The international community must come up with a plan for United Nations to monitor the abuses inside Syria, writes Donatella Rovera in the Washington Post.
More than a year after the Syrian uprising started, world leaders have failed to agree on an effective course of action to bring tangible relief and protection to Syrian civilians who continue to be mercilessly targeted by government forces for having dared to call for the removal of Bashar al-Assad and his repressive regime. Hundreds of nonviolent, pro-reform protesters have been fatally shot; thousands have been injured, arrested and tortured.
A Worst-Case Scenario in Egypt?
Zack Gold of the National Interest sees a lose-lose situation in Egypt’s presidential election run-off.
The SCAF has shown over and over that it has no interest in giving up military prerogatives. As such, a contest between the military and the Brotherhood will continue to simmer. Egyptian voters must decide if they prefer that conflict out in the open or behind the scenes. A Shafik presidency could block the independent parliament’s ambitions on behalf of the military, and a President Morsi would always have the possibility of a coup in the back of his mind. Neither scenario is particularly democratic.
Going Directly to Israelis and Palestinians
Writing in the New York Times, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Thomas Schelling, Jerome Segal, and Javier Solana put forward their own proposal in the New York Times for a new peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians.
With no prospect of meaningful negotiations between the Palestinians and the Netanyahu government, a new approach to peace is needed, one that focuses on the Israeli and Palestinian people themselves. Though not a perfect analogy, let’s call it UNSCOP-2 because the work of UNSCOP, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, in 1947, is the closest precedent for what is needed today.
Going Directly To The Wastebasket: Another Plan For The “Peace Process”
Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams presents his rebuttal of the peace plan by Ben-Ami, Solana et al.
The confidence of these four authors in getting “majorities on both sides” to support such a plan is bizarre. It has been tried. The “Geneva Initiative” of 2003, a lengthy, detailed peace plan developed by Israelis and Palestinians who know a lot more about the issues than these four gentlemen, went nowhere. The “People’s Voice Initiative” sponsored by one Israeli and one Palestinian leader, who offered some central principles for a peace deal and asked citizens on both sides to sign up, got 400,000 signatures in a combined population of 11.5 million.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu
Aaron David Miller of Foreign Policy takes a critical look at whether Israel’s prime minister can meet the challenges facing his country.
For Netanyahu, the Jewish people are at risk. It’s deeply ingrained in his approach to the world. To be sure, Jews worry for a living – their dark history compels them do to so. But Bibi worries about everything, including the Americans, whom he believes (perhaps rightly at times) don’t understand Israel’s situation. You live in Chevy Chase, he once told me – we don’t have any margin for error in our neighborhood. Ehud Olmert used to say that Israeli prime ministers sleep with one eye open. Bibi sleeps with two open. He’s constantly on guard.
Support Israel and Attend the June 3rd Israel Day Parade
Writing in Algemeiner, Ronn Torossian and Matthew Hiltzik urge New York’s Jewish community to put aside political differences and come together for the city’s annual Israel Day Parade.
We fear many American Jews are losing sight of our sense of community, allowing differences of opinion that are extensions of the larger left vs. right, “religious” vs. “non-religious,” to polarize the Jewish community. It’s true that not everyone who supports Israel has the same way of expressing their support. We can’t agree on everything, but June 3rd is a day to put differences aside and focus on what unites us: our appreciation for Israel and our fellow Jews. This day is about Israel, what Israel means to us, and how we send that message to the world. It’s a day to celebrate the strength from the diversity of Am Yisrael.
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