Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is getting a raw deal.   That’s the line being peddled by Elliot Abrams, who has emerged in recent months as one of the staunchest U.S. defenders of Netanyahu’s settlement policy.  Rather than bury Netanyahu with criticism for expanding settlements, Abrams argue, the world should praise him for his unrecognized settlement restraint.  The facts, Abrams insists, tell the story – facts that Abrams cherry-picks and spins to build a case that is pure fiction.

The following article by Peace Now's Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer, headlined The Bloody Shrapnel, was published in today's edition of the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth:

We had good reason to keep our fingers crossed during the negotiations in hope of a breakthrough; we had good reason to pull our hair out when the minister of housing kept issuing tenders for settlement construction; we had good reason to be angry when we saw the footage of the unjustified shooting in Bituniya; we had good reason to become angrier when the government ignored the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike. It was obvious that the despair, the hate, the hostility and the anger on the Palestinian side would find their way out.

We knew that time is not on our side, and that this was a matter of crucial decisions and human lives.  Seven years of quiet, in which we could have improved our relations with the Palestinians and achieved a peace agreement, had been wasted.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) today expressed deep concern for the safety of the three Israeli Yeshiva students who were kidnapped last Friday in the West Bank. Our hearts and prayers are with the three and with their families. We stand in solidarity with their families and the people of Israel. 

APN is also concerned about the possible repercussions of the crisis and calls on all parties involved to do their utmost to ensure that the three return home unharmed and that their abduction does not further exacerbate an already volatile situation.

This week, Alpher discusses what we should focus on with regard to the abduction-settlement link; if there is any link between the abduction, presumably by Palestinian Islamist extremists, and the military successes last week of the ISIS salafi group in Iraq; how all this will affect the Palestinian unity government experiment; and how the election of Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin as president of Israel last week will affect the Israeli political discussion of settlements and the two-state solution.

Veteran Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein, who has been covering Palestinian affairs for Israeli daily newspapers since 1967, shared his observations on current Israeli-Palestinian relations in perspective of 47 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On the 47th Anniversary of the Occupation: Time for Hard Truths, Tough Actions

Forty-seven years ago this week, Israel won a stunning victory in the 1967 War.  This was not a war of Israel’s choice or making.  It was a defensive war, with Israel facing threats by armies from countries on all sides seeking Israel’s destruction.  Repelling and defeating these armies, Israel sent a resounding message to the region and the world: we are here to stay. 

Israel’s victory in the 1967 War left it with a pressing question: what to do with the additional land now under its control: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights.  As recognized by many Israelis – and demonstrated in the Camp David Accords with Egypt – these lands offered Israel the opportunity to normalize its position in the region through agreements with its Arab neighbors, based on the principle of  land for peace.

Forty-seven years later, such normalization remains a distant dream.  Rather than act in good faith to seek agreements based on land-for-peace, for 47 years successive Israeli governments have actively and passively collaborated with Israel’s own extremists in their efforts to take land-for-peace off the table in favor of fulfilling their own grandiose, messianic vision of Greater Israel.  And now they’ve succeeding in killing what many believed was the best chance for a negotiated peace agreement with the Palestinians that has ever existed, and the best chance that may exist for a long time to come.

This week, Alpher discusses how the Netanyahu government plans to deal with the anomaly of its position vis-a-vis the new Palestinian government and the proposals and counter-proposals for unilateral and bilateral initiatives which are everywhere in the Netanyahu government; last weekend's dramatic withdrawal from the race of Binyamin (Fuad) Ben Eliezer, who had suddenly come under suspicion of receiving bribes and and when will the corruption trail end; who among the candidates benefits from Ben Eliezer's departure; and how dangerous is it that Palestinian prisoners under administrative detention in Israeli jails are on hunger strike, demanding to be charged and tried and why does administration detention exist in Israel?

There’s a lot of talk these days – from pundits, lobbyists, members of Congress, and others – to the effect that according to U.S. law, the Obama Administration must cut off all aid to the Palestinian Authority now that a new government is in power, a government that was produced out of a PLO-Hamas reconciliation agreement.

Regrettably, most of this talk appears to be informed more by anger, opinion, or wishful thinking than a careful analysis of the actual laws in question.   And as always, while every person is entitled to his or her own opinion, there is only one set of facts.  So now it's time to set the record straight.

This week, Alpher discusses the challenges the new Palestinian "technocrat" unity government sworn in in Ramallah this week presents to Israel and the US; the strange melodrama over the election of Israel's next president and what this tells us about PM Netanyahu's functioning; the US swap of five Guantanamo prisoners with the Taliban for an imprisoned US army sergeant; and why does either country need a "hot line" emergency phone connection between Netanyahu and Putin?