APN's daily news review from Israel - Tuesday November 24, 2020

Quote of the day:

"With all due respect to the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the guardian of the holy places to Islam, is the real thing, and it is a historic move that will probably take some more time."
--Middle East analyst Shimrit Meir writes in today's Yedioth that Israel should not hold its breath for normalization with Saudi Arabia.

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

REMINDER: APN Webinar with Yossi Alpher on Tuesday, November 24, 12 noon (Eastern): Israel and the Biden Administration - Register to attend 

APN's daily news review from Israel - Monday November 23, 2020  

Quote of the day:

"We don't owe him anything, sorry. He was an American spy who worked for a lot of money. This was not some Zionist volunteer who sacrificed his life."
--Former prime minister Ehud Olmert said that Jewish-American spy Jonathan Pollard should not immigrate to Israel because it will harm US-Israel relations further.*

APN's daily news review from Israel - Sunday November 22, 2020 

Quote of the day:

“I don’t know. We’re still counting votes in the US, so there’s not much game in talking about that, other than to say we’re very convinced that we have made the Middle East safer, and the policies we put in place are the right ones.”
—In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo answers the question: How easy or difficult will it be for the next administration to scale back its policies (vis-a-vis Israel and the Middle East)?*

1. Bills, Resolutions & Letters
2. Hearings & Markups
3. On the Record

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

APN's daily news review from Israel - Thursday November 19, 2020

You Must Be Kidding: 
Inspectors from Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank impounded cows belonging to a Palestinian resident of the northern Jordan Valley on the grounds that he had been grazing them in a nature reserve. However, the same Umm Zuka nature reserve has been used for grazing hundreds of cows by settlers of an unauthorized outpost in the same area.***

This webinar on November 24 featured strategic affairs analyst Yossi Alpher providing a view from Israel, as part of our series examining the Middle East policy impact of transitioning from the Trump to the Biden administration.

LISTEN

• How is the transition from Trump to Biden viewed in Israel, both by its leaders and the public?
• How might dealing with a Biden administration alter Israeli government policies and priorities?
• How would Israel’s conservative government and the Israeli public at large adapt to a liberal administration with a worldview diametrically opposed to Trump’s and very different from Netanyahu’s?

These and other questions were addressed by Yossi Alper, one of Israel’s leading strategic affairs analyst, and the author of APN’s Hard Questions Tough Answers, our weekly analysis of Middle East policy, politics, and strategic affairs. Alpher is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) strongly condemns an initiative by four Republican Senators to label products made in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as being “Made in Israel.” 

The four, Tom Cotton (AR), Kelly Loeffler (GA), Marco Rubio (FL), and Ted Cruz (TX), sent a letter Monday to outgoing President Trump, with copies to the Secretaries of State, the Treasury, and Homeland Security, urging Trump to allow “Israeli goods produced in Judea and Samaria to be labeled as ‘Made in Israel.’” Judea and Samaria is the biblical term used by Israeli religious nationalists and their supporters to refer to the West Bank.