“They’re working openly, and have been for years, to argue there is no distinction between Israel and settlements, that all the land was given to them by God, and that making a distinction between settlements and Israel is anti-Semitic,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a liberal think tank whose work focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The Trump administration has not announced any change in U.S. policy when it comes to entry of Palestinians to the United States,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and a former U.S. foreign service officer in Jerusalem. “One [denial] could be just a random happenstance, two could be a coincidence. Three, it’s reasonable to ask whether or not there hasn’t been a de facto shift in U.S. policy that is denying visas to Palestinians to come to the U.S. based on their political views, which would be deeply troubling.”

“The final panel focused on Gaza’s relationship with Israel, Egypt, and the United States, with panelists representing different perspectives. Lara Friedman, a former U.S. foreign service officer who now heads the Foundation for Middle East Peace, spoke about the state of dependency that the people of Gaza find themselves in, given their reliance on neighboring states for the necessities of life. Ghaith al-Omari, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, spoke about the security concerns of Israel, given Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians, and stressed the need for all sides to avoid escalations of conflict.”

…The Foundation for Middle East Peace published a chart listing the 17 states whose anti-boycott laws or implementing guidelines penalize businesses that boycott Israel or the territories controlled by Israel, a phrase that applies to the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The Foundation for Middle East Peace published a chart listing the 17 states whose anti-boycott laws or implementing guidelines penalize businesses that boycott Israel or the territories controlled by Israel, a phrase that applies to the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, which supports a two-state solution, told PolitiFact that, “in effect, Carter was agreeing with the assertion that he views settlements as illegal — in that they were contrary to the Geneva Convention, meaning illegal — without using that word himself.” At least one of Carter’s subordinates went so far as to use the word “illegal” — the United States representative to the United Nations, William Scranton, in a 1976 speech. “Substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including in East Jerusalem, is illegal under the (Geneva) Convention,” Scanton said. Friedman added that a group of memos to Carter from his chief of staff Hamilton Jordan used the term “illegal” in relation to Israeli settlements 16 times…

“Halfway into Donald Trump’s four-year term as president of the United States, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is, irrefutably, dead. Its final deathblow came in the form of the White House’s embrace of a hardline Israeli ideology – which today likewise dominates the Government of Israel – that rejects both the premises and goals of the Oslo process, including the framework of land-for-peace, the goal of a negotiated two-state solution, and the very legitimacy of Palestinians’ claims to national political aspirations. For all who reject zero-sum outcomes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is an historic moment of both peril and opportunity: the way forward on Israel-Palestine, and how it fits into and impacts on the broader regional picture, is now uncharted territory.”

“Of the many bad pieces of legislation being discussed in Washington at the moment, there are two particularly pungent anti-BDS bills presently winding their way through Congress—H.R. 246 and S. 120. If a Congressional freakout about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement feels familiar, it’s because the Senate already passed a bill targeting BDS in early February before it stalled out in the House. But rather than concede defeat, pro-Israel advocates and their Congressional allies have opted for what Lara Friedman, President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, has correctly identified as a “tactical shift,” a canny softening of language designed to get more Democratic buy-in.”

Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace and former director of policy at Americans for Peace Now, the sister organization of the Israeli group Peace Now, which works to promote a two-state solution, says she worries that anti-B.D.S. laws set a precedent for legislative assaults on free speech in other domains: “The American Jewish community, which is broadly speaking liberal, has allowed itself in the name of defending Israel and fighting B.D.S. to become the leading edge of illiberalism by pushing legislation to curb free speech.”

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami and Foundation for Middle East Peace President Lara Friedman in conversation with Todd Gitlin. They discuss what BDS is and isn’t — and offer strategies for responding to this very polarizing issue.