Last week, in anticipation of Abbas’ UNSC address, FMEP was proud to host a conversation between the PLO Ambassador to the United States, Husam Zomlot, and FMEP non-resident fellow Peter Beinart.

“The challenge Bibi faces is not so much to convince Trump and his closest advisors to adopt his wish list regarding the future of “Judea and Samaria”—a prayer already answered on Jerusalem—but rather to constrain his appetite for historic decisions that are so consequential that they will rouse even the slumbering giant in the Oval Office,” writes Geoffrey Aronson.

The first trailers were installed on Wednesday at a new settlement for evacuees of Amona, just over a year after their outpost was razed and seven months after ground was broken on their new hilltop community in the central West Bank.

UNRWA is missing millions of dollars from its budget after the US cut funding to the agency. Now, it cannot guarantee food distribution for the rest of the year.

Palestinian youth from across the West Bank demonstrated near Al Najah University in Nablus on Monday. The demonstrators held a long banner bearing slogans calling for peace, supporting non-violent struggle, and thanking the countries that opposed U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The demonstration was organised by Zimam, a Palestinian grassroots movement.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for an international peace conference to convene by mid-2018 in order to restart the stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks.

According to diplomatic sources, Kushner and Greenblatt said of the plan that “both sides are going to love some of it, and hate some of it.”

The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank grew at nearly twice the rate of Israel’s overall population last year, a settler leader said Monday, predicting that settlement growth would surge even more in the coming years thanks in part to the Trump presidency.

“In closed meetings and openly on Twitter, David Friedman propagandizes for Israel’s annexationist right; his only mention of Palestinians is to blame and vilify them. Sadly, in Israel’s foreign diplomat circles, he’s not alone,” writes Ahmad Tibi.

Egypt’s intelligence service is applying heavy pressure on Hamas to get it to move forward on its reconciliation deal with the rival Fatah party and hand control of the Gaza Strip over to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

On Jan. 25, Hamas’ internal security service in the Gaza Strip posted a video on its Facebook page of two alleged Islamic State (IS) members, titled, “IS surrounds Gaza from the south and Israel surrounds the rest.”

A Honda-sponsored racing event is moved from a settlement into Israel proper. Organizers admit they didn’t inform the headliner that it was in occupied territory, and the racer says he wouldn’t have participated if he had known.