Whether Palestinian elections can help or hinder the resumption of talks will depend on the outcome – if the voting actually takes place – and ultimately on Abbas’s posture, or that of his successor.
Palestinian responsibility for and success in acquiring Covid-19 vaccines continues to be ignored. Israel has supplied thousands of vaccines from its supply, while facilitating delivery of the large number of vaccines ordered by the Palestinian Authority.
Resuming contacts with Iran has become an early foreign policy priority for the Biden administration. American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO David Harris, a long-time observer of the Iran issue, offers six recommendations to the Biden Administration for any future negotiations with the Iranian regime.
As Middle East and North African leaders increasingly question old orthodoxies and recognize the benefits of new alignments—with normalization agreements offering advantages not only for Israel and Arab states, but also creating opportunities to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace—Washington, too, must look at this evolving region with fresh eyes. To advance its objectives, the new administration should take advantage of all the tools at its disposal—including those left to it by its predecessor.
“If Only Israel (IOI) syndrome,” a term I began using several years ago, is the misguided notion, peddled in the name of Israel's “best interests” by some in the diplomatic, academic, and media worlds, that if only Israel did this or that, peace with the Palestinians would be at hand.