Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu, I write this letter to you with a heavy heart as it pains me deeply to see the beautiful dream of a strong and proud Israel, the country that was expected to embrace what is virtuous, moral, and just, now losing its reason for being—as a free and secure Jewish state…
Israel’s historical experiences, coupled with decades of violent confrontations with Arab states and the Palestinians, have created a major psychological barrier embedded in the psyche of every Israeli, placing Israel’s legitimate national security concerns at the center of its domestic and foreign policy. That said, no military might or even the expropriation of the entire…
A regular reader of my weekly column recently shared with me a commentary about the brutal murder of Dafna Meir, an Israeli Jew who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian teenager. Needless to say, there are no words to express the anger and revulsion over this atrocious crime—murdering an innocent woman with six children…
I have long maintained that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank defies the moral principle behind the creation of the state. Contrary to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s assertion, the occupation erodes rather than buttresses Israel’s national security and cannot be justified on either security or moral grounds. Unless Israel embraces a new moral path, no one…
During several meetings I recently had with EU officials in Brussels, they argued that it is time to revive the Middle East Quartet, which consists of the US, EU, Russia, and the UN, to resurrect the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. I took the opposite position because I believe that the Quartet failed from the onset to…
In my column two weeks ago, I addressed the question as to why past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have failed, and last week I suggested that the regional environment is, in fact, conducive to the resumption of peace talks. As usual, I received scores of positive comments and perhaps as much criticism, which made me feel that…
No new format for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians can succeed unless it carefully considers the reasons behind the failure of past negotiations to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated. The following highlights some of the more prominent reasons behind the collapse of prior Israeli-Palestinian negotiations: Disagreement on rules of engagement:…
The upheaval sweeping the Middle East suggests that it will be extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to resume the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and reach a successful outcome. On the contrary, because of the prevailing political conditions and the continuing rise of extremism in both communities, the resumption of peace talks is as timely as it has…
The Netanyahu government has conveniently and consistently separated the occupation of the West Bank from the repeated eruption of violence, insisting that the Palestinians’ unrest is a result of incitement by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, when in fact he has been attempting to reduce the tension. Not once has any Israeli official suggested that…