Jeff Halper The claim that we in Palestine/Israel find ourselves in a historical moment, at a “fateful crossroads,” sounds like a worn cliché. How many historical moments have we entered and passed through, seeming without fateful consequences, in the past century and more? The illusion that nothing is final, that the occasional “crises” in the… Read more »

Jeff Halper – 3 Jan 2017 Perhaps the main losers of the American election, besides Donald Trump’s own voters, are the Palestinians. Meaning, of course, that the Israelis are among the big winners. Trump, who supported Netanyahu actively in the 2013 Israeli election, has already invited him to meet “at the first opportunity.” His advisor… Read more »

Jeff Halper September 1, 2008 Now, a few days after my release from jail in the wake of my trip to Gaza , I’m posting a few notes to sum things up. First, the mission of the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli siege proved a success beyond all expectations. Our reaching Gaza and… Read more »

CIVIL SOCIETY AS WATCHDOG IN THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATIONS   By Jeff Halper (3 September 2010)   Civil society is a blunt instrument. As “public opinion” we form a vague background to government decision-making and as voters we have a broad – but only broad – effect on who is in power and what policies are… Read more »

By Jeff Halper Published in The New Internationalist (April 2006) This is, as they say, the crunch. This is the political moment all Israeli governments – all of them, Labour, Likud and ‘National Unity’ – have been working towards the past four decades of Occupation: the final push for an expanded Israel, the permanent foreclosure… Read more »

The fatal flaw in most analyses of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the assumption that if the Palestinians can just get a state of their own, then all will be fine. A state on all the Occupied Territories (UN Resolution 242), on most of the Occupied Territories (Oslo and the Road Map to the Geneva Initiative),… Read more »

By Jeff Halper (November 2008) Even before the voting began, Israeli politicians and pundits were asking: Will an Obama Administration be good for Israel? “Be good for Israel” is our code for “Will the US allow us to keep our settlements and continue to support our efforts to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians from ever… Read more »

Published by Ma’an News 26 March 2014 By Jeff Halper The “Judaization” of Jerusalem and the West Bank continues apace, despite (and in fact because of) the so-called “Kerry initiative.” Over the past few months the Israeli government has intensified its campaign of demolitions in Jerusalem, in the strategic E1 area between Jerusalem and the… Read more »

By Jeff Halper (May 2016)   Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s address to both houses of Congress was perhaps the most skilled use of Newspeak since George Orwell invented the term in his novel 1984. (He had help: author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel reportedly drafted large sections of the speech.) Just as… Read more »

By Jeff Halper  October 12, 2018   Over the years tons of ink have been expended on the seemingly interminable issue of the Palestinians and Israel. The wonderful Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem is filled from floor to ceiling with books, films and merchandise on the Palestinians and their struggles, while Steimatsky’s in West Jerusalem… Read more »