Policy Analysis

As soon as next month, Israel’s new government could approve plans to annex a substantial portion of the West Bank. The trigger for this comes from Washington—a shift by the Trump administration to recognize Israel’s new self-declared borders. But that still doesn’t explain why. What might Israel gain by discarding

Israel's newly formed unity government intends to press ahead with a unilateral action to annex Palestinian lands in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley by early July. The current plan appears to include settlement blocs and most of the 140 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where

The world was caught unprepared by the COVID-19 outbreak, which has unleashed an unprecedented global crisis and left more than one hundred thousand people dead and many more in grave condition. The pandemic shows no signs of abating and the most recent assessments project tens of thousands of more deaths

With the announcement this week that Binyamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu would remain Israel’s prime minister in a new “emergency national unity” government, the latest poll shows that 62% of Israelis express support for this unusual political deal. Opposition leader Benny Gantz, who fell just short of unseating Netanyahu in an unprecedented

The coronavirus outbreak is having a major effect on Israeli personal and public life, but has a lesser effect so far on the Palestinians next door in the West Bank and Gaza. Even so, an extraordinary public opinion poll conducted in those territories right in the midst of this medical

The Bellwether Citizenship Question–Palestine Now Trumps Israel: East Jerusalem’s 330,000 Palestinian legal residents, though overwhelmingly not Israeli citizens, have many practical advantages over their West Bank neighbors. Only the former have the right to work, study, and travel freely inside Israel, and to participate in Israel’s extensive social welfare system

This month marks the anniversary of the pivotal Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, the first agreement of its kind. The two nations have enjoyed diplomatic relations since the signing of the treaty over 40 years ago. Through trials and challenges, the agreement has held and offers hope in a time where peace

Palestinians watching Israel’s election this week are likely to find their low expectations fulfilled. The vote produced yet another inconclusive result, with the incumbent prime minister’s Likud Party narrowly in the lead but unable to muster a majority governing coalition with its existing right-wing and religious allies. The centrist Blue

The disenchanted response of much of the Arab world to U.S. President Trump’s recently announced Peace Proposal has highlighted the serious need for alternative visions of a peace process, especially from Palestinians. And as an international community, we need to shake the foundations of this conflict to find peace. The

In between the Trump peace plan’s release on January 28 and Israel’s March 2 election, new survey data shows that most Palestinian respondents now say they prefer “regaining all of historical Palestine” over permanent peace with Israel. Yet majorities in both the West Bank and Gaza voice much more pragmatic

Three different Palestinian polls in the past few weeks indicate that the West Bank and Gaza publics roundly reject the U.S. administration’s peace plan by margins of around 90%. But the latest poll, conducted by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion (PCPO), also shows that most Palestinian respondents now also

On January 29, the Trump administration unveiled the political aspect of the long-awaited ‘Deal of the Century.’ This announcement came six months after the Manama workshop in Bahrain, which focused on the Plan’s economic vision, including proposals for investment and infrastructure projects in Palestine worth around $50 billion. The newly

In the past week since its announcement, there have effectively been no Palestinian voices coming out in favor of President Donald J. Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, announced on January 28, 2020 and dubbed as “The Deal of the Century,” whether publicly or privately. Palestinian opinion is overwhelmingly against this latest

On Tuesday, the Trump administration released the political portion of the long-awaited Middle East Peace Plan, six months after its attempts to publicly involve Arab states through the peace plan workshop in Manama, Bahrain, which introduced a $50 billion Palestinian investment and infrastructure proposal. The eighty-page document named Jerusalem as

The Palestinian Hamas movement briefly captured renewed attention when Ismail Haniyeh, a leader from Gaza, received the Ayatollah’s honors at the funeral of Qasem Soleimani in Tehran. Yet for the past few years, it has been Yahya Sinwar—head of the Hamas Political Bureau in Gaza—who has consolidated his stature as

The September 2019 election is viewed, with reason, as an important crossroad in the history of Arab society in Israel. This was an election in which the extent of Arab integration into the state emerged in an especially conspicuous manner. The Arab public’s chosen representatives opted for precedent-setting measures, most

The results of the Israeli elections have created mixed feelings, bringing a bit of despair along with a bit of hope as well. On the one hand, for Palestinians such as myself, there is a despair that there was little difference in terms of the peace process whether the right-wing

The choice of about half of Israel’s Arab citizens not to exercise the right to vote in Israel’s last parliamentary election in April dramatically affected election results, while also reflecting some powerful basic trends in Israel’s Arab society. While the voting rate—49 percent—was higher than expected due to concerns over

Palestinian public opinion clearly distinguishes between perceived rights and realities. Results from a new poll conducted June 27-July 15 show very mixed views on long-term peace issues among Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. The “two-state solution” has lost majority support. Yet if that option were available

The latest survey conducted by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion, June 27-July 15, 2019, indisputably confirms this highly counter-intuitive finding from other recent polls: on many issues related to Israel, the two million Palestinians in Gaza actually voice significantly more moderate opinions than do the roughly equal Palestinian population