Americans for Peace Now

May 7, 2013

According to an Israeli radio report earlier today, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently ordered Minister of Housing Uri Ariel not to issue new tenders for construction in settlements.

On the heels of this report, Israel's Peace Now movement today confirmed that, since President Obama's visit to Israel in March, the government of Israel has not announced or approved any new West Bank settlement construction plans, and has not approved any new tenders for settlement construction. 

May 1, 2013

Washington, DC - Americans for Peace Now (APN) warmly welcomes the Arab League's decision to soften its peace initiative to accommodate future land-swaps between Israel and the Palestinians, as a part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. APN is gratified to see that this positive development does not go unnoticed by Israel's leaders.

APN believes that the Arab Peace Initiative (API) of 2002, which has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the League of Arab States for more than a decade, represents a real basis for negotiations that could deliver comprehensive regional peace.

April 30, 2013

Washington, DC - Americans for Peace Now (APN) condemns the killing of an Israeli civilian in the West Bank by a Palestinian assailant, who has been arrested. This murder -- the first of its kind since 2011-- cannot be justified for any reason.  Such acts of violence are immoral and unjustifiable.  The victim, a 30 year-old resident of the settlement of Yitzhar, leaves behind a wife and 5 children.

APN also condemns the ongoing wave of violence launched by Israeli settlers against innocent Palestinian civilians in the aftermath of this murder, including an attack on a Palestinian school bus that injured two young Palestinian girls.  This vigilante behavior - the latest example of years of so-called "price tag" violence by settlers - is as morally indefensible as violence perpetrated by Palestinians or anyone else.  It is incumbent on Israeli authorities to combat settler violence against Palestinians with no less seriousness than it treats Palestinian violence against Israelis.

May 21, 2013

A trip through the West Bank with Dror Etkes, who tracks how Israel's settlements are altering the physical, political and human landscape in one of the world's most complicated pieces of land

By Matti Friedman

It has been just over a decade since Dror Etkes began criss-crossing the West Bank in a long war of unstinting dedication and uncertain efficacy against the spread of Israeli settlements...

May 20, 2013

By: Akiva Eldar

According to unofficial reports, certain progress was made at the talks held earlier this month (May 8) in Rome between Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's representative Isaac Molho and US Secretary of State John Kerry, in which senior officials from Jordan and Qatar also took part. Nonetheless, diplomatic sources caution that the progress regarding negotiation guidelines (a return to the 1967 border and an exchange of territories) is, in fact, a "manipulation" designed to improve Israel's international standing in order to prepare for a possible attack on Iran.

At the same time, there has been a considerable slowdown of construction in the settlements in the past few months. The Palestinians have set June 6 as the deadline for resumption of the diplomatic process...

April 15, 2013

by Sarah Wildman

In a city where borders mean everything, one stubborn man has made it his mission to record and warn others about changes to the city.

"The quip in Hebrew is 'everyone pisses in the swimming pool. Not everyone does it from the diving board.' What we've been watching in the last year is an unprecedented surge in settlement activities." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "has been pissing from the high board, and what we hear from D.C. is, 'hey, there is a light rain.'"

Daniel Seidemann is not a man who trades in verbal niceties...