Jerusalem, the meeting point of three major religions, is always set aside as the final item to be resolved in any discussion of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Have we waited too long?
Published March 22, 2013
TWO STATES OR TOO LATE
President Obama was in Jerusalem this week on a visit that was expected to be long on symbolism and short on substance. U.S. officials have been working hard to tamp down expectations for any sort of progress toward peace. The elephant in the room, of course, was the venue itself: Jerusalem.
As Pulitzer Center grantee Sarah Wildman explains in a Bloggingheads.tv interview, “an explosion of (settlement) building over the last 10 months” has pushed the city to the very brink of what one expert has called “the fatal heart attack of the two-state solution.” In her project, Sarah is examining the politics and culture of the settlement question in Jerusalem itself. She looks at the problems and pressure points of the Holy City, and whether time has run out for a two-state solution.
OCEAN FUNDS
The kind of innovative journalism that we support often requires innovative approaches to funding. After screening three films focused on ocean issues at this week’s Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital—and bringing our journalists into nearly a dozen DC-area classrooms—we launched Ocean Matters, a new Pulitzer Center fund to support reporting on the environmental health of our seas. To maximize the support we are able to give these projects, we’ve turned to the crowd funding site Indiegogo. Until May 1, we will match every dollar of your tax-deductible gift up to $25,000. With $50,000, we can support at least three in-depth ocean reporting projects, ensuring that these under-reported stories get told in media outlets and in classrooms across the world.
POLIO-FREE FOR TWO YEARS AND COUNTING
Last month, when India marked its annual National Immunization Day for polio, there was genuine cause for celebration. As Pulitzer Center grantee Esha Chhabra writes for The Atlantic, “The country has now gone two full years without a single new case. If India continues on this track, it will be declared polio-free in February 2014.” She notes that “for India, this will be historic, and for the global health community, it will prove that a live virus can be tracked and removed even in the most challenging environments—a monumental feat on both accounts.”
Esha, who specializes in solutions-based journalism, has been in India, looking at ways that new approaches and inexpensive technologies (such as mobile phones) can be harnessed to deliver better health services to the poor.
JOHNS HOPKINS JOINS CAMPUS CONSORTIUM
We are delighted to announce a new collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that will bring leading global health journalists to the Johns Hopkins campus and offer public health students funds to complete an international reporting project with the Pulitzer Center. Johns Hopkins joins more than 20 other U.S. universities as a member of our growing Campus Consortium program.
Recently
Sarah Wildman on the contested histories of modern Jerusalem and how they have shaped – and narrowed – the prospects for a final settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.
Talks @ Pulitzer Jersualem focus with Pulitzer Center grantee and Just Vision filmmakers - join the discussion and watch the screening of award-winning "My Neigbourhood."
Pulitzer Center staff
Before joining the Pulitzer Center, Tom Hundley was a newspaper journalist for 36 years, including nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. During that time he...