achieved significant goals in rebuilding the movement both from an organizational aspect as well as an ideological one. First of all, the internal elections for the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council finally tipped the scales in the power struggle between the old and mid-generation of leaders.
Co-Director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.
Monday, August 3, 2009 - 2:06pm
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Hamas Chief Khaled Meshaal told Jay Solomon and Julien Barnes-Dacey in an interview that "We along with other Palestinian factions in consensus agreed upon accepting a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines. This is the national program. This is our program.
co-editor of bitterlemons.org; former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University
Monday, July 6, 2009 - 12:55pm
On June 25, Hamas leader Khalid Mishaal gave an important speech, one seemingly designed to follow up on major policy pronouncements regarding the Middle East delivered earlier by US President Barack Obama and Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu.
Sr. Research Fellow & Director, Program on Israel-Palestinian Relations at the Institute for National Security Studies
Thursday, July 2, 2009 - 11:41am
INSS Insight No. 117, July 1, 2009
Adopting the current fashion inaugurated by President Obama with his June 4 Cairo address, Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashal joined the list of political leaders delivering major policy speeches in the Middle East. On June 25, Mashal delivered a response to the speeches of Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. His address presents Hamas' comprehensive, updated political approach, thus also deciding the internal debate within Hamas between the so-called moderates and the so-called radicals - in favor of the moderates.
Co-editor, bitterlemons.org & former Palestinian Authority Minister of Planning and Labor
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 - 2:12pm
In recent weeks we have witnessed an exchange of public statements between former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas regarding the Annapolis negotiations process. The exchange is reminiscent of the post-mortem that followed the failure of the Camp David final status negotiations between Ehud Barak and the late President Yasser Arafat.
On the thirteenth anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, at a memorial ceremony on Mt. Herzl in early November 2008, then-PM Ehud Olmert delivered one of his last speeches in office. He sought to leave the mark of his vision regarding the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the solution required by the state of Israel.
for Jewish-Arab Cooperation and a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.
