A historic choice for Mustafa Barghouti

Mustafa Barghouti has joined the chorus of voices warning of the “fast approaching” end of the two-state solution. In an article for the Washington politics journal The Hill, he writes that “The demise of the two-state solution is right there with climate change: It’s staring us all in the face.” He says “I do not know precisely when a younger generation of Palestinians will decide that two states is an outdated pipe dream of their parents’ generation, nor when Fatah officials will reach the same conclusion.” Read more…

Into the Mainstream

We reported that in June a poll found 28% of Israeli Jews already see one equal state as an option to explore. When an idea is in the mainstream to that extent, it’s a much bigger river with many different fish in it. With millions of people looking at one state as a possibility, we can expect the unexpected: significant opinions and actions in some very surprising places. Two such were in the press in the past week. A definite sign of the times. Read more…

How Israel’s status quo will self-destruct

The Levy Report, a legal opinion delivered to Netanyahu in June which concluded that there was no Occupation of Palestinian lands, was widely seen as paving the way for annexation of at least 60% of the West Bank if not the whole of it. Read more…

Annexation of West Bank in all but name

Bibi lawyers kill Two State solution, negate international law, and rule that West Bank was no-man’s land and is now part of Israel

A legal panel, the Levy Committee, set up by Netanyahu has concluded that the West Bank was effectively no-man’s land before 1967 and denies that Israel’s presence there is that of an occupying force. Read more…

A Charter of Rights for Palestine

Inalienable, unarguable, non-negotiable, universal — a powerful tool with many applications

A new campaign launched last month has grouped together, into a Charter of Five Urgent Demands, most of the main day-to-day issues of the fight against Israel’s apartheid. The UN’s rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, Dr. Richard Falk says: “This is an excellent initiative as it calls attention to the spectrum of Israeli ongoing abuses toward the Palestinian people, several of which receive almost no media attention.” Read more…

Civil Rights demands vs. Liberation Programme? Or is it all the same thing?

Some leading writers explore next steps on the road from the “Peace Process”

The ending of negotiations for two separate states has not, as many hoped, cleared a path for the only just alternative: either for such an Read more…

If US Party says: “one law for all people”

What are we to make of it?

A flurry of astonishment greeted the discovery that the US Republican Party’s National Committee (the RNC) had unanimously adopted a “One State” position. Read more…

Last year, this year:

J14’s Palestinian contingent

Dahlia Scheindlin took a very bleak view of the self-declared “Israel issues only” protest at its outset. Now, with her survey in +972 Magazine of  Israeli Arab participation, she presents a radically different view. Some extracts here:

Bucking both initial suspicion from the protest leaders, and cynicism among the Arab press and leadership, many Arabs report participating, and many more are open to joining in the future. Read more…

Last year, this year:

We’ve come a long way but it’s still the same road

2011 saw many dramatic surprises: the Palestine Papers revelations; the Arab Spring mass movements for democracy, ending some hated regimes and leading to bloody struggles of others to hold onto power; the Palestinian UN statehood bid; the Occupy movements and Israel’s J14 eruption; the reconciliation manoeuvres between Hamas and Fateh under pressure from their own disenfranchised populations. Read more…