Rosh Hashana is a time for reflection, a time to look back while considering the future. Israel is an amazing country. There is so much to be proud of, so many achievements in such a short time. No other country has accomplished so much while faced with so many challenges. Yet with all its achievements, it is difficult to predict if Israel’s immediate future carries the promise of peace, security and prosperity, or a much less happy fate.

Israeli understanding of the Jewishness of Israel is complex, and it makes the right of return the most contentious issue on the negotiating agenda

President Obama’s popularity in Israel is at an all time low for a US president. Only 4% of Israelis believe that the president is pro-Israeli, according to a survey published last week by the Jerusalem Post.

President Obama does not face elections in Israel so perhaps he does not need to be overly concerned with this statistic but in order for Obama’s Middle East peace plans to succeed, the Israeli public must have a “buy-in”.

Israeli society really does want peace, even if at the same time it expresses attitudes which are against making concessions to the Arabs, and in particular to the Palestinians. Israelis – like Palestinians – have lost confidence in peace processes and of hopes that there is a partner for peace on the other side. As the Oslo process lingered on far beyond the dates of the agreements and violence increased, people in the region and across the globe lost their patience and their belief that Israeli-Palestinian peace was possible.

We still have no real idea of when or what President Obama will present as an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. In the meantime, the Prime Minister’s special emissary, Yitzhak Molcho, is off to Washington to try and reach some understandings with the US administration prior to the next meeting between Senator Mitchell and Netanyahu.

The rumors floating around suggest that Obama’s plan will aim to focus first on setting borders between the State of Israel and the future State of Palestine, now that Netanyahu has accepted the two-state solution.

JERUSALEM IS not a united, undivided city. It is, in fact, very divided. Jerusalem is almost two separate cities. Perhaps the division is not east and west – those old divides have been changed by 42 years of massive Israeli construction in what was once the part of Jerusalem controlled by Jordan. It is true that there is a Jewish majority, not only in west Jerusalem but also in what is called east Jerusalem. The divide in Jerusalem is clearly on national-ethnic lines – there is an Israeli Jerusalem and there is a Palestinian Jerusalem.

Yes Netanyahu, by all means invite Abbas to meet with you. I am quite sure that this small sample of a possible agenda is much more modest than any your own creative imagination can come up with.

WHAT’S ALL the fuss anyway? Who really cares about a few more houses and school classrooms in settlements? Well, the whole world.

OK, Binyamin Netanyahu said the magic words “Palestinian state,” now what? I want to give our prime minister the benefit of doubt and say that he even meant it; at least that is what he told US President Barack Obama. Where do we go from here? How do those words become transformed into reality? Let’s try to imagine.

The opportunity for making a strategic change in the Israeli-Palestinian relation is here and now, despite the fact that it cannot be done by traditional means. There is close to zero chance of a bilateral negotiated Israeli-Palestinian agreement at this time given the political constellations both in Israel and in Palestine.

Over the years peace plans have been emerging on the Middle East peace track, yet most of them were dismissed by both Israelis and Palestinians.

The latest one came out of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), a group jointly run by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin and Palestinian lawmaker Hanna Siniora.