This is what an Israeli newspaper claimed. The truth is more nuanced, and sheds light on how difficult it is for international actors to accept Israel's demands According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the Spanish foreign minister outlined a new policy in her speech to the UN General Assembly last week. The headline chosen by the newspaper was "Spain recognizes Israel as Jewish homeland". According to the article's text, the Spanish minister also argued that "the issue of Palestinian refugees should be solved in such a way that it does not compromise Israel’s current demographic makeup of a Jewish majority."…

The idea that the tough choice about settlers can somehow be waved away through the magic wand of land swaps is a fantasy. Any solution that will leave most settlers in place (in one state, or two states) will be just a perpetuation of the conflict under another title. Following the uproar in the United States and Israel about his comments regarding 1967 borders, Obama, in his speech to AIPAC last week, stated … since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means. By definition, it means that the parties…

By Mahdi Sabbagh Following the inspiring yet tragic events of May 15th, when many Palestinians in various countries demonstrated to mark Nakba Day, and the general build-up to that day, I have been attempting to make sense of the protests, Israel’s brutal response and the political connotations and media craze that followed; not so much from an ‘international relations’ political perspective but from a cultural-political perspective. The following reflection centers on the internal narratives and realities of the Palestinian people. It does not address the relationship between the Palestinian and the Israeli narrative; which would be a constructive exercise for…

By Eliaz Cohen | Translation: Dimi Reider The story of the return of the descendants of the members of Kfar Etzion, a Jewish kibbutz destroyed in the war of 1948, can offer a healing model to the conflict between the two nations in this one country. For over sixty years, Israel’s independence and Palestine’s Nakba have been marked simultaneously and seen as intertwined; and for over forty years, the consciousness of “liberation and return” and the consciousness of “occupation and dispossession” tussled between them for the right to describe and define the result of the Six Day War.  As someone…

A year and a half into Benjamin Netanyahu’s second term, it’s clear that no matter what the Palestinians do or say, this Israeli PM will not sign a final agreement. I don’t think that even the US administration can change that. At most, it could ignite a process that the next government can carry on; much in the way President Bush forced PM Yitzhak Shamir into the Madrid conference. Every Israeli leader is more likely to prefer the statues quo to concessions on the Palestinian issue (I explained why here). But in Netanyahu’s case, stalling the process doesn’t seem to be…