Noted right-wingers call to demolish the separation wall. True, they are driven by a desire for annexation, but the Left finds itself in an unseemly position - defending one of the great injustices of the occupation in the name of the distant prospect of two states.  Former Defense Minister Moshe Arens yesterday told Ma'ariv he thinks the separation wall - which snakes its way around the West Bank and has been responsible for cutting tens of thousands of people from their livelihoods and from each other - should be torn down. "The wall is no longer of any use and it's only…

Veteran Israeli negotiator Shaul Arieli discusses the failure of the Oslo Accords, various Israeli prime ministers' commitment (or lack thereof) to ending the occupation, and the only solution he believes both sides could live with, however unsatisfied they might be with it.  Shaul Arieli is a man on a dual mission: educating Israelis about the conflict and diplomatic process with the Palestinians, and making the point that the two-state solution is both possible and necessary. His latest publication in Hebrew, A Border between Us and You (Yeditoth Ahronoth Books 2013), is a 500-page handbook to the history of the conflict, with an emphasis on…

Over the violent protests of its fascist fan club, Beitar Jerusalem makes good on its promise to bring two Muslim players onto team. A small victory over racism, but a victory nonetheless.  Even if it's a drop in the ocean, it's a pretty big drop: the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, symbol of Israeli racism at its rawest, has been integrated with Muslim players - and it was done, in a manner of speaking, over the dead bodies of the team's fascist youth movement, La Famiglia. The turning point came in the middle of the night last Thursday when arsonists torched…

On the Palestinian issue, the new leader of the Israeli center holds positions that take several steps back from ideas held by Israeli negotiators in the previous decade. The surprising success of Yair Lapid in the Israeli elections has led many people to believe that a new window of opportunity could be open for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Lapid himself had said before the elections that he will demand a resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Lapid did not, however, detail the policy principles which could reignite said negotiations. His party's platform – available…

Our post-election depression comes from being reminded that an end to tyranny and inevitable war is as distant as ever. It's time for new ideas - or old ideas that haven't been tried. Well, that was fun. And now it's over, and who really cares whether Yair Lapid becomes minister of this or minister of that; the twin elephants of tyranny over the Palestinians and the inevitability of war are still in the living room, and if anything, the country seems more determined than before to pretend they aren't there. For those who do see those elephants, there's a sense…

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave an interview on Friday night to Israeli Channel 2 in which he attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the latter's security spending and the way in which he approached a particular issue. Olmert didn’t say the word "Iran," but his message cannot be misunderstood: In the last two years we have spent more than 11 billion NIS (3 Billion USD) on security delusions that were not carried out and will not be carried out… it is a sum which is well beyond the multi-year budget […] Olmert added that he …believes that these moves will…

No matter what their beliefs about Palestinians’ aims and desires, the policy of Israel’s leaders does not accord with their stated support for a two-state solution or for a democratic and Jewish state. Following up on my post regarding the two-state solution (and some of the comments to that post), I would like to put forth a more general and formal version of my argument. Let’s say that you are stridently opposed to the idea of one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean - one that would be undemocratic, and based on the explicit, formal and institutionalized supremacy…

The party's new proposal effectively says the unsayable: that on the occupation, Israel is wrong and the Arabs are right. There are so many people out there, in Israel and overseas, who know that this country has gone wrong and that Netanyahu and the right are leading it to hell. Yet they end up giving their tacit support to the worsening status quo because they don't have the courage to follow their thoughts to their logical conclusion: that Israel is at fault for the occupation, and that the occupation is at fault for the conflict with the Palestinians. Not Israel…

Netanyahu didn't invent the E-1 dealbreaker that's got the world so mad at him; it goes back to Rabin and reflects overwhelming Israeli opinion. Except for right wingers, people look at the outrage over Bibi's revival of the E-1 plan, which would connect Jerusalem and the eastward Ma'aleh Adumim settlement with thousands of new homes, and say: Well, that's Bibi for you, picking fights for no good reason. Who needs more settlement construction? But if you ask them - "them" meaning all but the left-wing fringe among Israeli Jews and the country's supporters abroad - whether they're willing to give…

While commentators say the vote is merely symbolic, at least for Palestinians and the international community, the vote could be a game-changing  kind of symbol. One week ago, the request to the UN General Assembly to grant Palestine status as a non-member observer state looked like a poor stepchild of the highly anticipated first “UN route” just over one year ago. The buildup to September 2011 was long; yet until about a week ago, it wasn’t even clear whether the current vote would really happen. The 2011 application for UN membership turned into an anticlimax. This year, the dark-horse diplomacy…

Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni can win the January 22 election.  If there is one loser in the U.S. election outside the U.S., it is Benjamin Netanyahu - and all of Israel knows it. No one is fooled by his denials that he backed Romney and opposed Obama as demonstratively as he possibly could. The widespread conviction, now that Obama has won four more years in the White House, is that Bibi has endangered Israel's relationship with America in a way that is unprecedented in its recklessness. No Israeli prime minister ever took sides in a U.S. presidential election like…

Netanyahu called them a bluff, but Peres, Barak, Olmert and Livni called them 'brave.' With luck, they could be a catalyst for shaking things up around here.   To Israelis who genuinely support the two-state solution, Mahmoud Abbas' interview on Channel 2 last Friday was remarkably far-reaching and courageous, especially what he said about the right of return. Referring to Safed, the Galilee town his family and other Palestinian residents fled during the 1948 war, he said in English: It is my right to see it, but not to live there. This enraged Palestinians; thousands of Gazans protested and burned…

The reappearance of some veteran politicians on the scene had Netanyahu worried enough to merge with Lieberman. But while Bibi may be ensured another term, he will ultimately pay for the toll of his economic and political policies on Israelis and Palestinians. By Yacov Ben Efrat Benjamin Netanyahu's call for early elections initially evoked an instinctive response: Who needs this? The result of normal elections, scheduled for next fall, was predictable: Bibi could look forward to another four years as prime minister. He had split the Labor Party and pulverized his main rival, Kadima, dispersing its 29 mandates in all…