This year has brought an assault on truth that has left us all feeling like Diogenes the Cynic, wandering the streets with a lamp, looking for “an honest man.” Since our founding, Americans for Peace Now has been meticulous in uncovering the truth. We  shine a lantern in places that extremists would prefer to keep dark and hidden. We are unshakable in our honesty, even when the truth we tell is unpopular.

So, let us get right to the point: Americans for Peace Now will continue speaking the truth in the New Year, as will our sister organization, Peace Now in Israel.  

We will speak the truth about settlements: Settlements are used to prevent a viable two-state solution, to dispossess Palestinians of their land and, sometimes even to outright punish them. Settlements are the most potent of Israel’s actions against them. Settlements are the most potent of Israel’s actions against them.  

Creeping Annexation: Changes in the Interpretation of the Laws Regarding Occupation
Settlements Watch Peace Now,
December 2017

Report's Main Points:

In recent years, the Attorney General and the State Prosecutor's Office have made dramatic changes in their positions on a number of issues regarding Israel's control over the occupied territories (OT). These changes are part of the g overnment's effort to apply the standards of Israel's democracy to settlements located in territory that is subject to belligerent Israeli occupation, where the Palestinian population lives without democracy and equal rights. These changes are contrary to previous positions of the legal echelon and the Supreme Court, and they magnify the legal question surrounding Israel's control of the OT in terms of international law.

Among other things, the Attorney General stated that:

• • It is permissible to expropriate Palestinian land in cases where the Israeli takeover was carried out "in good faith."
  • It is permissible to confiscate land for the purpose of access to a settlement.
  • Abandoned property may be used for settlement purposes.
  • It is permitted to "liquidate" the abandoned property without judicial process.
  • It is permissible to expropriate protected tenancy of the Hebron Municipality on public land, even without a judicial process.
  • Legislative changes were made to facilitate the demolition and deportation of Palestinian communities in Area C.

These changes mark another step in the policy of de facto annexation of the OT to Israel, and they are intended to "normalize" the settlements and make them part of Israel, even without declaring so.

Read more

At this time of the year, I typically write to you reflecting on the progress made toward Israeli-Palestinian peace in the year that passed, and highlight the reasons for hope for further progress in the coming year.

As 2017 comes to a close, "the hope thing" becomes more difficult. With Donald Trump in the White House, Benjamin Netanyahu in his ninth consecutive year as Israel’s prime minister, and no sign of diplomacy from any of the players, it's hard to find reasons for hope. At least not in the short run. Holding one's breath in anticipation of Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian “ultimate deal” would not be a healthy way to start the new year.

One week after Donald Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem – which triggered unrest in Israel, the Occupied Territories, and the broader Middle East – Ambassador David Friedman was stoking the flames. At a menorah lighting at the Western Wall, Friedman kvelled in Hebrew, “It is a huge honor for me and I am extremely excited to be standing here at this holy site and to light the second Chanukah candle in Jerusalem, the holy city and the capital of the State of Israel.”

Friedman’s emotional visit to the Western Wall, in his official capacity as US ambassador, added a religious dimension to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It also provided reason to think that the United States government was for the first time accepting Israeli sovereignty in part of East Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in 1967 and Palestinians desire as their capital in a negotiated peace deal with Israel.

American Jews shouldn't take their cue from an Israeli left which is veering rightwards and indoctrinated by the false slogan of an 'eternal and undivided Jerusalem'. Trump's move sabotaged peace, and we U.S. Jews must push back against it

If President Donald Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem had a silver lining, for me it is this: many progressive, pro-Israel American Jews saw Trump’s gambit as the narrowly self-serving, reckless move it was, and rejected it. 

For this reason, I read with great interest the recent Haaretz op-ed by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, a former president of the Union for Reform Judaism (U.S. Liberal Jews Read It Wrong. Trump’s Call on Jerusalem Was Good for the Peace Camp).

An ardent Trump critic, Yoffie’s "default position is to resist every word on foreign affairs that comes out of [Trump’s] mouth." So what brought Yoffie to conclude that President Trump’s new Jerusalem policy is “generally responsible”?

Today's vote by the United Nations General Assembly, rebuking President Trump's irresponsible move to unilaterally recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, underscores Trump's flawed understanding of diplomacy and the heavy price the US pays when it subjugates a calculated foreign policy and national security interests to domestic politics.

The UNGA vote – 128 countries voting against Trump's move, with only 9 in favor and 35 abstaining – is a slap in the face of the US, a reality check for Israel, but also a welcome endorsement of the two-state solution and of diplomacy as a tool for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a rebuke of Trump's unilateralism and a bitter blow our country's global leadership role. "This is the price we pay for President Trump acting on a whim and reversing a fifty-year-old policy carefully implemented by past presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike," said Debra DeLee, APN's President and CEO.

On September 1st, 2016, the Supreme Court ordered that 13 illegal houses the were built on private Palestinian land in the outpost of Nativ Ha’avot will be dismantled by March 6th, 2018. Since this ruling, the settlers have imposed tremendous pressure on the government to resist the implementation of the ruling. They issued a public campaign full of misleading information, inaccuracies and downright lies, in order to raise public support for their struggle.

Peace Now, which petitioned the court together with the Palestinian landowners, sets the record straight in the following “Nativ Ha’Avot File” – replete with all the facts and proof regarding the land grab and the illegality of the outpost.

Kenneth Marcus, President Trump’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights in the Department of Education, has made it his mission to suppress speech critical of Israel on campuses by labeling it “anti-Semitic.”

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is due to vote on Marcus’s confirmation today, December 13, 2017. In keeping with our defense of free speech related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our commitment to opening the debate on this issue in American society, Americans for Peace Now strongly opposes Marcus and calls on senators to vote against his confirmation.

For a donation of $108 or more, APN will send you "City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement", by Dr. Sara Hirschhorn, who has written a Chanukah message for APN below.

Please note that all but $30 of your donation will be tax deductible and please be sure to put “Hilltop” in the comment field. We can send it to you or to the Chanukah-gift recipient of your choice, which you should also indicate in the comment field.

This Chanukah, it may seem to many of Americans for Peace Now’s supporters that the light of peace has snuffed out in the region. Will all the stakeholders somehow be able to burn the midnight oil to achieve a peace deal? Can the beacons of liberalism, democracy, and justice outshine forces of illiberalism, racism, and despair in Israel/Palestine? It seems like we may truly need a miracle to save the two state-solution this year.

On the 50th anniversary of the 1967 War.

Many of us have watched with consternation as the current U.S. administration (with a new cast of characters in the White House that have long been associated with the right-wing) has changed enduring policies regarding the status of Jerusalem and possibly the settlements question. Yet, the story of American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement is one far deeper than a small circle advising the sitting president over the past few months. Iit is the saga of over 60,000 American Jews who chose to leave comfortable lives in the United States to settle at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict and make history over the past half-century. This Chanukah, we need to listen to scholars and policy-makers who can shed new light on these pressing issues for Israelis and Palestinians.

Best,

Sara

Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn is the University Research Lecturer in Israel Studies, Faculty of Oriental Studies and the Sidney Brichto Fellow, at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford