Survey finds that majority of Jewish Israelis think the country should unilaterally determine its borders along the route of the West Bank separation barrier. One-third support either annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians civil rights, or perpetuating the status quo -- both of which are apartheid. According to a poll* released Sunday, a majority of Jewish Israelis (57 percent) believe Israel should determine its borders unilaterally according to the current route of the separation wall, which cuts deep into the West Bank, winding through Palestinian land well east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (Green Line). This confirms that 1) Israelis…

Rabbi Dov Lipman is soft-spoken and not even 41 years old, but has seen his share of action on the battleground of Israeli society. He's taken verbal beatings and sustained physical injury. He's won praise and publicity, and drawn fire too, for his tireless struggle against religious extremists literally next door. Lipman is a Haredi-ordained educator (Haredi = ultra-Orthodox), and a religious Zionist with a liberal bent – a rare bird in these parts. His main political arena is his home, the city of Beit Shemesh not far from Jerusalem, with its growing Haredi population. This year, Beit Shemesh became…

Mitt Romney sparked controversy during his visit to Jerusalem last week, thanks to a series of comments he made about Jews and Palestinians. Naturally, his comments about Palestinian culture being inferior to Jewish culture, and God's unfavorable bias against Palestinians, angered many Palestinians, who are worried that Romney could win the election. However, does that make Romney the preferred candidate for Jews or Israelis?  In this video produced by Bloggingheads.com, Matt Duss from the Center for American Progress and I discussed Romney's visit to Jerusalem and its consequences, the U.S administration's policies in the region, and the viability of the two-state solution. Related posts:…

This post was originally published on Peter Beinart's Open Zion blog (@ The Daily Beast), as part of a debate regarding the fate of the two-state solution. This piece by Jerry Haber, on the same issue, is worth reading as well. And if you have the stomach for it, here is rightwing MK Danny Danon (Likud), who wants to annex most of the West Bank without giving the Palestinians voting rights. _______________ In the wake of a unity deal between the Likud and Kadima, which resulted in one of Israel's largest coalitions in history, some claimed that there is a chance…

South Sudan joins the family of nations amid rising tensions with its neighbor to the north. While Israel has diplomatic and military interests in the new country, it is treading carefully for now It is not often one gets to start a sentence about the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with the words “to his credit.” But it is definitely worth noting that despite his original insistence that the South would never secede, on Saturday he will be among the honored guests in Juba as South Sudan officially declares itself as an independent country. Perhaps even more notable, Bashir’s government in…

When I was growing up, my father served as one of Yitzhak Rabin's chief advisers. This being the case, I learned to think of the two-state-solution to the question of this country as unquestionable. In the early 1980's the discourse common around the house involved "returning the territories"  to Jordan and Egypt, of which Israel conquered them in 1967. With time, however, my parents' consciousness of Palestinian realities grew, as well as their understanding that Jordan and Egypt didn't necessarily want the territories back. The idea of giving the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians themselves was accepted and…

Lara Friedman, director of policy and government relations for Americans for Peace Now (APN), writes in the forward against even talking about the one-state solution: Anti-Zionists and some post-Zionists imagine a Palestinian-majority, secular, democratic state; some Israeli right-wingers envision Israel annexing the West Bank, using ploys to disenfranchise its Palestinian residents and finally getting rid of Gaza. (…) Those of us who care about the future of Israel and the Palestinians should be doing everything we can to capitalize on this realism and to realize the two-state solution, before the opportunity is truly lost. And we should be pushing back…

Haaretz published my report on the growing support for what seems like a one-state solution in the Israeli Right. “The prospects of the negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas do not look promising. President Obama undoubtedly thinks otherwise, but if Abbas speaks for anyone, it’s barely half the Palestinians. The chances of anything good coming of this are not great. Another possibility is Jordan. If Jordan were ready to absorb both more territories and more people, things would be much easier and more natural. But Jordan does not agree to this. Therefore, I say that we can look at another option: for…