While incumbents around the world are struggling to hold on, one is thriving. By bringing the rival Kadima party into his ruling coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu has become "king of Israel," in Aaron David Miller's phrase. He has an unusual, perhaps unique, opportunity to use his new power to secure Israel's future.

Netanyahu's coalition now commands the largest parliamentary majority in Israeli history. He faces no plausible rival as prime minister. When pushed on the Palestinian issue, Netanyahu has often cited the constraints of his coalition to explain why he had not taken bolder steps toward resolution. Perhaps he liked being constrained: He refused to form a national unity government in 1996 (with Shimon Peres) and refused again in 2009 (with Tzipi Livni). But now he has a broad enough base of support -- with many moderates -- and could move toward a peace settlement without endangering his hold on power.

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Hourglasses don't tick. They make no sound, unless you bring them up to your ear and focus on the grains of sand that fall down slowly. The hourglass has no mechanism, only gravity. Nature works by itself.

 
Hourglasses don't tick, and therefore they do not disturb those who wish to let time do its thing, quietly. Nonetheless, they have a drawback: At one point in time, the sand runs out. Suddenly everything stops and the hourglass must be turned upside down to keep functioning.

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JERUSALEM -- Israel announced Tuesday that it has legalized three unauthorized Jewish outposts in the West Bank, a move that Palestinians and anti-settlement activists condemned as a step toward creating the first new settlements in more than a decade.

The decision marked the latest effort by Israel's right-wing coalition government to prevent evictions -- some of them court-ordered -- of Jewish settlers who have established communities without government permission in the West Bank, where Israel occupies land that Palestinians want for a future state.

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JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that his Cabinet has decided to retroactively legalize three West Bank outposts that previous governments had conceded were built without permission, marking the first step toward what critics fear will become Israel's first official new settlements since 1990.

The decision late Monday by a Cabinet committee begins a long administrative process to authorize the small settlements of Rehalim, Sansana and Bruchin.

The move infuriated Palestinians and frustrated the international community, which has been pushing Israel to freeze settlement construction in the West Bank and refrain from taking actions that might hinder efforts to restart peace talks.

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a worthy and serious partner, and it was certainly possible to reach a peace agreement with him during the past three years, President Shimon Peres told Haaretz.

"I am aware that there are other opinions [about whether Abbas can or wants to make peace], but I don't accept them, and I have a little experience," Peres said during an interview last week in the President's Residence in Jerusalem.

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Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a board member and past president of Americans for Peace Now.  (originally published in Peter Beinart's ZION SQUARE blog on The Daily Beast, February 14, 2012).

In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf wrote, "As a woman my country is the whole world."  I used to believe this; I thought divisions of nation, race, class, and faith could be trumped by a universalist vision of gender equality, justice, and peace.

Then came the UN's Decade for Women. In 1975, its first international conference famously produced the "Zionism is racism" resolution.  Five years later, when the second conference saw virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric, threats, and violence, I asked myself, why am I working to liberate women if they're going to turn around and  attack Jews?

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.

Iran is trying to strike Israeli targets around the world in a bid to stop the assassinations of its nuclear scientists, the head of the Shin Bet security service, Yoram Cohen, said Thursday.

Lecturing at a closed forum in Tel Aviv, Cohen said that Iran believes Israel is behind the attacks on its nuclear experts, which have killed four scientists since November 2010. "It doesn't matter if it's true or not that Israel took out the nuclear scientists," Cohen said. "A major, serious country like Iran cannot let this go on. They want to deter Israel and extract a price so that decision makers in Israel think twice before they order an attack on an Iranian scientist."

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Under new proposal from Likud MK Danny Danon, illegal outpost of Migron will be relocated while current structures remain intact to serve as farmhouses • Compromise complies with High Court ruling to evacuate outpost, but it may not be legal.

Settler leaders on Monday agreed to a compromise regarding the evacuation of the illegal outpost of Migron. The High Court of Justice ruled over the summer that the outpost, home to some 50 families, was built on privately owned Palestinian land and ordered its evacuation by the end of March.

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