Popular sentiments in the U.S. and the Middle East have started to play a more significant role in determining what happens in this conflict that is almost a century old.
Small majorities of both people still cling to the idea that a negotiated two-state solution could happen. What is lacking is leadership.
Veteran U.S. policymaker Dennis Ross argues that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is “doomed to succeed.” But a hardheaded look at the political, demographic, and ethnic changes in both countries suggests otherwise.
A two-state solution is the only equitable resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Former U.S. diplomat and policy director at Americans for Peace Now Lara Friedman explains why.
There are tens of thousands of more terrorists operating in the world today than there were in September 2001 when the global war on terror was launched. Something is not working here.
Critics of Israel’s most egregious and often illegal policies—occupation, colonization, mass incarceration, assassinations, and direct and indirect siege of Palestinian civilian communities—now also call for measures to deter or punish it.
Palestinian rights are popping up in more venues around the world, with a regular public focus on countering and even sanctioning Zionist actions such as expropriating and colonizing occupied Arab lands.
An American-Russian-French-European peace initiative, with the active participation of the moribund Arab League and expressions of support from Iran, Turkey, and other key players, is achievable and worth attempting.
“As the wider Middle East continues to be gripped by a relentless wave of extremist terror, Israelis and Palestinians have an opportunity to restore hope to a region torn apart by intolerance and cruelty.” —Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General
Resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, should be seriously grasped as a global priority.
Putting on hold now for two years serious diplomacy aimed at reaching a permanent peace agreement will only allow attitudes of militancy and murder to continue their upward trends.
It is a crime against rational language and thought to speak of “restoring calm” and “reducing the violence” in a situation where the Israelis are the occupiers, tormentors, colonizers, and mass killers of mostly defenseless Palestinians who are largely leaderless and unprotected by international law.
