The effort to maintain the illusion that the Abraham Accords are anything other than a military and trade agreement between an apartheid state and brutal dictatorships is facing serious obstacles. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Qatar, during the World Cup. 

We are beginning to see how Israel’s next far-rightwing government will make things difficult for the White House through the de facto annexation of the West Bank. And the early indications from Joe Biden’s administration indicate a continuation of the weak responses that have characterized his policy toward Israel for decades.

In a surprising but welcome development, the United States’ Department of Justice has initiated an investigation into Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Almost immediately, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz declared that Israel would refuse to assist with the investigation.

Although it is unlikely the U.S. investigation will lead to meaningful accountability, Israel’s refusal to cooperate should raise questions about the US/Israeli relationship.

Control of Congress remains up in the air following the 2022 U.S. Midterm elections but the outcome still has some interesting implications for Palestine advocacy. 

Israel’s boosters across the political spectrum are panicking over the far-right’s victory in Israel’s election, and the reactions are telling. “We cannot remain silent knowing the enormous impact that the words and actions of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as senior ministers would have on the US-Israeli relationship,” writes Israel lobby stalwarts Dennis Ross and David Makovsky.

It is not Palestinians who seem most concerned about a major right-wing victory in Israeli elections next week, it is Israel’s liberal supporters in the United States. 

While Americans and Europeans chat and debate with each other about the nuances of Israeli politics and come up with all sorts of fanciful solutions to “the conflict,” the Israeli government tightens its grip on Palestinians and Palestinians become ever more frustrated, eager for action, and impatient with their leadership and with a world that keeps telling them the time is not yet “ripe” for their rights to be realized. 

Perhaps that is why we are seeing such widespread support for armed resistance. Perhaps it’s simply a response to Israel escalating an already violent policy of apartheid. In any case, armed action seems to be moving into a more prominent role in Palestinian resistance and it will be important for supporters of Palestinian rights to be ready to defend those actions wherever we can.

A new program in New York City to combat anti-Zionism in the Jewish community will fail because Zionism is not a liberal movement.

The growing awareness of Israeli apartheid is leading Israel and its supporters to double down on draconian tactics to silence the truth.

For Democrats in the United States and the political “centrists” in Israel—represented by Joe Biden and Yair Lapid, respectively—the loss of credibility for the two-state solution has meant losing more and more support for Israeli policies. This helps explain the theater we have witnessed in recent days at the United Nations General Assembly and in the American media scene, where the lone Palestinian woman ever elected to Congress has come under unrelenting attack from her own party as well as the opposition.