Two-state solution and Middle East peace: It is past time to move to a different model
Fifteen years ago, I moved to Palestine with the hope that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations process will one day bring peace to the Middle East through the creation of an independent Palestine, free from the vestiges of Israeli colonial and military rule. As an adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, I spent more than six years working to achieve a “two-state” solution. After countless negotiation sessions and scores of proposals, my optimism transformed into realism: Despite years of negotiations, I saw that the Palestinians had moved further from their quest for their rights and freedom than they had before the negotiations began.
Expert Q&A: On the Obama-Netanyahu Meeting & the Crisis in Palestine-Israel
Al-Shabaka advisors Samah Sabawi and Tareq Baconi, and Executive Director Nadia Hijab take part in an expert roundtable Q&A on this week’s meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ongoing crisis in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel.
Palestinian Political Activism Could Push Toward a One-state Solution
Most Israelis seemed nonchalant about the recent Knesset election, held last March. The outcome was totally expected. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reelected and the overall political pendulum moved even further to the right. But one dynamic produced some shock and awe in the Israeli political system: For the first time ever, a political alliance of four Palestinian-dominated parties in Israel – Hadash, the United Arab List, Balad and Ta’al – joined forces in a Joint Arab List and became the third-largest faction in the 20th Knesset.
Palestinians ‘have become unreasonably reasonable’
Like “terrorism,” “incitement” is a word that works great in conflict zones because it means everything and nothing at the same time. However, its misuse as a justification to perpetrate blatant human rights violations and maintain an illegal state of affairs that contributes to conflict being fanned, not diffused.
What Americans Don’t Know About the Middle East and Why
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows better than anyone else that if we Palestinians are permitted to engage non-violently, odds are we will expose Israel’s military occupation for what it is, a system of modern-day apartheid or worse. This is why, following his March election victory, Netanyahu assembled an extreme right-wing cabinet that would work to ensure that Palestinians were provoked to the point of turning violent.
Why Palestinians Need an International Protection Force
It will ensure that lives are placed above politics, and defend a besieged population nearing its 50th year under brutal occupation.
Gas Politics in Gaza
At the end of the summer, the Italian energy giant Eni discovered one of the largest gas reserves in the Mediterranean. Just off Egyptian shores sits Zohr, a gas field with a staggering 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. As Egypt celebrated the good news, Israel panicked about the implications of the discovery on its much-touted Leviathan gas field, which was discovered in December 2010. It was a “painful wake-up call,” the Israeli energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, said.
Palestinians must not fall into this trap, again!
The lid on the powder keg of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, has been rattling for years now. Palestinians from all walks of life have lost their voices making the case that Israel’s right-wing government – with its numerous cabinet ministers living in illegal settlements and its fundamentalist prime minister – is pursuing policies bound to lead to exactly what we are witnessing today, violence.
Too few listened.
Reasons for the most recent protests are clear: Palestinians are fed up
This week Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians, including a 13-year-old child, in protests across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces maimed and wounded 800 additional Palestinians. Yet despite the deaths of these Palestinians, and the others that preceded them this year, talk of a “third intifada” only began in the international media with the killing of four Israeli colonists.
Ignored, of course, are that popular protests against Israel’s occupation have been ongoing throughout Palestine for years. No, for Israelis and for the international media, an uprising only begins when blood is shed, particularly Jewish Israeli blood.
