Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bitterlemons Online Project Closes

Bitterlemons, a joint Palestinian-Israeli Internet effort to promote an exchange of views about the Israeli-Arab conflict and other Middle East issues, is closing.

The closing of the publications, including two weekly e-magazines as well as Internet forums on Middle East topics, was announced this week by bitterlemons’ co-founders Yossi Alpher and Ghassan Khatib in separate columns at bitterlemons.org.

Alpher, former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, wrote that the closing of the publications “is not disconnected from what is transpiring around us in the Middle East and globally.” He blamed the closing on both donor fatigue and “local fatigue,” the lack of a peace process or even informal moves toward regional dialogue.

“We never aspired to make ‘virtual’ peace and never presented a ‘bitterlemons plan,’ ” Alpher wrote. “Rather, we sought to debate our differences and raise the level of dialogue. Over the years, our Internet and email publishing operation, based in Israel and Palestine, weathered an intifada, suicide bombings and an Israeli invasion of the Palestinian Authority.”

Khatib wrote that at the beginning of the project, he hoped that bitterlemons would provide a venue for the Palestinian voice to be heard.

“And to this day, I remain proud that we seem to have achieved this – that top international policymakers were able to read the opinions of Palestinians from many walks of life and political backgrounds and engage their ideas on this forum,” he wrote.

Khatib, director of the Palestinian Authority’s government media center, also wrote that “We are now, it appears, at the lowest point in the arc of the pendulum, one that is swinging away from the two-state solution into a known unknown: an apartheid Israel. How this new ‘one-state’ option will be transformed into a solution that provides freedom and security for all remains to be seen.”

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.