This month, in Amman, Jordan, Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators met for their first time in 15 months to try to restart the “peace process.” Meanwhile, the Palestinian group that rules in Gaza, Hamas, has repeated its declaration: "The battle for the liberation of Jerusalem is closer than ever and, God willing, we will win." [...]

Anyone who has read my many posts and columns on the Holy Land and the political struggle between Israel and Palestine knows I have reservations about the Israeli treatment of Palestinian Christians in particular and those who inhabit the West Bank in general. I have consistently argued for the necessity of a two-state solution whereby [...]

Direct peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine will resume on September 2 in Washington, D.C. The announcement of the talks has been greeted with a polite but skeptical nod from the media and a rolling of the eyes from experts in the realpolitik of international affairs. The assumption behind these dismissals is that peace talks [...]

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and I are both graduates of the same university, the University of Texas at Austin.  When I told him this morning that the Longhorn football team was #4 in the preseason rankings, he said, "That's good, it's bad when they are too high."  Fayyad's caution about his beloved Texas Longhorns is [...]

The Holy Land is a place of stories. Everyone has a story about Israel and the occupied territory called Palestine by those who live there. Many of the events are drenched in blood -- often that of relatives present or past -- which is why, when story is pitted against story, death against death, little [...]

In this Crisis Magazine classic, Ronald J. Rychlak says that while Pius XII was no Nazi collaborator, Hitler did have a strong religious ally... the grand mufti of Jerusalem.     The Jewish Holocaust of World War II is a story of human tragedy, with real victims, real villains, and real heroes. Important questions often [...]