When Gabriela Shalev arrived at the United Nations in 2008 as Israel's first female ambassador, she was determined to launch a diplomatic offensive to improve her country's international standing. Now Shalev, who stepped down in October ...warns that Israel's image is about to take another hit with a Palestinian initiative to win statehood recognition from the U.N. next month.

In putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization's longstanding solution to the Arab Israeli-conflict—U.N. Security Council Resolution 242—with unpredictable results.

According to Israeli security assessments, the Palestinians are not planning any violent demonstrations to coincide with the statehood quest in New York at the UN General Assembly. The Palestinians themselves also say that they prefer the “soft power” approach.

Tal Dror, the conference’s coordinator, said that though Israel’s public diplomacy is mostly directed at the media, the “real battle” takes place in the arena of international law. For this reason, Dror said, it is essential to educate international law students about the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What started as two unrelated social actions over a month ago — a Facebook campaign against inflated cottage cheese prices (an Israeli staple) and a doctors’ strike — has blossomed into a nationwide, multipronged collective revolt unprecedented in recent Israeli history. The Arab Spring, it appears, is turning into a hot, hot Israeli summer.

Historically, the modern Zionist movement has sought to transform the term “Jewish” into a distinctly national category. But it has not fully succeeded. The debate inside Israel over these issues...prevents Israel from articulating a coherent definition of its own identity, let alone one that is accepted and recognized by the majority of its citizens, most of whom are secular and liberal by any Western standard.

Palestinians insist that the Israeli occupation means that they are consistently denied their water rights which is why they have to live on 50 litres of water a day while Israeli settlers enjoy the luxury of 280 litres. Clearly, water is at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but commentators are now insisting that shared water problems could help motivate joint action and better co-operation between both sides, which could in turn help end the conflict.

"A fragile Israeli coalition government leans toward the views of its members from the nationalist and religious right, creating a challenge for diplomats seeking to build support for U.S. policies," the inspector-general said.