Henry Siegman

The bilateral peace process that the U.S. has doggedly sought to insulate from outside "interference" is not only an empty exercise but has served to provide Israel with cover for its settlement project. From its outset the goal of this project has been to subvert Palestinian statehood, a goal from...

Following President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East at the Department of State, The New York Review of Books (NYRB) published a letter that had been presented to the president this past January by a number of prominent, former, senior, U.S. government officials. The signatories to the...

What conclusions are to be drawn about the state of Middle East peacemaking from the extraordinary spectacle of the adversarial encounter between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their several major adversarial addresses in the second half of May?

The spectacle did not bring an Israeli-Palestinian...

For the longest time, Israeli governments have explained their resistance to Palestinian statehood by pointing to the Palestinians' and the Arab world's democracy deficit.

The dishonesty of that explanation has now been exposed to even the most credulous by the reaction of Israel's government to the democratic revolutions sweeping...

Virtually overnight, the Arab Middle East has been unrecognizably transformed. The implications of that transformation for America's vital interests in that region and for Israel-Palestine peacemaking will be far-reaching. They will also be largely interconnected.

Most observers seem to agree that Israeli fears of an emergent political influence of...

In response to President Barack Obama's criticism of Israel's most recently announced building plans in East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman made the following statements on behalf of the Prime Minister: "Jerusalem is not a settlement." "Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel." "Israel never agreed to...

This piece originally published in Arabic translation by Al-Hayat

The sloppiness -- not to say outright misrepresentations -- that characterize the punditry of too many Israeli journalists is striking.

I was reminded of that reading Ari Shavit's claim in his Ha'aretz column of October 7 that in...

Originally published on www.thenation.com

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks at the formal White House launching of the resumed Middle East peace talks on September 2nd were the clearest indication yet of his lack of seriousness. But neither the host, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nor any of...

Originally published in Hebrew in Ha'aretz.

Since the Goldstone report, Israel's political leaders and public have been agitated over what they claim to be a worldwide effort to "delegitimize" the Jewish state. A recent study by an Israeli policy institute warning of a looming global threat to the...

This article was published in the January 25, 2010 edition of the Nation.

Israel's relentless drive to establish "facts on the ground" in the occupied West Bank, a drive that continues in violation of even the limited settlement freeze to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself, seems...

Bradley Burston is offended by my characterization of Israel's inability to let go of the occupied territories as a pathology, a characterization he says can only be made by someone who hates Israelis.

Perhaps to soften the blow, Burston also wrote (rather bizarrely, I thought) in his column...

This column originally appeared in the New York Times.

Polls indicate that President Obama enjoys the support of only 6 to 10 percent of the Israeli public -- perhaps his lowest popularity in any country in the world.

According to media reports, the president's advisers are searching for...