Relations between Israel and the United States sank on Friday to their lowest point in years after the Obama administration declined to veto a resolution in the United Nations Security Council (full text here) declaring Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, “including East Jerusalem,” to be illegal under international law. Israeli leaders reacted with fury….
(JTA) — Shortly after dawn on July 30, a bomb hit a United Nations school sheltering thousands of civilians displaced by the fighting in Gaza, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens. The attack on the Jabalia Elementary Girls School was the fifth attack on U.N. facilities in Gaza since fighting broke out July…
One of the strangest aspects of the Syria debate is how much energy and passion is going into it, on both sides — for and against American air strikes — and how little light is being shed on the central issue, namely chemical weapons. Secretary of State John Kerry, in his supposedly game-changing speech August…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to bury the Levy Report, which recommends legalizing most unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank and making it easier for existing settlements to expand, a senior politician who spoke with the premier about the issue told Haaretz yesterday. Since the Levy Report was submitted, on June 21, Netanyahu…
Considerable attention has been focused these last several weeks on the report of Israel’s Levy Commission. No great surprise: The three-person commission, appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to render an advisory opinion regarding Jewish settlement in the West Bank, determined that there is no barrier to such settlement and, indeed, that the legality of…
A friend wrote in last week to dispute my critique of Israeli judge Edmond Levy’s settlements report. Levy claimed the West Bank isn’t “occupied” under international law, and therefore settlements aren’t illegal. I wrote that while his interpretation squares with the language of the relevant treaties, not one nation in the world accepts it, so…
Benjamin Netanyahu has a bad habit of pretending he’s Houdini — sticking his head in a noose, scaring everyone half to death, then wiggling free at the last minute. The difference is that Houdini’s viewers got to watch from their seats, while Netanyahu’s audience is stuck inside the noose with him. And the noose gets…
‘I am obligated to uphold the law and preserve the settlements, and I say here that there is no contradiction between the two.” Anyone aware of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in early June can be forgiven a despairing reaction. Only the prime minister and the dwindling number of supporters of Israel’s settlement enterprise…
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