palestine

Contrary to nearly a year of stern insistence from the Obama administration that Israel refrain from all growth in occupied Palestinian territory — an insistence that frayed with a recent comment by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the administration has tried to walk back — Israel has announced the construction of 900 new [...]

I said in an earlier post on the Obama administration and the Goldstone commission that Hamas might “benefit if next year’s scheduled elections go forward.” That was poorly phrased. What I meant was that Hamas stands to benefit from the weakening of more moderate factions. Because, as George Washington University’s Nathan Brown emailed me, I [...]

As if to underscore the point made in this post, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he won’t run for reelection. Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian emissaries are trying to get him to change his mind.

Missing from this otherwise-very good Washington Post piece about the Obama administration’s early and serious missteps on restarting Israel/Palestine peace talks is, unfortunately, the Goldstone commission on Gaza, which is relegated to a single sentence. This is the capsule version: Obama feared that Israel would freak out and foreclose on any peace talks if U.N. [...]

After receiving a letter from Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who investigated Israeli and Hamas war crimes in Gaza, to dispute an impending bipartisan House resolution denouncing his report, staffers for Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) are “conferring” with staffers for bill co-sponsor Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s (R-Fla.). “Chairman Berman is studying Judge Goldstone’s letter,” Berman [...]

TWI has acquired the text of a congressional resolution that may be introduced in the next few days condemning the findings of U.N. investigator Richard Goldstone’s report into war crimes during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza this past winter.
The resolution — drafted by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Dan Burton (R-Ind.), Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) and [...]

Obama seeks to cultivate ties with groups within the American Jewish and Arab-American communities to support a two-state solution.

I’m at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, where at 1 p.m., retired Gen. Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, will deliver a keynote speech on the administration’s approach to peacemaking in the Middle East to the first annual conference assembled by J Street, the year-old pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby. He’ll be part of a panel [...]

Laura Rozen goes through the tea leaves:
“We solved the matter of the settlements with the Americans,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Israeli daily Haaretz cites Zapatero.
“I cannot say more than that. If you are interested in hearing more details, ask in Washington,” Netanyahu added.
Oh really?

The AP has obtained a memo written by the non-Hamas wing of the Palestinian national movement:
“All hopes placed in the new U.S. administration and President Obama have evaporated,” said the document issued by Fatah’s Office of Mobilization and Organization. The department is headed Fatah’s No. 2, Mohammed Ghneim.