Current Issue

Michal Radoshitzky

In reading Israeli newspapers’ special Yom Ha’atzmaut editions, one could not miss the contrast between nostalgic accounts of Israel’s miraculous achievements in its history and the sober reality in which Israeli society is submerged today. Reading the words of leading Israeli commentators reinforced my understanding that my society is very much aware of the fact that we are destined to live on the same stretch of land with our Palestinian neighbors. Neither they nor we have any plans of setting up a home for ourselves elsewhere. Simultaneously however, we Israelis see the democratic character of our state as crucial. We also envision Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people – a state with a Jewish majority that treats its minorities as equal citizens.

By Ralph Seliger:

 

After a year and a half of planning and preparation, “J Street,” a new progressive Jewish lobby, was launched in the middle of April as a counterweight to the increasingly conservative American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). There is no physical J Street in Washington, DC, but the name conjures up K Street, the actual hub for lobbying on Capitol Hill.

... Click here for the Meretz USA Weblog interview with Jeremy Ben-Ami.

Dr. Herbert C. Kelman

There are good reasons to be skeptical – even cynical – about the outcome of the Annapolis Conference and pessimistic about the prospects of achieving a negotiated agreement by the end of this year. Yet, granting the vagueness of the commitments made in Annapolis and the discouraging effect of subsequent actions on the ground that have undermined the peace process, the conference has opened up the best opportunity since the failure of the Camp David summit for a return to a serious negotiation of a final agreement on a two-state solution. ...

... Public opinion on both sides is characterized by the anomaly that majorities support a two-state solution, but are not ready to give wholehearted support to negotiations because of profound distrust in the ultimate intentions of the other side. I propose that, to energize public opinion toward final-status negotiations at this point, it is necessary to go beyond pragmatism – essential though that continues to be to shaping the terms of a final agreement – and adopt a visionary approach, transcending the balance of power and the calculus of bargaining concessions. The leaderships will have to come to recognize that ... each can achieve the needed acknowledgments, commitments and concessions from the other only by offering such acknowledgments, commitments and concessions to the other. ...

Aaron Ahuvia, Ph.D.

How can advocates for a two-state solution win the debate within the American Jewish community? To a large extent, we already have. In February 2008, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella agency representing 14 national Jewish groups and 125 local Jewish community relations councils, voted that “the organized American Jewish community should affirm its support for two independent, democratic and economically viable states – the Jewish state of Israel and a state of Palestine – living side-by-side in peace and security.

"Only one Orthodox affiliate objected and even that only abstained. We’ve come a long way from the time that advocating this view could get one branded as a self-hating Jew, but the debate isn’t truly over yet. ...

Rebecca Manski

As a child in Israel, I often heard the lament: “If the Palestinians had simply accepted Israeli citizenship, this conflict would never have occurred.” When I returned 15 years later, I heard many Israelis say of the Arabs who did in fact accept Israeli citizenship: “If they only served the country as we do, in the military, we would feel better about providing them with services.” Yet the experience of the Negev Bedouin, people who embraced Israeli citizenship and until recently, generally served in the army, shows that this is not the case. ...

Thomas Mitchell, Ph.D.
The Much Too Promised Land by Aaron D. Miller, Bantam, 2008, 385 pp., $26.

Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East  Edited by Daniel C. Kurtzer and Scott B. Lasensky, the US Institute of Peace, 2008, 190 pp., $16 (paperback).

The first ... lesson is that the US is indispensable to progress in the Middle East peace process.

Miller argues that successful Middle East diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict .... would have to employ the deviousness of Kissinger, the missionary focus and attention to detail of Carter, and the ruthlessness of Baker.

Uri Avnery                  

Uri Avnery is a leader of the radical Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom. He was a Palmach (Hagana strike force) veteran of the 1948 war and disputes some conclusions of radical critics of Israel. Click here for online version.

By Ron Skolnik

 

Israel at 60– despite the shortcomings that still need to be addressed–is a cause for celebration. ...

Israel at 120 will be a nation that lives up to the promises made in its Declaration of Independence: ‘complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants....’

... Israel is neither a divine creation nor satanic scheme. It is a society, a home that can become  better....

Click here for online version.