BRIEFING MEMO - Israel’s New Governing Coalition: what happened and what to expect?Daniel Levy | May 22nd 2020

On Sunday May 17th, a new Israeli government took office after 508 days of caretaker rule since parliament formally disbanded the government leading to elections in December 2018. There followed three rounds of inconclusive elections, the most recent being on March 2nd, 2020. The path to a new government and coalition being formed was paved by a split within Blue and White, led by Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi, to join with Netanyahu. The Gantz faction (rump Blue and White party) reached an agreement with Netanyahu to form what is termed a parity government, ...

Don’t Call It a Peace Plan - Ten ways Trump has launched a relentless assault on the very idea of Israeli-Palestinian peaceDaniel Levy - The American Prospect | January 30th 2020

From the mid-1990s to the early noughties, much of my professional life was spent in a rather niche pursuit that came flooding back to me with yesterday’s release of President Trump’s “Peace Vision.” The drafting of Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements became my thing—sometimes in uniform serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sometimes as a concerned citizen in informal and often clandestine talks, and sometimes as an adviser in the offices of the Israeli prime minister and then justice minister during official negotiations. I was a negotiator at ...

Trump Channels Karl Marx in his plans for Israel-PalestineDaniel Levy - Responsible Statecraft | January 29th 2020

It would be nice to dismiss White House announcement on Israel/Palestine on Tuesday as simply a scam, offering more material to political satirists and comedy writers than to policymakers and conflict resolution practitioners in the Middle East. Nothing to see here, move on. 

Daniel Levy Remarks at 9th Valdai Discussion Club’s Middle East ConferenceDaniel Levy | February 18th 2020

First of all, thank you for bringing me back to Valdai. I’ll start with a very simple premise, which is that wars have terrible consequences, conflicts are devastating, the human cost primarily, then economic and opportunity costs, entire generations are denied their future. And it’s the people on the ground who incomparably pay the greatest price. Not external powers, not the U.S. So, the goal, avoid conflict. And the premise of the session, as I understand it, is that it seemed we were moving on a trajectory towards perhaps even more dramatic conflict than we have already s...

Five Key Takeaways From Israel’s Indecisive Election RerunDaniel Levy - The American Prospect | September 23rd 2019

Anyone expecting clarity from Israel’s electoral rerun will be disappointed. The public was sent back to the polls when coalition negotiations following the April 9 election failed. The resumption of those negotiations based on the new distribution of seats in the Knesset will not prove any easier. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will soon call the party leaders to begin the traditional round of post-election consultations, and within days will call on either Benjamin Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White Party (with 33 seats), or Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the Likud (31 seats),...

Kushner’s Israel-Palestine Shindig: Easily Forgettable and Rather ImportantDaniel Levy - The American Prospect | July 5th 2019

Jared Kushner’s long-awaited “Peace to Prosperity” gathering at the Manama Four Seasons Hotel in Bahrain generated just about the level of serious coverage that it merited—precious little. For all its borderline pantomime-style imbecility (Kushner himself put in a performance as someone pretending to care about the Palestinians), this convening actually matters. Coming at a time in the region when the U.S. is inching closer to an armed confrontation with Iran and endorsing Israel’s permanent annexation of more Palestinian territories, the Bahrain work...