Open Zion’s 2013 Predictions

With a new year fast approaching, we at Open Zion have invited our contributors to predict what 2013 will bring for Israel, Palestine, and world Jewry. After reading their predictions, we hope you’ll consider adding your own in the comments section below.

Mira Sucharov: 2013 will be a record year for arrests of Jewish women, both Israeli and non-Israeli, at the Kotel, for the apparent crime of wearing a tallit or chanting prayer. Following Women of the Wall's example, this year will see a serious and long overdue global Jewish conversation about religion and state in Israel, the kind of Judaism Israel is peddling, and the kind of Jewish state Israel is becoming.

Ahmed Moor: Next year, the Swiss, French and Palestinians are going to provide unimpeachable evidence that Yasser Arafat was assassinated by someone with access to Israeli polonium. The Palestinians will move further along toward conciliation and unity as a result. They will also petition for membership to the International Criminal Court.

Mark Baker: In 2013, Israel will face many Holocausts: Netanyahu will warn that the Iranian red line is reaching the point of elimination and advance across the green line. Lieberman will tell the Europeans that they must prove they are no longer Nazis by approving the development of E1; the Education Minister will make a speech from Ariel University about the existential threat of delegitimization, while the Jewish lobby will warn us that we are reliving the boycotts of 1933; the new Knesset will clamp down on human rights organizations because they make Israel a pariah; it will be illegal to remember anyone's suffering except our own; large swathes of the West Bank will be annexed because the wall is an Auschwitz border; Jerusalem will reach Maaleh Adumim and be the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish ghetto. The city-state of Tel Aviv will sleep-party through the end of the two-state solution. The State of Palestine will vanish with the Palestinian Authority. Beyond 2013, Zionists will dream about what we have willed. The one state that will emerge won’t be secular or democratic. It won't be Belgium. It won't be Lebanon. It won't be South Africa. It won't be Bosnia. It will be a combination of all these elements, and Jewish, too.

Hannah Weisfeld: Major institutions of UK Jewry will publicly express their concern that settlement expansion hinders the possibility of a two-state solution.

Emily Hauser: Abbas will continue to publicly threaten and retreat, threaten and retreat: “We’re going to dismantle the PA! No we’re not! We might go to the International Criminal Court! Not really!” as he has for years, but ultimately will only take game-changing action if Israel does something really unprecedented and forces his hand. As a result, Israel will continue to treat him with contempt, even while using his government to keep a lid on Palestinian resistance.