Dec 15
There is a growing expectation among analysts that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas could soon issue a decree to set up parliamentary and presidential elections in 2020.
A vote was last held for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) – the parliament of the PA in the occupied West Bank and Gaza – in 2006. Read more
Days in advance of Israel‘s second election in six months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political life.
The long-serving leader faces potential indictments in three corruption cases, while his right-wing Likud party has failed to open up a significant gap in the opinion polls ahead of its biggest rival, the Blue and White party, headed by former military chief Benny Gantz. Read more
Ahead of the Trump administration’s “economic workshop” in Bahrain, Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt recently acknowledged what many had already surmised: that the full unveiling of the US “peace plan” would be postponed once more, due to the pending Israeli elections.
“I think the logic would still dictate that if we wanted to wait until a new [Israeli] government is formed, we really do have to wait until potentially as late as November 6,” Greenblatt said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. Read more
The 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords has been marked with unsurprisingly downbeat coverage and talk of broken promises. Marginalised or neglected in much of the analysis, however, has been an honest appraisal of Israel’s own strategic considerations at the time.
First, from Israel’s point of view, Oslo was not about Palestinian statehood. Read more
If the Oslo Accords gave birth to a Palestinian Authority without authority, then Donald Trump’s “ultimate deal” looks set to offer the Palestinians a state without statehood.
The potential spoilers are the Palestinian people themselves. The protests over recent days are an indication of the potential impact of popular mobilisation, and its ability to undermine US – and Saudi – plans for an “ultimate deal” that will ride roughshod over inalienable Palestinian rights. Read more
It is easy enough to understand why an ambitious politician like Priti Patel would have wanted to court Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), described this week by The Jewish Chronicle’s reporter Marcus Dysch as “the biggest lobbying group in Westminster”.
But what about the Israeli government and its allies? Why, in the words of Israeli opposition politician Isaac Herzog, was Patel’s fall from grace a “great loss for Israel”?
True, she looked like future leadership material. But in fact, a more interesting answer lies in the story of how the Department for International Development (DFID) has become a key battle ground for Israel and its Westminster lobbyists, an arena for foreign policy by proxy. Read more
Last month saw yet another attack on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the body supporting Palestinian refugees in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and wider region.
“New UNRWA textbooks for Palestinians demonize Israel and Jews” ran the headline in The Jerusalem Post on 28 September, in a piece on a new “study” funded, carried out and published by the Los Angeles-headquartered Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the anti-Islam, Daniel Pipes-led Middle East Forum, and the Jerusalem-based Centre for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR).
There was one problem, however: almost 90 percent of the books cited are not being used in UNRWA schools. Read more
At an April conference in Washington DC held by the Middle East Policy Council, University of Pennsylvania-based political scientist Professor Ian Lustick had some strong criticism for what he described as “the continuous merry-go-round of American-orchestrated negotiations”.
After analysing the interests and roles played by, respectively, the Israeli government, the US government, and the Palestinian Authority, Lustick turned his attention to a “fourth player” – what he called “the peace process industry”. Read more
Before Donald Trump’s inauguration, it was a safe bet to assume that his administration’s approach to Israel and the Palestinians would either be one of relative neglect, or serve as a boost to the far-right Israeli nationalists who seek annexation of all or parts of the West Bank.
Either, of course, would spell trouble for the Palestinians. So far, and particularly after Trump’s meeting this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it would appear to be a combination of the two. Read more
It was a perfect microcosm of the Oslo peace process: Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, requesting permission from the Israeli military to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres. Read more
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