Back in February when Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow longtime Israel’s longtime friend and ally Hosni Mubarak, many Israelis fretted over what ill wind the “Arab Spring” would bring. Would a more democratic Egyptian government veer away from the U.S.-Israel axis and ally with Hamas? Would it abrogate the Camp David treaty …
Palestine
U.S. Global Influence Tanks with the Economy
You say you want a revolution? Not now, mate, can’t you see we’re busy?
“It’s the economy, stupid,” was the focal message around which Bill Clinton organized his against-the-odds 1992 campaign victory over President George H.W. Bush. The incumbent had presided over the soft landing of the collapsing Soviet empire and driven Saddam …
A ‘Dramatic Turnabout’ by Netanyahu on Peace Terms? Not Quite
With tens of thousands of young protestors on his streets in a social justice movement sparked by a housing crisis, some Israeli commentators have suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s best hope for quelling a domestic “rebellion” lies in changing the subject to the question of peace with the Palestinians. But …
Reluctant Revolutionary Abbas Urges Palestinian Street Protests to Back U.N. Statehood Bid
The biggest problem on the desk of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a protest movement — not of Palestinians, but of young Israelis, who have poured onto the streets in their tens of thousands demanding that their government resolve a growing housing crisis. Sure, the Obama Administration has failed in its effort on …
What Comes After the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process?
An Italian philosopher once remarked that moments when “the old is dying and the new cannot be born” are marked by a “great variety of morbid symptoms”. Watching the machinations of the Obama Administration and its allies, the Palestinian leadership and its rivals, and the Israeli government ahead of a planned U.N. vote on …
Poll Finds Palestinians Disenchanted with Hamas, Iran and the Peace Process
Palestinians are trudging down the same long road as Israelis. Yes, they want peace. No, they don’t think the other side will play ball. So for now their priority is private life: Getting food on the table and keeping the kids safe. That, at least, is the picture painted by a new survey of 1,010 Palestinians interviewed face to …
Amid Uproar, Israeli Lawmakers Vote to Punish Boycotters
Israel’s parliament late Monday night made it illegal to call for a boycott against the state or its settlements on the West Bank. The measure, which passed the Knesset 47 to 38, had the support of the right-wing coalition led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who nonetheless failed to show up for the vote. Reports in the Hebrew …
Memo to Mideast Quartet: The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Train Derailed Ages Ago
The Obama Administration and its European allies meet Monday in Washington, under the auspices of the Middle East Quartet, in search of a formula to head off a Palestinian bid for recognition of statehood by the U.N. in September. A U.N. vote would be a “train wreck”, U.S. officials like to say, setting up renewed confrontation; …
Eight Days in Israel’s Battle Against Pariah Status
Last Saturday, July 2, the Israeli politician Amir Peretz slipped onto a plane in London, and placing both his seat and himself in an upright position, escaped back to Israel just hours ahead of an arrest warrant. His crime: Serving as minister of defense during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, when civilians were killed along with the …
The Ben Gurion Airport Protest: Picking the Wrong Line?
Of the many fruits born of the Arab Spring, is any more exotic than the protest unfolding at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport this week? In what Palestinian organizers describe as a kind of sidelong challenge to Israeli control of access to the occupied territories, activists are arriving at the airport, standing in line at …
Is Israel the ‘National Home of the Jewish People’?
In a scathing commentary on the folly of the Obama Administration relying on Dennis Ross to resuscitate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar notes that Ross has been at the center of just about every failed initiative on that front over the past two decades — and that now, as ever, he is running …
The Flotilla Sequel: This Time with Diplomacy
For a while there it was looking like Rocky II. Same story, much less reason to watch. A year after Israel shot itself in the foot by killing nine Turkish activists on the high sea off Gaza, everyone had taken their places and appeared intent on reprising familiar roles. The Israel Defense Forces was talking tough: “We’ve got some …
Facebook Revolution in Israel Takes the Form of Cottage Cheese
When Tahrir Square was going full steam, I spent an afternoon asking Israelis their thoughts on the matter in a sleek shopping mall in Ra’anana, north of Tel Aviv. The first question was whether, watching the events in Cairo, they felt inspired? I should have said “sympathetic,” because several people thought they were being asked if …