Think Trump’s Policies on Israel-Palestine Have Nothing to Do with You? Think Again

What We’re Reading

US-Israeli Relations

Think Trump’s Policies on Israel-Palestine Have Nothing to Do with You? Think Again,

“President-elect Trump and his surrogates are dropping heavy hints about plans to break with longstanding U.S. positions vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the direction of changes that both Israelis and Palestinians would view as turning away from a negotiated peace agreement… Few people today seem to grasp the consequences – entirely unrelated to Israel and the Palestinians – such changes are set to unleash, or the profoundly negative implications they would have for all Americans,” writes Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now

Peace Process

The Skepticism Is Justified. But Paris Can Be More Than Just Another Vague Peace Initiative,

“Faith in the peace process is at a nadir. The history of failure, Trump’s election, Israeli rejectionism. But the January conference in Paris could still produce concrete progress,” writes Nimrod Goren of Mitvim,  The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies

Occupation/Human Rights

Palestinian plows truck into Israeli soldiers, four dead,

“A Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four of them in an attack that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was likely inspired by Daesh,” according to Reuters

ISIS Attack Theory Suits Netanyahu Well, but Jerusalem Is Not Berlin,

“Jerusalem is not Nice, and not just because it has no seashore. Nice doesn’t have 40 percent of its residents living without civil rights, under occupation and in humiliating living conditions. In Nice a prime minister doesn’t announce the closure of a neighborhood that’s home to tens of thousands of people just because one of them was a terrorist. Even Sunday’s attack was indeed inspired by ISIS, it still originated in Jerusalem and is part of the unending series of attacks the city has suffered over the past two-and-a-half years,” writes Nir Hasson

After attack, heavy presence of Israeli forces in East Jerusalem sparks clashes,

Clashes erupted in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabbir on Sunday night amid a fierce crackdown by Israeli forces in the area, after one of the neighborhood’s residents carried out a deadly truck attack earlier in the day at a neighboring illegal Israeli settlement.

Jerusalem

Abbas urges world leaders to prevent US Embassy move to Jerusalem,

“According to the official PA news outlet Wafa, Abbas sent letters to the heads of Russia, China, France, Germany, Britain, the European Union, the African Union, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab League secretary general, ‘asking them to spare no effort in preventing the US embassy from moving to Jerusalem,'” according to The Times of Israel