Yes You Can, Mr. President

NEW@IPF

The views shared on The Mideast Peace Pulse are those of the author(s) and not those of Israel Policy Forum.

Israel Policy Forum Announces its Next Chapter with Middle East Progress

Dear Friends and Supporters of Israel Policy Forum:

On behalf of Israel Policy Forum (IPF), including our President Peter Joseph and Chair Larry Zicklin, I am pleased to inform you that IPF is embarking on its next chapter. 

2010 Must Be Showtime for Mideast Peace

Assistant Director, IPF - NY

As 2009 draws to a close, we are bombarded by the annual litany of commentary features recapping the year in Hollywood movies to the year in international conflict, and everything in between.

When it comes to the Middle East peace process, current conventional wisdom suggests the 2009 recap might go something like this: 

US-Iran Negotiations: Simulation Exercise at INSS

Ephraim Asculai, Emily B. Landau, and Tamar Malz-Ginzburg

INSS Insight No. 154, December 29, 2009

Despite the tendency to denote any simulation exercise on security issues a "war game," the recent simulation designed and held at INSS did not focus on the option of a military attack. Rather, it developed the scenario of a bilateral US-Iranian negotiation over Iran's nuclear program.

Camp David

An Israeli View: Palestinians will have to find a formula

co-editor of bitterlemons.org; former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University

The "Jewish state" controversy returned to the headlines a couple of weeks ago. In the course of the first meeting between US emissary George Mitchell and PM Binyamin Netanyahu, both invoked the term. Netanyahu stated that Israel would not enter negotiations over creation of a Palestinian state until and unless the Palestinians declared they recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Mitchell presented the vision of Israel as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian state as the end-product of two-state negotiations.

A Palestinian View: More of the same

Co-editor, bitterlemons.org & former Palestinian Authority Minister of Planning and Labor

The incoming Israeli government has already received a frosty reception from almost all concerned parties, including close friends of Israel.

US President Barack Obama said the new government is not going to be helpful to the peace process. The EU has said that the upgrading of relations with Israel will depend on the new government's commitment to a two-state solution and later added that if Netanyahu did not commit to such a solution it could have negative consequences for EU-Israel relations.