The Legacy Of Benjamin Netanyahu And The Likud Party In Israel A Military Government Facilitating Disregard For Innocent Life Overpopulation Suicide And Violent Extremism In Gaza

Speaking before a group of foreign ambassadors to the United Nations on one of his final days in office, President Reuven Rivlin in New York issued a plea to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to "forget about the past" and work together with Israel to achieve peace. "We are not doomed to live to together, we are destined to live together. It's our role to end conflict," Rivlin said in a speech at the tail-end of his farewell tour in the United States. "Let's forget about the past. Let's build confidence. There are opportunities to achieve a bright future for our peoples. We are interested in continuing to work with the UN in order to meet the humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza, with whom we have no conflict," Rivlin said. Hence it is imperative that peace and harmony are manifested in Israel-Palestine; and that all parties concerned start working towards a just and fair Middle East peace plan - as well as restoring human rights, human dignity and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in the region. It is also imperative that the Bennett-Lapid government is fair and just; and that policies implemented are free from systemic injustices, so that equal rights and legal equality can be manifested in the land. This also means that Hamas's extremist leaders - in particular Mr. Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa - need to reconcile and make peace with Israel. Otherwise the Gazans must find a new leadership, so that the Gaza blockade can finally be lifted, and the UDHR can be restored in the land. It should also be noted, that more than 2.5 million Palestinians live under Israeli rule but cannot vote in national elections. This must change. All people in the land should be eligible to vote and stand for election - as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). This also means that legal equality and equal rights must be manifested in Israel-Palestine by legislation. Hence it is imperative that the Knesset implements the necessary legislation that ALL people in the land are equal under the law, and eligible to vote and stand in national elections. Failure to do so, will increasingly label Israel as an Apartheid State. That is the reality of the situation, Mr Naftali Bennett and Mr Yair Lapid! In other words, the Israeli judicial system alone, will not be able to manifest legal equality in the land. The Knesset - in particular the Bennett-Lapid government - will also have to do its part.

In a timely reminder of how the past informs the present, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal offer an authoritative account of the history of the Palestinian people from their modern origins to the Oslo peace process and beyond. Palestinians struggled to create themselves as a people from the first revolt of the Arabs in Palestine in 1834 through the British Mandate to the impact of Zionism and the founding of Israel. Their relationship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel has been fundamental in shaping that identity, and today Palestinians find themselves again at a critical juncture. In the 1990s cornerstones for peace were laid for eventual Palestinian-Israeli coexistence, including mutual acceptance, the renunciation of violence as a permanent strategy, and the establishment for the first time of Palestinian self-government. But the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a reversion to unmitigated hatred and mutual demonization. By mid-2002 the brutal violence of the Intifada had crippled Palestine's fledgling political institutions and threatened the fragile social cohesion painstakingly constructed after 1967. Kimmerling and Migdal unravel what went right--and what went wrong--in the Oslo peace process, and what lessons we can draw about the forces that help to shape a people. The authors present a balanced, insightful, and sobering look at the realities of creating peace in the Middle East.

What is the value of diplomacy? How does it affect the course of foreign affairs independent of the distribution of power and foreign policy interests? Theories of international relations too often implicitly reduce the dynamics and outcomes of diplomacy to structural factors rather than the subtle qualities of negotiation. If diplomacy is an independent effect on the conduct of world politics, it has to add value, and we have to be able to show what that value is. In Diplomacy's Value, Brian C. Rathbun sets forth a comprehensive theory of diplomacy, based on his understanding that political leaders have distinct diplomatic styles—coercive bargaining, reasoned dialogue, and pragmatic statecraft.Drawing on work in the psychology of negotiation, Rathbun explains how diplomatic styles are a function of the psychological attributes of leaders and the party coalitions they represent. The combination of these styles creates a certain spirit of negotiation that facilitates or obstructs agreement. Rathbun applies the argument to relations among France, Germany, and Great Britain during the 1920s as well as Palestinian-Israeli negotiations since the 1990s. His analysis, based on an intensive analysis of primary documents, shows how different diplomatic styles can successfully resolve apparently intractable dilemmas and equally, how they can thwart agreements that were seemingly within reach.

This book explores the development of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from a liberation movement to a national authority, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). Based on intensive fieldwork in the West Bank, Gaza and Cairo, Nigel Parsons analyzes Palestinian internal politics and their institutional-building by looking at the development of the PLO. Drawing on interviews with leading figures in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, delegates to the negotiations with Israel, and the Palestinian political opposition, it is a timely account of the Israel/Palestine conflict from a Palestinian political perspective.

Freedom in the World contains both comparative ratings and written narratives and is now the standard reference work for measuring the progress and decline in political rights and civil liberties on a global basis.

The Comparative Survey of Freedom is an institutional effort by Freedom House to monitor the progress and decline of political rights and civil lib­erties in 191 nations and 59 related territories. These year-end reviews of freedom began in 1955, when they were called the Balance Sheet of Free­dom and, still later, the Annual Sur­vey of the Progress of Freedom. This program was expanded in the early 1970s, and has appeared in Freedom Review since 1973. It has also been issued in a more developed context as a yearbook since 1978. Since 1989, the Survey project has been a year-long effort produced by regional experts, consultants and hu­man rights specialists. The Survey derives its information from a wide range of sources. Most valued of these are the many human rights activists, journalists, editors and political fig­ures around the world who keep us informed of the human rights situa­tion in their countries. Throughout the year. Freedom House personnel regularly conduct fact-finding missions to gain more in-depth knowledge of the vast political transformations affecting our world. During these week-to-month-long in­vestigations, we make every effort to meet a cross-section of political par­ties and associations, human rights monitors, religious figures, represen­tatives of both the private sector and trade union movement, academics and journalists. During the past year. Free­dom House staff traveled to numerous countries throughout most of the world's geographical and political re­gions. The Survey project team also consults a vast array of published source materials, ranging from the reports of other human rights organi­zations to often rare, regional news­papers and magazines. This year's Survey team includes: Adrian Karatnycky, Martin Edwin Anderson, Kristen Guida, Marshall Freeman Harris, Thomas R. Lansner, Arch Puddington, Leonard R. Sussman, and George Zarycky. The general edi­tor of Freedom in the World is Roger Kaplan; the managing editor is Tara Kelly. This year's research coordinator was Charles Graybow.