On February 5, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Seven years after the 2014 Gaza conflict, in which war crimes were committed by both Israel and armed Palestinian groups according to the United...
Despite the breakdown in peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, both sides must continue to talk. Failure by the Israelis and Palestinians to even reach a framework accord came as no surprise. Observers and pundits around the world — notably most vociferously in the Middle East...
Settlements and recognizing Israel as a Jewish state are symbolic of the distrust between Israelis and Palestinians. The older of these two challenges resurfaced only recently in the now “suspended” negotiations between the two sides but, in fact, has been at the core of Israeli aspirations...
The one-state solution is the only way forward for Palestinians and Israelis. The metastasis of Jewish colonies in Palestine has reinforced the argument that there will never be a Palestinian state. Now, there are approximately 600,000 colonists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the...
Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory are one of the most crucial issues in the conflict. Background Immigration, population transfer and the control of land have been core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the arrival of the first Zionist settlers in the late 1800s....
Failure to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement could be catastrophic. In April 2013, US Secretary of State John Kerry made clear his opinion on the necessity of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, elucidating his dedication to the current negotiations. He...
Circumstances for reaching peace are significantly more complicated than ever. In fact, the environment today may be the worst in the entire history of the 65-year conflict, and certainly more so than the high-water mark of the 1993 Oslo Accords or even the ill-fated 2007-2008 negotiations between...
Josef Olmert looks back at the life of one of Israel’s most important leaders. A famous Zionist poet, Saul Tschernichovsky (1875-1943), wrote in one of his songs that "the human being is a reflection of his childhood landscape." If there was one Israeli leader of recent time whose life story...
An orthodox American-Persian Jew discovers that the road to peace is paved with rice and opera. This is the last of a two part series. Read part one here. From the old city’s Damascus gate, Eitan, Samuel, a Dutch anthropology student and I tread through the strange faces and smells of a...
Does Hamas hold a unified position on the use of violence for resistance? A crucial player in the conundrum that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hamas has always been a controversial actor. It was founded in 1987 by late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in...
