Americans for Peace Now Board Member Mandy Patinkin today toured the West Bank and East Jerusalem with Israel's Peace Now movement and spoke at an annual conference of Israel's peace camp, addressing a crowd of 700 progressive activists.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF

Netanyahu forms panel to legalize Rechelim, Bruchin, Sansana; Peace Now: PM developing settlements at expense of peace.

www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=267077

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Also included: AFP: "Netanyahu tasks panel to solve settlement row"
Hagit Ofran, of Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, said the debate proved ministers were trying to renege on the government's pledge to the supreme court.

Jo-Ann Mort is vice chair of Americans for Peace Now and a frequent Forward contributor. She is CEO of ChangeCommunications, which works with clients in the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

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Picture: "Is this pesto really the enemy?"
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While I am not a member of the Park Slope Food Coop, I can't help but be pulled into the controversy surrounding a prized neighborhood institution as it debates whether or not to take a position on boycotting Israeli food products.

The ongoing work of Peace Now's Settlement Watch program, headed by the formidable Hagit Ofran and readily available at peacenow.org, and frequent analysis by the apparently indefatigable Lara Friedman, American for Peace Now's director of policy and government relations, provide comprehensive -- and disheartening -- details on settlement actions and issues in general.

Fein is an APN Board Member who has written and advocated for progressive Jewish causes since the 1960s. In 1974 he founded Moment magazine, the journal of Jewish ideas, and in 1985 he founded MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

Extremists vandalized again in Jerusalem in an apparent "price tag" attack against Peace Now's Jerusalem offices. The extremists sprayed "No leftists, no terror attacks"

Read JTA and Jerusalem Post articles...

Peace Now executive director Yariv Oppenheimer, slammed Monday's compromise offer by Migron residents as "outrageous. The government is avoiding fulfilling the Supreme Court decision. Not only will the outpost not be evacuated on time, it will not be evacuated at all. And the settlers will gain another settlement in the heart of the West Bank,"

Netanyahu urges residents of illegal West Bank outpost to accept compromise offer and move to new neighborhood on State-owned land. Settlers: He's learned nothing from Gaza pullout

(excerpt)

Peace Now Director Yariv Oppenheimer called Netanyahu's offer a "cynical spin that is aimed at thwarting the implementation of the court's decision and delaying the outpost's evacuation by several years.

Read the entire article

A new report by Peace Now's Settlement Watch project shows that 2011 was a record year in West Bank settlement construction. Worse, the past years highlighted dangerous trends on the ground in the West Bank, which may end up torpedoing a two-state solution: an Israeli government intention to legalize illegal outposts and thus transform them into full-fledged settlements, and building in sensitive locations such as E-1, Efrat, and Givat Hamatos, which would deny contiguity for a future Palestinian state.