فلسطين

For the first time in almost half a century, the United States has acknowledged that it is “out of ideas” about how to address Israel’s occupation and fulfill a declared American interest in establishing a Palestinian state at peace with Israel.

Read the full article at Brookings. Amb. Daniel Kurtzer is a member of MEI’s International Advisory Council.

This article was first published in Foreign Affairs.

Read the full article on Al Jazeera America.

The White House recently acknowledged that it was out of ideas on how to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency, raising — for the first time — the prospect that Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank is permanent.

Only a few authors have works that can be found on both floors of the Oman Library at The Middle East Institute, and fewer still that have a personal connection to both the institute and the history of the region. The late Ambassador Richard B. Parker can claim this status, having served 31 years in the Foreign Service and as the third editor of The Middle East Journal. He was also a longtime MEI scholar-in-residence.

A recent United Nations report warned that the Gaza Strip might become “uninhabitable” by 2020 for its 1.8 million residents.[1] Serious changes must be implemented as soon as possible to reverse the coastal enclave’s de-development.

Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been around for generations, it still has the capacity to surprise.  Even the experts are confused by the current violence that has been roiling Jerusalem for weeks now.  Is this the long-awaited third intifada?  What is causing it?  Why is it centered in Jerusalem, not the West Bank? Who is leading it, and why are the principal actors teenagers with household knives?  In fact, similar questions were asked at the beginning of the two previous intifadas, and of the Palestinian Revolt during the British Mandate.  Why now?  What for?

On a scale not seen since April 2002, Israel is instituting dramatic increases in the deployment of its military and police forces throughout Israel, East Jerusalem and the West Bank proper. These moves by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comprise the initial security response to limited but escalating Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians, settlers, and military forces throughout Israel and the occupied West Bank.

While the international community focuses on the latest refugee crisis fomented by the cascading calamities now engulfing the Middle East, Gaza—home to the region’s first permanent refugees—offers a cautionary lesson about the costs of man-made hardship and instability.
 
The UN recently reported that the infant mortality rate in the Gaza Strip has increased for the first time since Israel occupied the area in June 1967, in part because of the draconian restrictions on Gaza trade imposed by Israel and Egypt during the last decade.

This article was originally published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

On Saturday, local and international media outlets reported that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had formally announced his resignation from another organization he heads: the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Specifically the reports said Abbas had quit his role as chairman of the Executive Committee, the highest decision-making body in the PLO.

The 1,667-strong contingent of U.S. and international forces that make up the Multinational Force of Observers (MFO) in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is in a tough spot. The ongoing failure of the Egyptian government’s war against the ISIS-led rebellion there has shredded the MFO’s mandate to monitor Egyptian and Israeli adherence to their peace treaty. Sinai’s descent into anarchy also puts outnumbered and outgunned U.S. troops in the only location other than Iraq that confronts ISIS in an active theater of war.