I have some great news to share: Peace Now - our sister organization in Israel - has succeeded in forcing the Israeli government to impose the rule of law and evacuate Migron, the largest illegal outpost in the West Bank. Yesterday, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected the latest effort by settlers to prevent the outpost's evacuation, ruling that the outpost must be evacuated by next Tuesday, September 4th.
Washington - Yesterday, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected the latest effort by settlers from the illegal outpost of Migron to prevent the outpost's evacuation. The Court ruled that the outpost must be evacuated by next Tuesday, September 4th.
Justices accept state's position regarding some structures, says those homes remain up until three months, until the veracity of the purchasers claims can determined.
Alpher discusses Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's motives for apparently declaring war on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and his view regarding if and when Israel should take the military initiative on Iran revisiting his set of criteria for determining whether it was wise for Israel to attack Iran's nuclear project.
Yossi Alpher is an internationally renowned consultant and writer on Israel-related security issues. He served as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces, a senior officer in the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, and as director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Prior to and during the Oslo peace process, Alpher coordinated several track II dialogues between Israelis and Arabs. He served as Special Adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the Camp David talks in July 2000.
"Why don't you come spend Shabbat with us on our settlement, come to the
synagogue and see for yourself that we don't have horns and there is no
occupation?" I get such an invitation practically word for word every
few months from settlers who wish to present the appearance of a
normative, moral and virtuous community beyond the Green Line.Q. ...how can Netanyahu
emerge from this showdown with the United States and his own security
establishment (on his approach to Iran) without losing face?
Tell Obama: Don't Be Pressured Into War with Iran
With the 2012 election season in high gear, Iran hawks in both parties and their Israeli counterparts, including Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak, are pressing for war.
Washington, DC - Today Americans for Peace Now (APN) sent a letter to President Obama calling on the president to continue to resist election season pressures to abandon Iran diplomacy in favor of military action. The letter was signed by APN Chairman James Klutznick and APN President and CEO Debra DeLee.
Dear President Obama,
With the 2012 election season in high gear, we know that you are under increasing pressure to launch a war against Iran. We are writing to tell you that Americans for Peace Now (APN) - a proud American, Jewish organization whose mission includes supporting Israel and Israel's security - believes that such a decision is too important to be turned into election season political football. We urge you to remain committed to the responsible course of diplomacy, backed by sanctions, that is the centerpiece of your current policy.
August 21, 11:00 AM (EST)
Israeli officials may see a "zero hour" for attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, but it could backfire.
by Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs
(p. B4) by Ofer Petersburg 
Alpher discusses the controversy within Israel and between it and the Obama administration regarding the wisdom and timing of an attack on Iran: what would Israel gain? What would be the downside? Why are Netanyahu and Barak having so much difficulty in persuading the Israeli public that Israel should do the job, and soon, Why the Israeli civilian rear is such an important factor in Israeli calculations when it wasn't in the past, the odds of an early Israeli attack, and the strategic implications of Morsi's dramatic subordination of the Egyptian military to his authority.
Israel will return home with no Olympic medal for the first time in two decades and Egypt prepares for an attack in Sinai making top stories in Hebrew papers this morning. Iran will be turning off its internet and Morocco hosted an Israeli delegation - along with an highly unusual meeting...
read moreIsraeli settlement of the West Bank is untenable, and framing it as inevitable just makes matters worse.
By Elia Leibowitz
In honor of the Ninth of Av, my friend Yossi Sarid wrote a lamentation for the State of Israel. He included excerpts of the writings of another intellectual, Meron Benvenisti, who preceded Sarid in making gloomy predictions about Israel's future. Indeed, Israel of 2012 should be the subject of regret, as in "Weep sore for him who goes away" (Jeremiah 22:10). In this case, the ones going away are the passengers aboard the modern-day Titanic, better known as Israel, whose captains do not see the iceberg ahead if they stay on course. While the gloomy mood and sorrow in Sarid's essay are fully justified, his lamentation is based on two mistaken theories.
read more at Haaretz
Alpher discusses whether the terrorist incident in the Sinai on Sunday with the Egyptian soldiers is an internationally significant event, comments on Dani Dayan's opinion piece in the New York Times, and the dissonance between Netanyahu's government's policies and his quiet agreement with the Palestinian Authority to improve the PA's economic situation through more efficient cooperation.
Last month saw an assault in Congress on Palestinian refugees--an effort to use legislation to re-define the Palestinian refugee issue out of existence. This week the other shoe dropped, when a bipartisan group of members of Congress introduced a new bill embracing the cause of "Jewish refugees from Arab countries" in a way that Congress has never replicated on the Palestinian side (for more info, see this list of all bills/resolutions dealing with Palestinian and/or Jewish refugees since 1989).
read more at the Daily Beast's Open ZionOn August 2nd, 2012, Yedioth Ahronoth (Hebrew print edition) published a powerful article looking at the financial bonus that settlements enjoy compared to areas inside the Green Line. The article comes on the heels of Peace Now's publication of an analysis of the budget and a plan to save billions by reducing some benefits to settlements.
The translation is by Israel News Today (INT).
Bonus for Settlements: NIS 1,059,988,790
Yedioth Ahronoth (p. 4) by Gad Lior and Yuval Karni -- While the middle class is bowing under the weight of rising taxes and an expected cutback in the budget of the government ministries, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was asked about the special budgets transferred every year to the settlements. "These are negligible amounts," Netanyahu said, "it's a drop in the ocean." But an examination of the data shows that the amount in question reaches over NIS 1 billion per year--hardly a "negligible" amount.
By Thomas L. Friedman
I'll make this quick. I have one question and one observation about Mitt Romney's visit to Israel. The question is this: Since the whole trip was not about learning anything but about how to satisfy the political whims of the right-wing, super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why didn't they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas? I mean, it was all about money anyway -- how much Romney would abase himself by saying whatever the Israeli right wanted to hear and how big a jackpot of donations Adelson would shower on the Romney campaign in return. Really, Vegas would have been so much more appropriate than Jerusalem. They could have constructed a plastic Wailing Wall and saved so much on gas.
read more
