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Egypt’s foreign minister paid a rare visit to Israel on Sunday, saying that his country remains a “steadfast and unwavering” supporter of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians but warning that conditions for achieving that are deteriorating. Sameh Shoukry’s trip was the first official visit to Israel since 2007 and reflected the strong but low-profile ties that have developed between the two countries in recent years. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Shoukry’s visit was aimed at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. …

International mediators trying to promote Mideast peace warned in a highly anticipated report Friday that Israel’s settlement expansion is eroding the viability of a Palestinian state and raises “legitimate questions” about its commitment to a two-state solution. The Quartet of Mideast negotiators — the U.N., U.S., European Union and Russia — also criticized the glorification of Palestinians who commit “terrorist attacks” against Israel and called on the Palestinian Authority to “act decisively” to stop incitement to violence and clearly condemn “all acts of terrorism.” While the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and the majority of people on both sides support a...

Former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton believes both Republican candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz "missed the mark" with their approach to the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict. Speaking Sunday to CNN, Clinton vowed to support Israel but also said she would insist on the "two-state solution", that is the formation of a Palestinian state, in order to bring an end to the conflict. In the interview, Clinton was asked about Trump's and Cruz's comments last week. While Trump indicated he would be "sort of a neutral guy" on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Cruz said, "I have no...

Opposition leader MK Yitzhak Herzog admitted on Wednesday that the "two-state solution" is not feasible at this time. "I look at the reality, and the reality as I read it is a complex one. I cannot see in the current reality how the two-state solution could be implemented," the Zionist Union chairman told Army Radio in an interview. "I want to aspire to it, I want to negotiate it, and I am committed to it, but I do not see the ability to do that now," added Herzog, who continued, "In the absence of the ability to do that right...

In response to Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon's (Likud) announcement last Wednesday that a strategic 40 dunam compound is being officially added to the Gush Etzion region in Judea, the US lost little time in condemning the move. The land that is being added was purchased by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz and his wife, and is referred to as "Beit Bracha." Jerusalem Councilman and Israel Land Fund (ILF) Director Arieh King covertly obtained the abandoned church complex adjacent to Highway 60 three years ago according to reports, and worked to renovate the compound. On Friday, US State Department spokesperson John Kirby...

On Saturday, US Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech before the Brookings Institute's Saban Forum. Kerry focused on the Palestinian conflict with Israel and sought to draw a distinction between the two-state policy model, which he supports, and the one-state policy model, which he rejects. To justify his rejection of a policy based on Israeli sovereignty over areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines, Kerry raised a series of questions about what a one-state policy would look like. I answered all of his questions, as well as many others, in great detail in my book The Israeli Solution: A...

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday said that after a new Israeli government has been sworn in he will investigate whether there are "realistic options" for a return to peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), Reuters reports. "Once a new government has been sworn in, the Secretary-General will explore with Prime Minister Netanyahu realistic options for a return to meaningful negotiations on a two state solution," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, after Netanyahu was able to clinch a deal to form a coalition hours before a deadline. Dujarric also said Ban was "deeply concerned by recent...

What does the State Department’s Wendy Sherman do with her spare time when not negotiating weak nuclear deals with rogue regimes? The same as the rest of the Obama foreign-policy team: threaten Israel with diplomatic isolation at the United Nations. Sherman issued some thinly veiled threats yesterday in remarks to a gathering of Reform movement leaders in which she made clear that the administration expects the next Israeli government to do its bidding with respect to supporting a two-state solution with the Palestinians. While there’s nothing new about this insistence, Sherman’s language followed the same pattern as other remarks issued...

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said the United States should not be attempting to tell Israel how to negotiate peace with the Palestinians, and he wouldn’t do so if elected president. “Israel is a sovereign nation, and I trust the leaders of Israel to determine whether they want to adopt a one-state solution or a two-state solution,” Cruz said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The Obama administration has “demonstrated an arrogance that America’s going to dictate the terms of security in Israel. It’s not our place to do it,” Cruz said. …

<p>Ugh. Our petulant man-child Muslim president and his Israel-hating administration are now threatening that they just might agree to a UN Security Council resolution that would call for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and push them into negotiations to create a palestinian state.</p>

In first post election interview, Netanyahu says he wants a ‘sustainable’ two-state solution, notes ‘we have no other alternative’ to continued cooperation between US and Israel

Days after vowing not to establish a Palestinian state, Netanyahu says something else in his first post-election interview. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has retracted his pre-election statements, according to which he would not allow a Palestinian state to be established. "I don't want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution," Netanyahu said Thursday in an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. "I haven't changed my policy." Netanyahu said his earlier comments were a reflection of changing conditions on the Palestinian side, pointing to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's pact to form a unity government with Hamas, which Israel,...

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi said in remarks published Sunday that Egypt is prepared to send troops into a future Palestinian state to assist local police and guarantee Israel’s security. In comments to Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, el-Sissi said the troops would be stationed there temporarily to establish confidence. In a clarifying statement later, his office said the idea is a way to encourage Israel to accept a two-state solution. …

Assistant Spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry Susan Shibley said on Friday that her country would not follow in the footsteps of Sweden and recognize a Palestinian State, Anadolu news agency said. She was speaking at a press conference held in Berlin. She said that her country has been supporting a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on the two-state plan via a deal between the Israeli and the Palestinians. …

Irish senators have adopted a non-binding motion on Palestine recognition, as the EU prepares to set out new red lines on Israel relations. The motion, tabled by Averil Power from the opposition Fianna Fáil party, passed without a vote on Wednesday (22 October) after winning cross-party support. It urges the Irish government “to formally recognize the state of Palestine and do everything it can to help secure a viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. Power told the Senate that in the past 20 years “while pretending to talk peace … [Israel’s] illegal settlements in the West Bank have trebled...

For more than 20 years since the Oslo process began, those urging Israel to make more and more concessions to the Palestinians have based their views on the belief that both peoples supported a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict. But a new poll of Palestinian public opinion shows that an overwhelming majority opposes any goal other than eliminating the State of Israel. The poll, conducted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, showed some interesting and, in part, contradictory results. Only 27.3 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution. By contrast, more than two-thirds see the restoration...

Synopsis A manifesto that exposes the flaws in the two-state policy of the United States toward Israel and the Palestinians and offers a direct and powerful call for Israeli sovereignty in the region. The reigning consensus in elite and academic circles is that the United States must seek to resolve the Palestinians' conflict with Israel by implementing the so-called two-state solution. Establishing a Palestinian state, so the thinking goes, would be a panacea for all the region’s ills. It would end the Arab world’s conflict with Israel, because the reason the Arab world is anti-Israel is that there is no...

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed on Tuesday the formation of the new Palestinian “unity government” which includes the Hamas terrorist group. In a statement, Ban expressed hope that new opportunities for progress towards a two-State solution with Israel will emerge soon, saying the UN had received assurances that the Hamas-Fatah deal would be implemented on the basis of previous commitments such as the recognition of Israel and non-violence. …

The assumption that Israel must accept the Kerry plan as a basis for negotiations with the Palestinian Authority — lest it risk a rift with the U.S. — should be assessed in light of the full context of U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation, the imploding Arab street, the unique foundations and nature of U.S.-Israel ties, the U.S. political system, the ineffectiveness of prior U.S. plans and Israel’s own security requirements. U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation transcends the Palestinian issue. Despite the 66-year-old disagreement between the two governments about the ways and means to resolve the Palestinian issue, strategic cooperation has catapulted tounprecedented heights. Notwithstanding...

President Barack Obama is not as optimistic as his Secretary of State regarding the possibility of peace between Israel and the Arabs. Obama, who gave an interview to the New Yorker magazine on Sunday, said that he believed the odds of reaching a peace agreement were less than 50%. The President told the magazine’s editor David Remnick that these odds were true in all three of his main initiatives in the region—with Iran, with Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and with Syria. “On the other hand,” he said, “in all three circumstances we may be able to push the...