Third attack on West Bank settlers in three days – Israeli Interior Minister orders facilitated gun permits for West Bank Jews

As the principals were in Washington for the re-launch of Israeli-Palestinian direct talks, a third nighttime attack on Israeli settlers driving in the West Bank occurred at around 9pm on Thursday night, in the northern West Bank near the large settement of Ariel.  A 12-year-old girl was moderately wounded by stone-throwing when the car in [...]

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What is Abu Mazen doing?

DOES THIS NEW YORK TIMES PHOTO SAY IT ALL?

NETANYAHU CALLS ON PALESTINIANS TO RECOGNIZE ISRAEL AS “THE NATION STATE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE”
At the official launch of direct peace talks at the White House on Thursday (2 September), according to a report in Haaretz, “Netanyahu explained, addressing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas directly, that just as [...]

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Barak on East Jerusalem – “ours”, “theirs”, and a “special regime” in and around the Old City

Ehud Barak, Israel’s current Defense Minister Ehud Barak [who, as such, rules the West Bank, while Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is in charge of Israel within the "Green Line"] gave an interview to Haaretz from his office at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, published today, in which the editors say he has [...]

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“It’s a tragedy”

Four Israeli settlers were ambushed, shot and killed — apparently at close range — Tuesday evening, while driving to their homes in the West Bank settlement of Beit Hagai, near the large and well-fortified settlement of Kiryat Arbaa, outside Hebron.
The deaths occurred on Road 60, just after 7:30 in the evening, at a time when [...]

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Quote of the day – (6th in our series)

Haaretz (with an input from Reuters) reported today that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told journalists in Ramallah on Monday that it was important to know “What kind of state does Mr. Netanyahu have in mind when he says ‘Palestinian state? … I think this is a most fundamental question and I believe, without wishing [...]

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What is going on here?

USAID just doesn’t know what to do with its money?
It could partly build a new school (it could build maybe one-fourth of a new school) with what it has agreed to spend in giving the Israeli team of the “Geneva Initiative” — not a deprived or unconnected group of people — to film certain [...]

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Incitement – cont’d

Now, at last, at long last, the U.S. government has spoken out, and called incitement, “incitement”.
And it was on a Sunday, too, a day on which Washington is normally quiet.
The U.S. went further, and said that the remarks made by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in a sermon in a Jerusalem synagogue over [...]

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Incitement

The fact that he is old is no excuse.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said, in a sermon at a synagogue in Jerusalem this weekend, a few days before last-ditch efforts to hold Israeli-Palestinian direct talks in Washington, that “Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world … God should [...]

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Al-Arakib: some background via Haaretz

Haaretz has published a lengthy look into the background of the situation at one of the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, Al-Arakib, that has been demolished four times in recent weeks by Israeli bulldozers protected by Israeli forces, but documented by Israeli human rights activists, as we have reported previously here.
Here are some extended [...]

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Palestinians tell U.S. that East Jerusalem must be included in continued Israeli settlement freeze + more

Akiva Eldar reported in Haaretz overnight that the Palestinian negotiating team (meaning Sa’eb Erekat and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) have “delivered to the Americans an opinion prepared by Israeli jurists. The Palestinians say this paper proves that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims that the government has no authority to freeze construction on private land are [...]

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