Just days ahead of Netanyahu-Obama meeting, builders start 20 Jewish homes in east Jerusalem
by Ronen Medzini
Construction in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah began
Sunday, just a few days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was
scheduled to meet with the US president.
YNET: "Peace Now denounces King's Garden plan in Jerusalem"
Jerusalem Post: "Peace Now urges longer settlement freeze"
AFP: "Settlers 'building in West Bank despite freeze'"
AFP: "Israel's Likud to back West Bank settlement growth"
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Americans for Peace Now welcomed what it said were
improvements to an Iran sanctions bill, but still opposed the proposed
law.
"Positive changes to the bill, which APN had called for, include the
addition of significant waiver authorities for the President throughout
the bill, even if in many cases that authority is highly
circumscribed," the group said. "These waivers are critical to giving
the President at least the minimally necessary flexibility in his
conduct of U.S. foreign policy, in particular vis-a-vis the critical
challenge posed by Iran."
by Hagit Ofran
Director, Settlement Watch project of the Israeli Peace Now movement
&
Lara Friedman
Director, Policy and Government Relations, Americans for Peace Now
While all eyes are focused these days on Gaza, around the corner awaits
another huge challenge to nascent peace efforts: the September 26th
expiration of the settlement moratorium.
Addressing criticism of the demonstration on June 6, Yariv writes:
All...agreed to say fully
that the demonstration was not a demonstration of hatred for the State
of Israel or the IDF but, rather, was a
demonstration that focused on the profound fear as to the place to
which the government was leading the State of Israel.
The root of this disaster lies in the failure of the policy, initiated
by Israel after Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 and supported by the
international community, to block the free movement of goods and people
in and out of Gaza.
