Gilles Pargneaux, MEP, and Professor Alon Ben-Meir, New York University Over the years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been characterized, and for good reasons, as the most intractable and irreconcilable conflict since the Second World War. The status quo erodes every day the prospect of a solution, but the changing geopolitical winds in the Middle East…
Dear President Abbas, Last week I sent an open letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, criticizing him in the strongest terms for pursuing policies that prolong the occupation of the West Bank rather than searching for ways to end it by resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a two-state solution. I must hasten to say, however,…
Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu, Since you celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the victory of the Six Day War, did you ponder what this triumph has done to the Palestinian people and to the moral character of the state of Israel? I am not sure how harshly history will judge you, but one thing is certain—I,…
Today, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has reached the milestone of 50 years that will be recalled in shame. Fifty years that have dehumanized both the occupier and the occupied; years of failing to muster the courage to right the wrong. Fifty years that bred nothing but hatred and contempt for the other;…
Sadly, President Trump’s visit to the Middle East only confirmed my skepticism about what might come out of it. Trump went to the region with nothing to offer to mitigate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and received no commitment from either Israeli or Palestinian leaders to resume the peace negotiations in earnest, but he received lots of…
President Trump’s upcoming visit to Israel and Palestine—during which he hopes to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process—will go nowhere unless he fully understands the complexity of the conflict and why previous attempts by successive American administrations to negotiate a peace deal have failed. Recently, he stated that “I want to see peace with Israel and…
Israel will soon reach on June 5th the grim milestone of fifty years of occupation of the West Bank. Many Israelis have become complacent and succumbed to the government’s argument that the continuing occupation is necessary to safeguard Israel’s national security. Others are lamenting the day, as they view the occupation not only as a…
On the sad occasion of the fiftieth year of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, I will be writing a series of articles that will propose a number of peaceful people-to-people measures—which have been largely missing—that Israelis and Palestinians must take to bring an end to the occupation. This is the first article that…
The razor-thin victory (51.3% to 48.7%) of Turkey’s President Erdogan in the referendum held on April 16 in fact denies Erdogan the mandate to govern with the sweeping powers the new constitution grants the President, especially when the results of the referendum are seriously contested. Even if there was no outright fraud or irregularities in…