In an interview with the ‘New York Times,’ Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid rejects the idea of a settlement freeze or compromise on Jerusalem, instead offering an updated version of the Oslo Accord as an interim solution.

Yair Lapid. The Israeli public feels that the status quo represent the preferable alternative on the Palestinian issue (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)

Yair Lapid, the surprising star of the last elections and Israel’s current finance minister, gave an interview to the The New York Times in which he left only “a little daylight” between himself to Prime Minister Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue, as the Times’s Jodi Rudoren put it.

That was clearly an understatement. Except for paying lip service to the need to create a Palestinian state – now a precondition for every policy speech by a mainstream Israeli leader, intended to prevent accusations of Apartheid – Lapid didn’t even try to hide his rejectionism. He told Rudoren that a final status agreement with Mahmoud Abbas is probably impossible; he said that Israel “should not change its policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” and he objected to territorial compromises on Jerusalem, as he has done in the past.

When it came to talking about what should be done, rather than what shouldn’t, Lapid had the following idea:

Lapid failed to offer a catchy name for his plan. I suggest the “Oslo Accords.”

______________

A favorite pastime among observers of Israeli politics and ‘The Conflict’ is searching for a new leader of the peace camp – someone who will finally end this foolishness with the settlements and lead the army out of the West Bank. Some thought that he or she would come from the Left, carrying with them the democratic traditions and pragmatic determination of the founding fathers. Others say it should be a centrist, or even better, a hawk-turned-dove, a general, an expansionist or a former-settler who, after decades of war, chose to live with the enemy rather than continue fighting him.

Lapid appeared to be somewhat of a hybrid – not exactly a lefty, certainly not a general, but popular enough with the Israeli mainstream. To top it off, he’s pragmatic and handsome. A new leader for a new age. In order to believe that...

A new position paper, which echoes previous statements by EU negotiators and leaders, urges the EU to adopt a more confrontational approach toward Jerusalem.

EU High Representative Catherine Ashton (European Union / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A top European think tank is urging the European Union to take concrete measures to keep open a window for the two-state solution. The report, published two weeks ago, urges European countries to exempt settlements goods from Israeli-European trade agreements, to refrain from contacts with the West Bank’s new university in Ariel and even impose visa requirements on settlers.

The report (PDF), published by the Middle East-North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations and written by Senior Policy Fellow Nick Witney, claims that European support for the Palestinian Authority has created “a culture of dependence,” while removing the occupation’s financial burden from Israel. Due to Israeli restrictions and past agreements which prevented real economic developments, “state building efforts have reached a dead end,” the paper states.

Similar suggestions were raised in April by former European leaders and negotiators in a letter to EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton. Both the letter and the ECFR paper recognize the diplomatic vacuum created by the U.S.’s inability to confront Israeli governments over the occupation, and urge EU action.

The ECFR paper has a couple of interesting observations. First, it recognizes that the political elites in Europe, and not the public, are at the heart of the problem. While the European public is more and more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians under occupation, EU foreign policy is “on autopilot,” sticking to the Oslo paradigm and framework, even when it’s clear that it serves to maintain the status quo (one could claim that this is the opposite of the American problem, where popular support for Israeli policy remains high even as the elites are beginning to question it). The paper cites economic interests – Israel being an important trade partner of many states – and successful lobbying efforts by Jerusalem as possible explanations for the lack of coherent and unified action by the EU.

The paper also recognizes the failure of positive incentives vis-à-vis Jerusalem:

The ECFR doesn’t have a unified position and the new paper only represents the opinion of its authors, and not that of...

The Israeli Right has been waging a war on history in recent years, using extreme measures to remove evidence of the Nakba from the national discourse. It failed.

A Palestinian photographer stands during a minute of silence commemorating the Nakba at a ceremony held by Palestinian and Israeli students at the entrance to Tel Aviv University. Right-wing activists protesting the ceremony and policemen are seen in the background. May 13, 2013 (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

Yedioth Hakibbutz is the weekly magazine of the United Kibbutz Movement. It is delivered every week to hundreds of Kibbutzim as part of the weekend edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, the best selling paper in Israel. Even at a time of diminishing political influence – there is not a single representative of the United Kibbutz Movement in the current Knesset – the Kibbutzim remain both a symbol and a stronghold of conservative Zionism, and the mainstream tone of Yedioth suits them well.

Three months ago, there was an unusual story on the cover of Yedioth Hakibbutz. The front page read: “We expelled, blew up and killed.” Inside the magazine was a three-page interview with Kibbutz Degania member Yerachmiel Kahanovich, a former fighter in the Palmach (the Jewish underground that preceded the IDF), in which Kahanovic confessed to his part in the expulsion and murder of Palestinians during the war of 1948.

Several months earlier, Kahanovich was interviewed as part of a project by Zochrot (“remembering”), a non-profit that deals with the Nakba from an Israeli perspective (an English translation of his testimony can be found here), and his testimony drew the attention of Yedioth reporters. Zochrot exists mostly in the margins of the Israeli discourse. Getting such a follow-up in the Kibbutz magazine was unique but not unheard of: in October 2012 the same paper ran a story on a Nakba tour book published by Zochrot.

Kahanovich’s testimony touched on one of the most awful events of 1948 – the intentional murder of Palestinian civilians who sought refuge from...

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has clarified that the “forbidden” buffer zone in Gaza strip stretches 300 meters from the fence (the Israeli border), and not 100 meters as it previously announced.

Civilians who enter the area risk being shot by the army. In the past, the killing of Palestinians who wandered into the forbidden zone has led to retaliatory rocket launching from the Strip into Israeli territory.

The clarification was made following a request by the human rights organization Gisha. Gisha had noticed that the IDF Spokesperson’s messages stated a different distance than did the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which claimed that Gazans are not allowed into an area stretching only 100 meters from the fence. Recently, the army notified Gisha that the forbidden zone is indeed three times larger than previously reported.

The army has refused to fully detail the methods it uses to warn farmers and other civilians from wandering into the forbidden zone it declared. A spokesperson for the army has told Gisha that such methods are part of “the opening fire procedures, and cannot be disclosed.”

There are over 1.5 million Palestinians living in 141 square miles in Gaza, including the buffer zone, which represents a population density of 11,267 people per square mile. Below you can see a map of the Gaza Strip (click on map for larger scale). The dark green strip represents 500 meters from the Gaza-Israel fence. For the full scale map in PDF format, click here.

Gaza map and IDF imposed “forbidden zones” (by Gisha)

Israel recently reduced the area off the Gaza coastline which it allows for fishing to 3 miles (it increased it to 6 miles as part of the cease fire agreement ending Operation Pillar of Defense late last year). Under the Oslo Accords, Israel committed to allowing Gazans to fish up to 20 miles from the coastline.

By choosing to avoid the Presidential Conference – an annual meeting of Israeli generals, politicians and business elites with their international fans, Prof. Hawking reminds that the occupation cannot be forgotten or avoided. A response to Haaretz’s Carlo Strenger.

The British Guardian on Wednesday reported that Prof. Stephen Hawking has cancelled his appearance at the fifth Presidential Conference due to take place this June, in protest of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The report was later confirmed by Cambridge University. A spokeperson for the Jerusalem-based conference called Hawking’s decision “outrageous and improper.”

One of Haaretz’s leading lefty columnists, Carlo Strenger, wrote an open letter to Hawking echoing these feelings. After expressing pride in his own opposition to the occupation, Strenger accuses Hawking of hypocrisy and applying a double standard; he claims that Israel’s human rights violations are “negligible” compared to those of other countries in the world, and notes that the Israeli academia is for the most part liberal and therefore can’t be blamed for the occupation.

I would like to respond to some of the points he makes, since they represent a larger problem with the Israeli left.

______________

While Hawking responded to the call for academic boycott, it should be noted that the Presidential Conference is not an academic event: it’s an annual celebration of the Israeli business, political and military elites, whose purpose is unclear at best, and which has little importance in Israeli life (it didn’t exist until five years ago). The pro-occupation Right has a heavy presence at the conference – or at least it felt that way last year, when I attended. I will get back to the notion of “the liberal academia” and the Presidential Conference later.

Personally, I think we should put  the “double standards” line of defense to rest, since it’s simply an excuse against any form of action. The genocide in Cambodia was taking place at the same time as the boycott effort against South Africa. According to Prof. Strenger’s logic, anti-Apartheid activists were guilty of double standards; they should have concentrated their efforts on many other, and “much worse” regimes.

The notion according to which the horrors in Syria or Darfur make ending the occupation a less worthy cause represents the worst kind of moral relativism, especially when it’s being voiced by members of the occupying society.

I’m also not sure what makes Israeli human rights violations “negligible” compared to those of...

Meretz MK announces plans to challenge Tel Aviv-Jaffa’s 15-year mayor. Though he faces difficult odds, Horowitz has a legitimate chance to become the first openly gay mayor of any Israeli city.

Knesset Member Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) on Monday announced his intention to run in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal elections, due to take place on October 22. Horowitz, a second-term MK and former journalist for Channel 10 News, will be challenging former Labor member Ron Huldai, who has served as Tel Aviv’s mayor since 1998. If he wins, Horowitz (49) would be Tel Aviv’s first openly gay mayor, and the first in any Israeli city.

MK Nitzan Horowitz (photo: Moshe Shai / CC-BY 3.0)

In a press conference at the old city hall building on Monday, Horowitz mentioned rising real-estate prices – which sparked the social protest movement in 2011 – along with the city’s infamous transportation problems among his reasons for running. He also promised to introduce a new plan for the city’s southern neighbourhoods, which have almost doubled their population due to the waves of asylum seekers who were sent there by the government.

If elected, Horowitz said he will resign from the Knesset.

Mayor Huldai is still considered a favorite in the race. Internal polls give him around 50 percent of the vote, and only a third to Horowitz. However, the surprising achievement of Hadash’s Dov Khenin, who received over a third of the votes in 2008 despite coming from the margins of the political system, made Horowitz, who is considered more mainstream, believe that he can beat Huldai. Khenin decided not to run this year.

Estimates are that Horowitz could perform very well in the center of the city, where Khenin beat Huldai in 2008. The city’s residential neighborhoods in the north – home to the upper-middle class – are Huldai’s stronghold, but Horowitz could have some appeal there too (certainly more than Khenin did). Horowitz’s challenge will be in the south, where locals are frustrated by what they see as the city’s indifference to pressures the asylum seekers’ presence has put on the municipal infrastructure and the local population. I don’t think that Horowitz can win those votes, but if the south doesn’t break in Huldai’s favor, the elections could be...

After Israel’s reported air strike on Damascus, intervention is no longer a theoretical concept. The question now is whether international military action should move from containment to humanitarian intervention?

Last week, Larry Derfner made an argument against international intervention in Syria. This was before news broke of the recent attack (video above), and things are different now. Here are a few of my thoughts:

Israel has reportedly struck targets inside Syria twice in four days. This time, the targets were in the Damascus area and unlike the previous strike, the Syrian regime publicly blamed Israel for the latest attack. So intervention is Syria is no longer a theoretical option, but something that to a limited degree is already taking place (and not just as a response to occasional stray fire from Syrian territory, as Israel and Turkey have done in the past). We can expect such attacks to happen again.

The real question is whether the international community should move from a containment effort – i.e. ensuring that the war doesn’t spill into other countries or that WMDs and other advanced weapons systems are not moved – to offensive action against the regime. I think the answer is unclear, but recently I’ve been leaning towards ‘yes.’

Naturally, it’s not Israel that should lead or even take part in such an effort, for all the obvious reasons. Still, I think we should see greater Israeli involvement on the humanitarian side of the conflict. Unlike all the countries that border Syria, Israel has only accepted a handful of Syrian casualties, and no refugees. The problems that the entry of refugees pose to Lebanon and Jordan exceed the threat to Israel considerably, yet those countries allow hundreds of thousands of Syrians into their territory (Jordan doesn’t allow Palestinians, however). None of these countries are as rich and powerful as Israel. If Israel ever wants to be accepted in the Middle East, it should start acting like a Middle Eastern country and share the burden in times of suffering. It’s way more important than sending aid delegations to Haiti.

With regards to international military intervention, I do not think the main problem is the potential rise of radical groups when the regime eventually falls. With or without intervention, what happens next in Syria is anybody’s guess. It’s also not clear that holding back from intervening is the...

Following the murder of a settler from Yitzhar on Tuesday, dozens of Israeli settlers from the region attacked several Palestinian villages. They threw stones at Palestinians, at cars and buses, smashed windows and burned houses. These videos, taken by B’Tselem photographers from the villages Asira al-Qibliya and Urif, show how IDF forces allow the riots against the Palestinian farmers to take place. In several cases the soldiers talk to the rioters or try to shove them away. In others, they simply provide escorts for them as they throw stones or storm the villages.

Video from Asira al-Qibliya:

Video from Urif:

Video from Asira al-Qibliya (An officer is speaking to a rioter – the smoke from the burning field can be seen in the background):

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) now estimates that approximately 235,000 Palestinian refugees have been displaced due to the civil war in Syria. In a statement to the press this week, UNRWA reported that on April 26, no fewer than 6,000 Palestinians had been displaced from Ein El Tal, a Palestinian refugee camp some 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Aleppo in northern Syria.

According to UNRWA:

Several months ago the PLO estimated that over 600 Palestinians, mostly civilians, had been killed as a result of the fighting, but this number has since risen considerably.

Related:
30 Palestinians killed last week in Syria
Five Palestinian children killed in Syria

Israel’s opposition leader and the head of Labor party claimed this weekend that ignoring the Palestinian diplomatic issue in her election campaign cost her party four Knesset seats. Yachimovich ran her campaign mostly on economical issues, in hopes of capitalizing on the social protests. She ended up with a disappointing 15 seats – a couple more than Ehud Barak got as the head of Labor but still fewer than what polls gave her.

Maariv obtained a recording of a meeting between Yachimovich and some of her supporters, in which she said:

“Diplomatic process” or “diplomatic issue” are code names in the Israeli political lexicon for the Palestinian issue. I believe Yachimovich was right to state that the peace process is currently meaningless. However, she conveyed the message that the entire Palestinian problem is not important. While most of the Jewish public would probably agree with her, there were some people in the Labor base for which this was a non-starter.

Parties agree to put a five-year time limit on the evacuation of the unrecognized Bedouin villages. Rights groups warn that if the government plan is implemented, some 30,000 Palestinian-Bedouin will be expelled from their homes and resettled in unsuitable townships.

A woman of the al-Qian Bedouin tribe stands in front of a house in the unrecognized village of Um al-Hiram (photo: Yossi Gurvitz)

Members of the four leading coalition parties have reached an agreement that would further cut the land designated for resettlement of the Bedouin population in the Negev (Naqeb), Israeli daily Maariv reports.

Israeli governments have been working on a policy that would solve the issue of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev for the past decade. Under the latest plan – commonly referred to as the Prawer plan – the government would forcibly expel between several thousand (according to the government) and up to 30,000 Palestinian Bedouin from their current villages, while several villages will be recognized and become eligible for government services and infrastructure.

The Bedouin who are slated to be removed from their homes will receive monetary compensation and offered new houses in existing townships.

Today, however, Maariv reports that prominent members of Knesset from all major coalition parties agreed to further limit the Prawer Plan. MKs from Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, Netanyahu’s Likud and the settlers’ Jewish Home decided to remove modifications made in the plan by former Minister Benny Begin, who was appointed by the previous government to adjust the initial outline to the needs of the population on the ground.

While Bedouin leaders and rights groups weren’t satisfied with Mr. Begin’s work, his negotiations with the local population were scrutinized by the Right, which demanded the government forcefully evacuate most of the unrecognized villages, and opposed any negotiations with the local Bedouin citizens.

The coalition parties agreed to remove much of the land Mr. Begin promised the Bedouin, and also to place a five-year limit for removing the population from their current homes and resettling them into the zones designated under the old Prawer Plan. During this period, Bedouin can appeal their individual cases to the...

Palestinian citizens have many rights in Israel, but they are not equal citizens. Only by removing all discriminatory elements from the legal system will Israel cease to be a democracy of racial profiling.

Following one of his visits to Israel, Jewish-American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg praised last year the ease with which he underwent the security procedures at Ben-Gurion International Airport, compared with the long waits he experienced in U.S terminals. Racial profiling made all the difference: while Israeli Jews and many white Westerners – especially those with Jewish names – are rushed through the lines in Israeli terminals and gates, every person with a Muslim or Arab name or appearance – including Israeli citizens – is subject to long interrogations and searches. Solely by being Jewish, Goldberg is entitled to better treatment than Israeli citizens who actually live here.

Racial profiling at Ben-Gurion has received some attention in recent years because its discriminatory nature is so obvious: at the airport, one can actually see the Arab families being taken to a separate security check. Yet racial profiling is more than just a security technique which aims to make boarding more pleasant for non-Arab passengers. It is – especially under the Netanyahu governments – a national policy.

Recently, Israel has engaged in a dialogue with the American administration in an attempt to be made part of the visa waiver program. The effort reached a dead end because the Israelis wanted to reserve the right to refuse entry to “certain U.S. citizens” – i.e. Muslims – beyond the right to individual refusal which both countries will obviously keep. It even got to the point that AIPAC lobbied Congress to agree to discrimination against its own citizens by a foreign country, with no success.

Last week, the government and Knesset extended the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, which prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel married to non-citizen Palestinians from living with their spouses in Israel. The law was described as a security measure, but as statements made during the time that the bill was initiated revealed, its real goal was demographic – namely, reducing the number of Palestinians who are entitled to Israeli citizenship, or are even allowed to live in Israel as residents.

In both cases, the Ben-Gurion Airport procedures were imitated in totally different fields. The Citizenship Law targets Palestinian citizens as a group: from now on, if they wish to marry a...

Adi Koll, a relatively unknown Knesset member from Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party, posted this picture along with an uncharacteristically long and emotional status on Facebook, the day after she paid a visit to the home of a Palestinian friend in Ramallah. (Translated in full below)

Ramallah (photo: Adi Koll)