Shlomo Avineri
Shlomo Avineri, Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry in the first cabinet of Yitzhak Rabin, is Professor of political science at Hebrew University.
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2009-05-09
| While both the Palestinians and Israel can easily and rightly be blamed for the failure of the Oslo peace process, the fundamental problem was that effort's insistence on creating a Palestinian state from the top down. The effort should shift to building a Palestinian state from the bottom up, for which there are encouraging signs.... read |
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2008-05-19
| America's inability to broker an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reveals an important truth about the limits of US power: while America can act as a fire brigade that prevents conflicts from spilling over into wider wars, or as a midwife to peace agreements, it cannot initiate anything in the absence of political will on the part of clashing national movements.... read |
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2007-07-16
| It is easy to blame the current Palestinian crisis on individuals – be it Arafat or Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – and even easier to blame the Israeli occupation or American policies. But the Palestinians must overcome their own tragic heritage of repeated failures to create a coherent body politic.... read |
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2007-05-01
| Despite the Winograd Commission's devastating criticism of the prosecution of last summer's war with Hezbollah, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government may survive, owing to widespread fear of a comeback by the right-wing leader Binyamin Netanyahu. But a weak and discredited Israeli government will be in no position to revive meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians.... read |
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2007-01-01
| Saddam Hussein is dead, but not all Iraqis are celebrating. On the contrary, the way in which the various religious and ethnic groups in Iraq responded to his execution is emblematic of the difficulty of holding Iraq together as a coherent entity.... read |
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2006-07-17
| Today’s crisis in Lebanon is a crisis of the Lebanese state. It is this structural crisis that must be addressed if the violence is to stop.... read |
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2006-06-30
| With one-third of the Palestinians’ Hamas-led government now under arrest by Israel, the escalation in Israeli-Palestinian relations has moved beyond military confrontation. A far more fundamental question has come into view: can a Palestinian government that draws its authority from an agreement with Israel stay in power when it is led by an organization committed to the destruction of Israel?... read |
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2006-01-26
| The victory of the fundamentalist Hamas in the Palestinian elections will have far-reaching consequences for the region, some totally unexpected. Two aspects, however, are already visible.... read |
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2005-10-12
| Iraq’s draft constitution will probably be approved in the referendum to be held on October 15. But whether it is ratified or not ultimately does not matter, as the constitution – and the whole constitution-making process – is totally out of touch with the realities of a country that no longer exists as a coherent body politic. ... read |
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The Unilateral Road to Peace
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Shlomo Avineri 
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In the next three weeks, the Israeli army will do something unprecedented: instead of defending the country against external enemies or terrorism, it will evacuate – by force if necessary – 9,000 Israelis from their homes.... read
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2006-01-26
| The victory of the fundamentalist Hamas in the Palestinian elections will have far-reaching consequences for the region, some totally unexpected. Two aspects, however, are already visible.... read |
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2004-08-05
| One reason Greek Cypriots rejected last April UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan for the reunification of Cyprus was that an overwhelming majority of them felt it did not do justice to the claims of refugees displaced during the 1974 Turkish invasion. This was also one of the few occasions when international public opinion became aware that there was a refugee problem on the island, because few people knew that refugees from that war still exist.... read |
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2005-01-17
| The euphoria that has, for over a week, greeted Mahmoud Abbas's election as President of the Palestinian Authority was perhaps justified. But now it is time for a clear-eyed assessment of what lies before Palestinians, Israelis, and, perhaps more importantly, for the wider Arab world.... read |
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2005-10-12
| Iraq’s draft constitution will probably be approved in the referendum to be held on October 15. But whether it is ratified or not ultimately does not matter, as the constitution – and the whole constitution-making process – is totally out of touch with the realities of a country that no longer exists as a coherent body politic. ... read |
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2006-07-17
| Today’s crisis in Lebanon is a crisis of the Lebanese state. It is this structural crisis that must be addressed if the violence is to stop.... read |
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2005-08-16
| In the next three weeks, the Israeli army will do something unprecedented: instead of defending the country against external enemies or terrorism, it will evacuate – by force if necessary – 9,000 Israelis from their homes.... read |
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2004-05-17
| The assassination of the President of Iraq's Governing Council makes it crystal clear that the US is failing to create the minimal law-and-order needed for any sort of orderly transfer of power to take place by June 30th. Barely two months ago, the signing of a constitutional document by a US-appointed group of un-elected Iraqi officials was heralded as if it were the re-enactment of America's constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787.... read |
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2007-01-01
| Saddam Hussein is dead, but not all Iraqis are celebrating. On the contrary, the way in which the various religious and ethnic groups in Iraq responded to his execution is emblematic of the difficulty of holding Iraq together as a coherent entity.... read |
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2004-02-17
| Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's announcement that he plans to dismantle Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, as well as some settlements in the West Bank, has shocked and caught people off guard both in Israel and around the world. Many denounced Sharon's plan as a trick. But that surprise was wrong-headed from the start. ... read |
