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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

Losing Lebanon

Violence has shaken Lebanon as Hezbollah, backed by Iran, resists efforts by the nation's pro-western government to weaken its power.

Gershom GorenbergMay 14, 2008

The time, according to Hilal Khashan, was 10 minutes past the ceasefire. That was another way of saying 10 minutes after another Hezbollah victory, Khashan explained. I phoned Khashan -- head of the political science department at Beirut's American University -- several days into Lebanon's latest armed upheaval. He spoke in a strangely dispassionate tone I've heard before in Jerusalem and Ramallah, the voice of a man taking refuge from chaos in careful analysis.

The Mideast Editing Wars

The hawkish pro-Israel group CAMERA's campaign to warp Wikipedia articles was ineffectual. But it's a warning not to trust the online encyclopedia -- and to be wary of partisan "accuracy" advocates in the Israeli-Palestinian Narrative War.

Gershom GorenbergMay 01, 2008

"We will go to war," reads the ungrammatical email, "after we have build our army, equipped it, trained… so if you want to win this war help us build our army."

J Street on the Map

Today's announcement of a new Washington-based pro-Israel lobby is long overdue. Finally, there is a lobby working for what Israel and the U.S. really need: Middle East peace.

Gershom GorenbergApr 15, 2008

Reading the front page of my Hebrew paper last weekend, I tried to imagine an American senator saying something like, "I have great respect for the Israel Defense Forces. But eventually Israel will have to leave the West Bank. In its heart, the Israeli nation has already decided. The Israeli army should not create a rift with Palestinians that haunts us for generations. Think of Palestinians stripped at the checkpoints only because there might be terrorists among them. Think of those who stand for hours at checkpoints because we fear that a booby-trapped car could pass through."

Hamas: A Silent Partner for Peace?

Faced with internal political pressures and the hard fact of Israel's strength, Hamas has moderated its political positions significantly. The moment may be ripe for pushing Hamas further toward the center.

Gershom GorenbergApr 10, 2008

What would happen if Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal gave an interview and nearly no one in the West listened? Well then, it would be possible for the Israeli government and the Bush administration to continue with dead-end policies for dealing with the Islamic movement that rules Gaza, without anyone asking questions about failed strategic assumptions.

ROAD TO SEGREGATION.

Gershom GorenbergMar 28, 2008

The Israeli Supreme Court has given its stamp of approval, at least temporarily, to an army policy of keeping a key West Bank highway off-limits to Palestinian drivers, as New York Times correspondent Ethan
Bronnerreports
today. The irony: The Israeli government originally told the Court that the road was being built to serve local Palestinians. Bronner notes that I've found the paper trail in Israeli archives proving that the road was actually as part of the Israeli settlement effort in the West Bank. The explanation

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