Eric Alterman shows real courage in saying that the Bowman-Engel race in NY was liberalism versus Zionism and liberalism won. And that’s a wakeup call to Jews who thought the two belief systems are compatible.
The PA has lost its trust within the Palestinian community, and the international community is either silent with regards to annexation or complicit. The best chance to stop annexation is through opposition from within Israel led by the Joint List, which can truly bring it to a halt.
12 Senate Democrats have introduced legislation that would prohibit Israel from using U.S. military aid to annex portions of the West Bank.
Annexation will require that Israel update, change, adapt, or reaffirm decrees, laws, and military orders that have governed how the occupying power administers the territory and its inhabitants. Jonathan Kuttab discusses how these changes will impact the legal status of Israeli settlers, and the Palestinians that live in the areas that are annexed.
European opposition to Israeli annexation plans mean nothing to Trump or Israel because Europe hasn’t articulated “a single concrete sanction,” says Lara Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. And Democratic opposition to annexation is just as “soft,” she says, and therefore if you hope that annexation can be turned back, “hope would be deeply, deeply misplaced.”
The virus has come back to the West Bank and Gaza with a vengeance. Over 24 hours 272 new cases of the virus have been confirmed in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu will go forward with annexation once he sorts out the battle over its dimensions within the rightwing Israeli camp. Then he will unleash Sheldon Adelson to bring it to the White House and any thought Jared Kushner will stop it — do you believe Alice in Wonderland? The insights of Daniel Levy of the Middle East Project.
Raja Shehadeh writes, It is not the business of Colum McCann in his novel “Apeirogon” to provide political solutions of the conflict. He highlights in an artistic fashion that is highly moving, the humanity of two individuals, the Israeli father who has lost a child just as he does the Palestinian father’s loss. How can we take offence about this?
Over the last week cases of COVID-19 have surged in Israel and the West Bank, prompting both governments to resume lock down measures in efforts to curb the second wave.
Historian Susan Reverby’s riveting biography of Alan Berkman is a magnificent book. Berkman was imprisoned in the 60s, convicted for his political work in the underground as a leader of an offshoot of the Weather Underground. On regaining his freedom he devoted his life to public health and helping those the system abandoned.