BICOM

‘Peace comes dropping slowly…’ said the poet William Butler Yeats. Exactly 20 years after the historic Oslo accords, seen then as the cornerstone of a peace settlement, Israelis and Palestinians are once again trying to strike an agreement.

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Twenty years after Oslo: peace now?

By Toby Greene

Was Israel’s attempt to resolve its dispute with the Palestinians through bilateral negotiations with the PLO doomed from the outset, or can talks finally succeed twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords? The grim expression on Yitzhak Rabin’s face when shaking Yasser Arafat’s hand at the signing of the Oslo Accords was telling. Rabin would have preferred a deal that cut out Arafat, but he urgently wanted progress, and the secret understandings hammered out by his foreign minister Shimon Peres with the PLO in Oslo were the only game in town…

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Two States is Common Sense

By Hitham Kayali

Many of the initial enthusiasts have come to favour other solutions or have simply chosen to turn a blind eye to the conflict. Within both political elites, and among the two peoples, there does not seem to be much hope. But despite all, the two-state solution still has one thing in its favor: common sense.…

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Fathom 4 will be available on October 4 and includes these highlights: Matthew Levitt on the Hezbollah’s criminal networks, David Pollock on Palestinian incitement, Richard Pater on a day in the life of an IDF reservist, Yair Raveh on the rise of the Israeli horror movie, Stephen J. Zipperstein on a new biography of Menechem Begin, Israel Bartal on Shlomo Sand; Einat Wilf on the need to reform UNRWA, Nir and Grey on the campaign for a new Israeli ‘Basic Law: Social Rights’, Yigal Shtayim on new technologies of social protest in Israel, Rabbi Dov Lipman MK on his dreams for the future of the Haredim, Rupert Shortt interviewed about his new book Christianophobia, Podcasts of Danny Seidemann on the future of Jerusalem and the Director and stars of the film Within the Eye of the Storm, plus Andrei Markovits on the legendary Jewish baseball payer Hank Greenberg. And more. Don’t miss the new Fathom on October 4.

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Fathom is published quarterly by the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM).