Tzipi Livni | The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’s Two-State Solution – The New York Times

“TEL AVIV — The first meetings of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority back in 2007 were very emotional.

Each of us — I, as Israel’s chief negotiator, and Ahmed Qurei, known as Abu Ala, the former Palestinian prime minister — tried to convince the other who has more rights to the land: the Jewish people or the Palestinians.

Unsurprisingly, we left these sessions frustrated and unconvinced. After two such meetings, we agreed that these discussions would lead us nowhere and that any peace agreement would not determine which narrative prevailed, and instead we should focus only on how to establish a peaceful future.

The argument over historical narratives hasn’t changed. It won’t. Those on both sides that insist on forcing their narrative on the other side, or turning the conflict into a religious war, cannot make the compromises needed for peace. This is true also for those from the international community supporting one side and denying the rights of the other. This is destructive and only strengthens extremists.

Peace based on the vision of two states for two peoples gives an answer to the national aspirations of both the Jewish people and the Palestinians and requires compromises by both.

The solution of a Jewish state and an Arab state has actually existed for some 75 years. It was laid out by the United Nations in 1947 as a just solution to the conflict between Jews (including my own parents) and Arabs who already lived between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  . . . “

Thomas Friedman | On Israel-Palestine, Biden Must Revive a Two-State Solution – The New York Times

“. . .  Therefore, I hope that when the secretary of state, Tony Blinken, meets with Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week, he conveys a very clear message: “From this day forward, we will be treating the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank as a Palestinian state in the making, and we will be taking a series of diplomatic steps to concretize Palestinian statehood in order to preserve the viability of a two-state solution. We respect both of your concerns, but we are determined to move forward because the preservation of a two-state solution now is not only about your national security interests; it is about our national security interests in the Middle East. And it is about the political future of the centrist faction of the Democratic Party. So we all need to get this right.’’

For starters, Biden should reshape U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian relations by opening a diplomatic mission to the P.A. — as the nascent Palestinian state government — near its headquarters in Ramallah. At the same time, he should invite the P.A. to send a diplomatic representative to Washington as the would-be ambassador of a future Palestinian state.    . . . “

David Lindsay Jr.Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:

Thank you Thomas Friedman. Sounds like a plan, and it just might, help starve the beast, which would be Hamas for the Palestinians, and Netanyahu and the right wing pro settler parties of Israel. I support these proposals as reasonable ideas, though I do not think the US should pay for it all. We no longer need the oil of the middle east. What we need is to focus ourselves and the world on combatting climate change and the sixth extinction, which are threats to all humans and non humans alike. World popuation grew from 2 to 7.8 billion in the last 90 years. All our foreign aid should be part of a larger war on overpopulation and climate changing pollution from fossil fuels.

Why Did the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Explode Now? – The New York Times

By Patrick Kingsley

Published May 15, 2021Updated May 18, 2021

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“JERUSALEM — Twenty-seven days before the first rocket was fired from Gaza this week, a squad of Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brushed the Palestinian attendants aside and strode across its vast limestone courtyard. Then they cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful from four medieval minarets.

It was the night of April 13, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was also Memorial Day in Israel, which honors those who died fighting for the country. The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out.

The incident was confirmed by six mosque officials, three of whom witnessed it; the Israeli police declined to comment. In the outside world, it barely registered.  . . . “

Bret Stephens | For the Sake of Peace, Israel Must Rout Hamas – The New York Times

By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

“As of this writing, terrorists in Gaza — the word “terrorist” fits people who take indiscriminate aim at civilians to achieve political goals — have fired some 1,750 rockets at Israel since Monday.

That’s a number worth pausing over, and not just because it has had the effect of overwhelming Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense. Gaza is often said to be sealed off and utterly destitute. Yet Hamas, which rules Gaza, seems not to have had too much trouble amassing this kind of arsenal, or too many qualms employing it in a way it knew was sure to incur a heavy Israeli response.

The usual rule in life is that if you throw the first punch you can’t complain if you’re counterpunched. The test of Western policy and public opinion is whether they will let Hamas break this rule.

That’s a test the Biden administration has so far passed: Both the president and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have issued statements stressing that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Good. It’s more than can be said for progressives such as Bernie Sanders, who blamed “the irresponsible actions of government-allied right-wing extremists in Jerusalem” for the fighting without adding a word of condemnation for Hamas.

Now let’s hope the administration’s attitude lasts. The tactics of Hamas are to house its arsenals in schools and mosques, set up headquarters in the basement of hospitals and fire its missiles from sites next to crowded apartment buildings and hotels housing foreign journalists.

The idea is either to keep Israel from returning fire or, if it does, reap the propaganda benefits from televised and tweeted pictures of wrecked buildings and human casualties and “disproportionate” Israeli-Palestinian death counts that obscure the fact that one side is doing what it can to protect civilian lives and the other side is doing what it can to endanger them.

The cynicism is breathtaking. It ought to be widely condemned as a form of terrorism against ordinary Palestinians, whose visible suffering is as central to Hamas’s global purposes as is the suffering of Israeli civilians to its domestic purposes. But if past experience is anything to go by, an errant Israeli mortar or missile will mistakenly hit a civilian target, generating furious claims that Israel has committed war crimes, along with intense diplomatic pressure for Jerusalem to “de-escalate” and seek a cease-fire — at least until the next round of fighting.

In that case, the result would be a political victory for Hamas, achieved not only at a heavy price in Palestinian lives but also at the expense of Palestinian moderates, who’d look like weaklings or fools for opposing the strategy of violent “resistance.”   . . . “

David Lindsay:

Dear Bret, Thiscolumn is brilliant. You completely convinced me that the current form of Hamas leaves no room for peace. I think it was Thomas Friedman who taught me to see that Netanyahu sought and started the war with Hamas, to stop a new more moderate coalition in Israel from coming to power, that included the four Arab members of the Knesset. I would like to see you put forward your ideas for how to make peace. It seems to me that such ideas will make any writer appear stupid. We need both a two state solution, and equal rights for all Palestinians inside of Israel, both built on the grave of Hamas, as it is currently constituted, and many stolen properties, will have to be given back to Palestinians. Ultimately, there will have to be one country, since there is so little land, and it should be called something like, Israel and Palestine, or Palestine and Israel. Both peoples will have to live in peace and share equal rights. Is this totally naive. There are majorities on both sides that want peace instead of war. Neither of these majorities are currently in power.

Bret Stephens | If the Left Got Its Wish for Israel – The New York Times

By Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

“Imagine an alternative universe in which an enlightened Israeli government did almost everything progressive America demanded of it.

An immediate cessation of hostilities in Gaza. An end to Israeli controls over the movement of goods into the territory. A halt to settlement construction in the West Bank. Renunciation of Israel’s sovereign claims in East Jerusalem. Fast-track negotiations for Palestinian statehood, with the goal of restoring the June 4, 1967, lines as an internationally recognized border.

Oslo would be placing phone calls to Jerusalem and Ramallah in October, to bestow the Nobel Peace Prize on the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Arab states such as Saudi Arabia would establish formal diplomatic relations with Israel. The international community would agree on a multibillion-dollar aid package for the new state of Palestine.

But there would be flies in this ointment.   . . . “

David Lindsay Jr.Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:

Dear Bret,

Your column before this one was brilliant. You completely convinced me that the current form of Hamas leaves no room for peace. You taught me to see that Netanyahu sought and started the war with Hamas, to stop a new more moderate coalition in Israel from coming to power, that included the 4 Arab members of the Knesset. There are many issues with this next essay today. Please read carefully the comment about your wrong assumptions. I will add to that list, your first wrong assumption, when you started, imagine that Israel gave in to all the demands of the progressive Democratics. It is so incorrect to think that all progressives think only one way about most anything. You are an easy target to pick on, if bullying is what people are about. I did notice that inside your foolish assumptons, you still made good arguments in this very essay I am criticizing. Instead of re-editing it, I would like to see you put forward, as others here request, your ideas for how to make peace. It seems to me that such ideas will make any writer appear stupid. We need both a two state solution, and equal rights for all Palestinians inside of Israel, both built on the grave of Hamas, as it is currently constituted, and many stolen properties, will have to be given back to Palestinians.

Thomas L. Friedman | For Trump, Hamas and Bibi, It Is Always Jan. 6 – The New York Times

By Thomas L. Friedman

Opinion Columnist

“There are many ways to understand what is happening today between Hamas and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, but I prefer to think about it like this: They are each having their own Jan. 6 moment.

Just as a mob was unleashed by President Donald Trump to ransack our Capitol on Jan. 6 in a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results and prevent a healing unifier from becoming president, so Bibi and Hamas each exploited or nurtured their own mobs to prevent an unprecedented national unity government from emerging in Israel — a cabinet that for the first time would have included Israeli Jews and Israeli Arab Muslims together.

Like Trump, both Bibi and Hamas have kept power by inspiring and riding waves of hostility to “the other.” They turn to this tactic anytime they are in political trouble. Indeed, they each have been the other’s most valuable partner in that tactic ever since Netanyahu was first elected prime minister in 1996 — on the back of a wave of Hamas suicide bombings.

No, Hamas and Bibi don’t talk. They don’t need to. They each understand what the other needs to stay in power and consciously or unconsciously behave in ways to ensure that they deliver it.

Peter Beinart | Palestinian Refugees Deserve to Return Home. Jews Should Understand. – The New York Times

By Peter Beinart

Mr. Beinart, a contributing Opinion writer who focuses on politics and foreign policy, is an editor at large of Jewish Currents, where a version of this essay appeared.

“Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, need not refer only to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in terror during Israel’s founding. It can also evoke the many expulsions that have occurred since: the about 300,000 Palestinians whom Israel displaced when it conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967; the roughly 250,000 Palestinians who could not return to the West Bank and Gaza after Israel revoked their residency rights between 1967 and 1994; the hundreds of Palestinians whose homes Israel demolished in 2020 alone. The East Jerusalem evictions are so combustible because they continue a pattern of expulsion that is as old as Israel itself.

Among Palestinians, Nakba is a household word. But for Jews — even many liberal Jews in Israel, America and around the world — the Nakba is hard to discuss because it is inextricably bound up with Israel’s creation. Without the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, Zionist leaders would have had neither the land nor the large Jewish majority necessary to create a viable Jewish state. As I discuss at greater length in an essay for Jewish Currents from which this guest essay is adapted, acknowledging and beginning to remedy that expulsion — by allowing Palestinian refugees to return — requires imagining a different kind of country, where Palestinians are considered equal citizens, not a demographic threat.

To avoid this reckoning, the Israeli government and its American Jewish allies insist that Palestinian refugees abandon hope of returning to their homeland. This demand is drenched in irony, because no people in human history have clung as stubbornly to the dream of return as have Jews. Establishment Jewish leaders denounce the fact that Palestinians pass down their identity as refugees to their children and grandchildren. But Jews have passed down our identity as refugees for 2,000 years. In our holidays and liturgy we continually mourn our expulsion and express our yearning for return. “After being forcibly exiled from their land,” proclaims Israel’s Declaration of Independence, “the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion.” If keeping faith that exile can be overcome is sacred to Jews, how can we condemn Palestinians for doing the same thing?  . . . “

Nicholas Kristof | What Your Taxes Are Paying For in Israel – The New York Times

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

“Saying Hamas must pay a “very heavy price” for belligerence, Israeli bombs destroyed a 13-story apartment building in Gaza that had a Hamas presence. And saying Israel “ignited fire” and is “responsible for the consequences,” Hamas launched more rockets at Israel.

We’re now seeing the worst fighting in seven years between Israelis and Palestinians, and again a basic pattern asserts itself: When missiles are flying, hard-liners on each side are ascendant. Civilians die, but extremists on one side empower those on the other.

The late Eyad el-Sarraj, a prominent psychiatrist in Gaza, described this dynamic when I visited him during a past cycle of violence: “Extremists need each other, support each other.” He lamented that Israel’s siege of Gaza had turned Palestinian fanatics into popular heroes.

The recent fighting was prompted in part by Israel’s latest land grab in East Jerusalem, part of a pattern of unequal treatment of Palestinians. Two prominent human rights organizations this year issued reports likening Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to apartheid. One group, B’Tselem, described a “regime of Jewish supremacy” and concluded, “This is apartheid.” Human Rights Watch published a 224-page report declaring that Israeli conduct in some areas amounts to “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”  . . . “

Amid the Shooting, Netanyahu’s Foes See an Opening, and Risks – The New York Times

By Isabel Kershner

Published May 12, 2021Updated May 13, 2021, 4:56 a.m. ET

JERUSALEM — When the guns are talking, Israel’s domestic political strife typically goes silent.

When the country is on the brink of war, the opposition usually rallies around the government.

Not this time.

As the conflict with Gaza wrought more death and destruction on Wednesday — and as an intense surge of Arab-Jewish sectarian violence rocked towns within Israel — a chief opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the prime minister for the spiraling sense of chaos and said he was working to oust him.

Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of the opposition, said the events of the last week “can be no excuse for keeping Netanyahu and his government in place. Quite the opposite,” Mr. Lapid wrote in a statement he posted on Facebook. “They are exactly the reason why he should be replaced as soon as possible.”

The escalating crisis, in which dozens have been killed in airstrikes and rocket barrages, has come at a pivotal moment in Israeli politics.

David Lindsay Jr.Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:

“More recently, in fiscal year 2019, the US provided $3.8 billion in foreign military aid to Israel. Israel also benefits from about $8 billion of loan guarantees. Almost all US aid to Israel is now in the form of military assistance, while in the past it also received significant economic assistance.” Israel–United States relations –

Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org › wiki › Israel–United_States_relations

Perhaps we should stop giving Israel $3.8 billion a year in military aid. They appear to be the instigator here, and the oppressor. Pushing Palestinians out their own homes on their own lands seems like a policy from hell. This is what the US is supporting?

Rula Salameh | Why So Much Rests on the Fate of a Tiny Neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem – The New York Times

By Rula Salameh

Ms. Salameh is a Palestinian community organizer and film producer from Jerusalem.

“JERUSALEM — I watched the wailing ambulances bring the injured, the medical staff carry them on stretchers and the nurses guide them into the emergency ward. I saw blood-soaked clothes and gauze-wrapped necks and faces.

On Monday more than 330 Palestinians were wounded by the Israeli police at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Many of those needing medical attention were taken to Al Makassed hospital, about a mile and a half from the mosque, in East Jerusalem.

Tensions had been rising as Israel blocked access for Palestinians from outside Jerusalem headed to the mosque for prayers during the last days of Ramadan, the sacred Muslim month of fasting. Serious violence erupted on Jerusalem Day, an annual event to celebrate Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967. Early Monday, Israeli police officers stormed the mosque compound and began firing rubber-tipped bullets and stun grenades at Palestinians who were throwing stones.

I am a Palestinian community organizer and film producer and live in Beit Hanina, less than five miles from Al Aqsa Mosque and Al Makassed hospital. I have been part of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation for years.  . . . “

“My phone rang relentlessly. Friends and colleagues from all over the world were calling and asking what they could do for Sheikh Jarrah, a tiny East Jerusalem neighborhood about two miles from the Aqsa compound. The events unfolding at Sheikh Jarrah were the context of the escalation of violence between Palestinians and Israeli forces at Al Aqsa Mosque and elsewhere in the territories.

Palestinian residents of the neighborhood have been protesting for weeks to prevent the eviction of Palestinian families sought by Israeli settlers. The protests underscore that the expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah are part of the broader expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland — a process that started during the establishment of Israel in 1948 and turned about 750,000 Palestinians into refugees. . . . “