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Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent for The Prospect. He is the author of The Unmaking of Israel, of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 and of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. He blogs at South Jerusalem. Follow @GershomG.

Recent Articles

The Coalition Against Israeli Democracy

A proposed amendment to Israel's citizenship law shows how far right Netanyahu's government really is.

Gershom GorenbergOct 14, 2010
Israeli Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

Israeli Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog is normally a soporific politician. Dressed up in a suit, he looks and sounds more like a boy about to celebrate his bar mitzvah than like a Cabinet member. Asked for a sound bite on a controversial issue, he's likely to answer with a tangle of equivocation. Herzog owes his senior status in the Labor Party to legacy -- his father's career in Labor concluded with 10 years as Israel's figurehead president, his grandfather was Israel's first chief rabbi -- and to his proven willingness to support whoever's in charge in the party. A key example: Last year he backed party leader Ehud Barak's decision to join Benjamin Netanyahu's government, over the objections of Knesset colleagues who recalled that Labor once had principles.

Netanyahu Isn't in Charge Here

The lesson from the latest crisis in Israeli-Palestinian talks is that Obama should be negotiating with the Israeli public.

Gershom GorenbergSep 29, 2010
Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak arrives at the Pentagon, Monday, Sept. 20, 2010. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The confession of weakness was startling. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was explaining to the BBC why Israeli-Palestinian peace talks should continue despite Israel's refusal to extend its freeze on new building in West Bank settlements. People had to understand, he said, "Israel doesn't have a way to stop this building totally."

The Occupation Comes Home

Ruling the West Bank continues to corrode Israeli society.

Gershom GorenbergSep 15, 2010
Israeli police officers treat a man after a Qassam rocket, fired from the Gaza Strip, landed in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, Thursday, June 15, 2006. (AP Photo/Dave Buimovitch)

A recent news item in a niche publication about a new recruitment program for Israel's national police force obliquely provided some of the most telling testimony I've seen recently about the importance of the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It said nothing about the talks, yet read properly, it was a reminder that reaching a two-state solution is essential not only as a means of achieving peace -- critical as that is in itself -- but also of protecting Israel's own society from the rot caused by occupation.

Attacks in Hebron.

Gershom GorenbergAug 31, 2010

At dusk today, terrorists shot and killed four Israelis on the main West Bank highway south of Hebron. News reports identified the victims as residents of the nearby Israeli settlements of Beit Hagai and Kiryat Arba. Hamas -- the ultra-nationalist Islamicist group locked in conflict with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority -- quickly took responsibility for the attack. The Hebron area is known as a Hamas stronghold, and Hamas bitterly opposes the direct peace talks between Israel and the PA that are scheduled to resume in Washington on Thursday.

Is This the Road to Israeli-Palestinian Peace?

Middle East peace talks resume in Washington on Thursday, but conditions on the ground belie optimism.

Gershom GorenbergAug 31, 2010
Palestinian cars with waving Palestinian flags approach an Israeli army roadblock near Ramallah, on Tuesday, June 22, 2010. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Update: At nightfall, Israel time, Hamas terrorists killed four Israelis on a highway near Hebron in the West Bank. The attack was clearly aimed at discrediting the Palestinian Authority's efforts to stop terror, and at thwarting the resumption of peace talks. Read more here.

"Watch out for the yahud," for the Jews, said the young Palestinian man outside Ramallah whom we asked for directions. My colleague asked what he meant; we certainly weren't going to run into crowds of Israeli Jews, civilians, or soldiers if we took the wrong turn in Ramallah. Besides, our accents made it obvious that we were Jews ourselves.

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