Noting the stellar performances of young Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf on the “Arab Idol” singing contest, ATFP urges its friends to join us in voting for Assaf. Call the “Arab Idol” hotline and punch #3, or send a text message to this number: 011 882162277411 with the message reading simply 3.

A businessman who attended the meeting said that the lack of progress toward a two-state solution could send Israel down a slippery slope toward a bi-national state.“The world will not accept this,” he said.“Foreign investments will not come to such a state. No one will buy goods from such a state."

Daniel Barenboim: Imprisoning conscientious objectors reflects not only injustice of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, but also a deplorable retreat from the great Jewish moral tradition.

Dr. Fayyad succeeded even when success was difficult and thorny, and he failed when anyone else would also have failed, because he was made to fail and absolutely prevented from succeeding. We hope and expect, and our people look forward to, his return to the national leadership scene.

Israel is going ahead with plans to build more than 1,000 settler homes in the West Bank, a spokesman said Thursday, a step that drew criticism from the Palestinians and may pose a challenge to peace efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry.

Ali Ayyad: Along with many other West Bank Palestinians who own land and property in East Jerusalem, my family is caught in a Kafkaesque trap: We are considered absentee owners - and the Israeli government has the right to take our homes away from us.