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Middle East Task Force
The American Strategy Program’s Middle East Task Force seeks to inform and deepen the debate on American policy towards the Middle East both here in Washington and across the United States. Our task is to advance sensible debate and offer strategic solutions for resolving long-running conflicts in the Middle East, and core among them the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Within the American Strategy Program, this initiative will seek to draw on the moderate debate from a region of increasing importance to America’s strategic interests and to international peace and security, through dialogue, policy research, events and media that target practitioners, policy makers, opinion leaders, the American public, and the international community. Working closely with partner institutions in the United States and abroad, the initiative is laying the groundwork for stability, security, and eventually a sustainable peace that serves U.S., Israeli, Palestinian and global interests.
Is the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) leadership, which is currently proposing to seek United Nations
recognition of a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 border, about to shake up
the Israeli-Palestinian paralysis in a game-changing way? The answer for now
would appear to be "no." Both U.S. and EU officials were quick to
distance themselves from the idea and label it premature. For their part, the
Israelis took umbrage at this hint of Palestinian unilateralism. In case anyone
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stepped from the
frying pan into the fire this weekend, when she sparked a controversy regarding
U.S. policy toward Israeli settlements right after some tough days of public
and private diplomacy in Pakistan. But was the controversy as serious as it
seemed? And what does it means for the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace
efforts? Here, a fact check on some settlement myths and misconceptions.
1. What is the
significance of Clinton's linguistic acrobatics?
President Obama's efforts to achieve a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Arab states, including a Palestinian state, received a much appreciated, if surprising, boost with the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the US president. It's fair to assume that the Nobel prize committee is hoping that the award will promote Obama's diplomatic efforts across a range of issues.
Headlines are now being prepared following U.S. President Barack Obama's convening of a trilateral Israeli-Palestinian-American peace summit today in New York. Many will seek to belittle the president's efforts thus far. The summit was being dismissed as a photo-op before it even happened.
The following segment is part of a live debate between the New America Foundation's Daniel Levy and the American Enterprise Institute's David Frum. The debate was hosted by TheEconomist.com and moderated by Xan Smiley.
On October 13, John Ging, the director of operations in
Gaza for the
United Nations Relief and Works, had a public discussion with Amjad Atallah,
co-director of the New America Foundation's Middle East Task Force. This year
UNRWA commemorates six decades of service to the Palestinian refugees, and Mr.
Ging spoke about the current and prospective challenges facing UNRWA and
Gaza as a whole.
On
September 16, General Danny
Rothschild (Ret.) of the Israeli Defense Forces and Major General Peal D. Eaton
(Ret.) of the US army discussed Israel and the United States' shared strategic
interests with an emphasis on how the two-state solution has become a matter of
both Israeli and US national security. The topics discussed ranged from the
potential for settlement evacuation to Israel's incursion into Gaza during December 2008
and January 2009. The event was moderated by Daniel Levy, Director… more
Please join the New American Foundation and our co-sponsor,
Americans for Peace Now, for a briefing by Michael Sfard, followed by an end of
day wine reception.
Mr. Sfard is Israel's pre-eminent legal expert on
settlements and the challenges posed by
the broader infrastructure of Israeli
occupation to the daily life of Palestinians, to the two-state solution, to
American policy and to Israel's democracy.
As President Obama sits down with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, beginning an intense two week engagement with Middle East leaders, the new release of a Zogby Interactive survey helps clarify the political landscape here in the United States.
