Top news stories from Israel/Palestine: March 12, 2018

What We’re Reading

US-Israeli/Palestinian relations

AIPAC won’t win back progressives until it faces hard truths about Israel,

“At its annual policy conference last week week, AIPAC made a high-profile, widely discussed bid to bring progressives back into the fold. Those efforts revealed that the organization’s leaders understand that their particular brand of Israel politics is losing support — but that they still may not understand why,” write Jill Jacobs and Jeremy Ben-Ami.

The Mideast Peace Plan Is Nearly Finished. Is It Dead on Arrival?,

The Trump administration is putting the finishing touches on its long-awaited Middle East peace plan, three senior officials said on Sunday, and President Trump is likely to present it soon, despite risking swift rejection by the Palestinians.

Trump administration backs PLO in terror lawsuit, angering conservatives,

The Trump administration sided with the Palestine Liberation Organization in a terrorism lawsuit the Supreme Court may soon consider, drawing an angry rebuke from conservatives, including one of its most steadfast Jewish community defenders, the Zionist Organization of America.

Palestinians reject US invitation to Gaza 'stakeholder' summit,

Ahmad Majdalani told the Voice of Palestine radio on Friday that the PA would not attend the meeting, saying that the issue in Gaza was “political par excellence”.

Adelson-Funded Friends Of Israel Excuse European Alt-Right’s Anti-Semitism,

A familiar group of super-hawkish, anti-Iran U.S. billionaires has been spending millions of dollars on a rather eclectic and somewhat bizarre organization of mainly foreign leaders. This organization, the Friends of Israel Initiative (FOII), has hailed the advent of what it calls the “New Right” in Europe.

We Made A Documentary Exposing The ‘Israel Lobby.’ Why Hasn’t It Run?,

“I am distressed to find that our investigation into America’s pro-Israel lobbyists may represent the most important test yet of Al Jazeera’s independence,” writes Clayton Swisher.

Occupation/Human rights

The Right doesn't want you to know about the violence of occupation,

“What disturbs the Right is not the occupation, but those who attempt to expose the violence that maintaining military rule over a civilian population requires,” writes Frima Bubis.

The Wrong Man for the Job,

“Hananel Gurfinkel helps settle Jews in East Jerusalem. He should not be in charge of the claims of the city’s Arab neighborhoods,” write the editors of Ha’aretz.

UNHRC report: settlements are a war crime,

“The establishment and expansion of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory by Israel, including the legal and administrative measures that it has taken to provide socioeconomic incentives, security, infrastructure and social services to citizens of Israel residing in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, amount to the transfer by Israel of its population into the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Slap heard ‘round the world: Ahed Tamimi becomes symbol of Palestinian resistance,

After being arrested with her mother, Nariman, days after the Dec. 15 incident, the teen with long blond curly hair swiftly became a global symbol of resistance to Israeli occupation.

Palestinian politics

Preparing for the day after Abbas,

“Mahmoud Abbas’s heir apparent, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, will have to prove himself by distinguishing his path from that of his predecessor, widely viewed by Palestinians as a failure,” writes Menachem Klein.