By Pnina Sharvit Baruch and Udi Dekel
The Israeli government prefers to undermine the rule of law, violate Israel’s commitments to the United States, and pay the price for the escalation of terrorism in the northern West Bank in order to advance the ideology of the radical right.
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By Yohanan Tzoreff
The PLO as an organization and its leader Abu Mazen essentially lost their status as the sole representatives of the Palestinian people once Abu Mazen decided to cancel the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council. The Palestinian Authority suffers from a loss of relevance, and Abu Mazen personally is the target of harsh criticism from many members of Fatah, who are eager for his departure.
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By Udi Dekel
The religious-nationalist fervor is the element that ignited the events in Jerusalem, mainly at al-Aqsa (the Temple Mount), which is a consensus issue for all streams of the Palestinian camp. The al-Aqsa riots, and mainly the entry by police forces into the mosque, stoked the sense among young Arabs that Israel was pushing them out of the Muslim holy sites. Augmenting this were fundamental problems endemic to Arab society in Israel, namely the outcome of years of neglect and marginalization: structural discrimination between the Jewish and Arab publics in mixed towns.
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By Noa Shusterman, Research Assistant and Israel-Palestinian Research Program Coordinator
Nickolay Mladenov served as UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process for nearly six years and earned the trust of Israel and the Palestinians alike – an achievement not reached by many before him. How was he able to do this, and what challenges face his successor?
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By Kim Lavi and Udi Deke
In the most recent escalation between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the message conveyed by both parties was that they are not interested in paying the price of a war that will ultimately return them to square one. At the same time, neither wants to allow the other to score success or to appear as if it is conducting negotiations with the enemy. Thus, in the Palestinian arena, Israel should give priority to its long term interests at the expense of its short term interests that focus on achieving calm in the area. It is preferable for Israel that the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip be conducted by means of the Palestinian Authority, so that the PA, and not Hamas, reaps the fruits of reconstruction in the eyes of the Palestinian public.
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By Philip Gordon
The prospect of Israel normalizing its relations with Arab states is an enticing idea that anyone who cares about Israel or the region should want to see realized. Arab strategic interests are aligning with Israel’s; some Arab leaders’ attitudes toward Israel are changing; and the Arab desire to see an Israeli-Palestinian deal remains strong.
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by Neil Caplan and Daniel Haboucha
Last week, a political storm broke out in Jerusalem over the European Commission’s new guidelines barring the funding of entities operating in Israeli settlements beyond the 1967 borders. Although unlikely to have any major impact on actual funding practices, the guidelines sparked accusations of bad faith and even anti-Semitism from many Israeli opinion-makers.
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by Shimon Stein,
On June 20, 2013, at the end of a routine visit to the region (which included stops in Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian Authority), Lady Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, met in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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by Gideon Biger and Gilead Sher,
The death of Rabbi Menahem Froman five weeks ago touched many people from different sectors of society, including those with diametrically opposed political views.
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