Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

West Bank crossings and checkpoints exist to protect Israeli civilians from terrorist attacks and they have been highly successful in doing so.  However, in recent years as security conditions have improved, Israel has greatly eased security restrictions in the West Bank, removing most checkpoints and streamlining procedures at both the remaining checkpoints and border crossings.

The Israel Defence Force has posted an information page "Reality check: The truth behind crossings in Judea and Samaria", which further explains what checkpoints and crossings are, why they exist, and especially, how they work - including the process for West Bank residents to obtain a permit to enter Israel.

In a bizarre move, the hardcopy edition of the Daily Telegraph failed to run any coverage before or after a BDS protest on April 30 at the University of NSW against a planned Max Brenner outlet set to open on campus in June.

However, in the paper's "They Said It" section (May 1) which highlights quotes of the day, this appeared:

"‘These brigades have committed war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and are involved in Israel's continual ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Students and staff of conscience demand that the Max Brenner be shut down! We don't want companies that endorse the apartheid state of Israel and it's apartheid practices.' A Facebook page set up by UNSW students opposes a campus chocolate shop."

Today's Update deals with the aftermath of a candid interview recently "allegedly" given to the New York Times by Salam Fayyad - the Palestinian Authority PM who resigned last month but is still in office in an interim role - and especially what it says about the problematic state and policies of the Palestinian leadership. The nature of this problem is partly highlighted by the word "allegedly" in the previous sentence, because Fayyad is now denying having given the interview at all, calling the whole story a " forgery that carries political dimensions with the goal of causing damage and fomenting strife."

Contrary to recent headlines, the Arab League as a collective body did not substantially "sweeten" its 2002 Peace Initiative (API) for Israel on Monday.

Nonetheless, there is some reason to see this diplomatic movement, while relatively minor, as a small, positive step.

On Fairfax's "Daily Life" site (April 23) Ruby Hamad, who has previously penned some ill-informed and one-sided pieces on Israel, presented a sober account of the escalating restrictions imposed by Hamas on Gazans.

Unfortunately her explanation for Gaza's economic difficulties was entirely predictable...

While many Gazans struggle with poverty like many people across the Middle East, one may be surprised to find that there is another side to Gaza's economy - a booming property development industry supported by the smuggling trade that is estimated to have made a thousand millionaires in the last five years. In fact, property prices for luxury villas and apartments in elite Gaza areas like El Remal are reportedly on par with London and New York. 

This certainly came as a surprise to television presenter Seyi Rhodes, who filmed the documentary "Unreported World: Gaza's property ladder" which aired on the UK's Channel 4 on April 26.

One of the most interesting and original aspects of Israeli national culture has been the coupling of Israel's Independence Day, Yom Haatzmaut, with the memorial day for victims of war and terrorism, Yom Hazikaron. Yom Hazikaron, is the 4th of Iyyar in the Jewish calendar, one day before Yom Haatzmaut, the 5th of Iyyar. These fell on April 15 and April 16, respectively, this year.

Fayyad's tenure has since been defined by institution-building, including in the areas of finance and security - an approach that became known as "Fayyadism". Security cooperation with Israel became the norm. As violence decreased and order returned to the street, Israel lifted many of its West Bank checkpoints, while the PA built 1,700 community development programs, 120 schools, 50 health clinics, and three hospitals. More than 1,600 kilometres of roads were paved and 1,360 kilometres of water pipes were installed.

Did you know that "the Israel-Palestine conflict" is "the central factor in Islam-West relations"? Not one of a number of factors, not an element of a larger, multi-faceted engagement, but "the" central factor?

Readers of the latest volume in Australia's "Islamic Studies Series" are presented with this "fact" as an attempt to justify a thin book on "Making Australian Foreign Policy in Israel-Palestine" being published as part of its catalogue.

The death of convicted Palestinian terrorist Maysara Abu-Hamdiya from throat cancer in an Israeli jail on April 2 amid Palestinian accusations that he did not receive adequate treatment prompted rocket fire from Gaza and violent demonstrations in the West Bank.

Coverage of these clashes unfortunately followed a familiar pattern of focussing primarily on Palestinian claims against Israel and on Israeli actions against Palestinians.

As readers are probably aware, Palestinian Authority PM Salam Fayyad  - widely seen internationally as a competent, efficient and moderate state-builder - submitted his resignation on Saturday and had it accepted by President Mahmoud Abbas. This Update is devoted to analysis of how Fayyad's resignation came about, and the implications of this change for the future of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli-Palestinian relations.

There is a re-appearing assumption that "everybody knows" the general outline of a future two-state peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, that both peoples support the idea, and that it is only distrust and the politics and limitations of the leaders of both sides that prevents it from coming about.

But what do Palestinians really think about the "everybody knows" peace deal? Well, there's good news and bad news.

This Update deals with the apparent political crisis within the Palestinian Authority, with reports saying Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has either submitted or plans to submit his resignation following growing disagreements with President Mahmoud Abbas and the wider Fatah movement he chairs (Fayyad is not a Fatah member).

Ahead of PM Julia Gillard's cabinet reshuffle Michael Danby's name was touted in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald (March 25) as a potential foreign affairs parliamentary secretary (in the end he got the gig for the Arts instead).

Danby of course has excellent foreign policy credentials...Unfortunately, unlike the five other MPs profiled whose professional experience was touched upon, Danby's only qualification appears to be that he is a "staunch supporter of Israel", according to the Fairfax papers.

The Jewish people recently celebrated the festival of Passover, which recounts the Jewish exodus from Egypt. In the Middle East, this festival often leads to new outbreaks of the ugly antisemitic lie of blood libel - the claim that Jews use the blood of non-Jews to make Passover Matzah.  This year a particularly concerning case of blood libel promotion occurred in an article by Jordanian writer Nawaf al-Zaru published on the Arabic website of MIFTAH, an NGO founded in 1998 by Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who still plays a senior role there.

Many well-meaning pundits and politicians seem to base their whole approach to the Middle East peace process on a single "fact" - namely, that if a two-state solution is not reached soon then "Arabs living under Israeli control" will outnumber Jews, thus either destroying Israel's democratic character or else turning it into a majority Arab state.

Guess what? This "fact" - postulating an imminent "demographic threat" to Israel and a two-state outcome - is simply wrong...

I think the world is headed towards a surprise. I think the United States and Israel are converging on a fresh initiative towards the Palestinians. I don't think this is merely being imposed on Netanyahu from the outside - I think this is what he wants.

Few outside of certain circles would be aware that a draft of the report by the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (‘OHCHR') to the UN Human Rights Council (‘HRC') on last year's Gaza conflict was released in March.

Any report that the HRC releases on Israel should immediately arouse suspicion - it is not without reason that Israel is currently refusing to participate in any of the HRC's functions.

It is one of the seminal images that appeared over and over again in the early stages of last November's Second Gaza-Israel war. 
 
Distraught Palestinian father Jihad Masharawi, holding the dead body of his 11-month-old son, Omar, who was reported to have been the victim of an Israeli rocket hitting the family home.
 
Except on March 6 2013, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights announced that its investigation into the circumstances of Omar's death suggests he was most likely a victim of a rocket fired by Hamas or one of its affiliates that fell short.
 
So, yes, in a very real sense, Omar was a symbol - a tragic victim of the callous indifference of the so-called Palestinian resistance movement that is based in, and operates from, built up civilian areas in Gaza.

US President Barack Obama's trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories has been vitally important - and apparently highly successful. In only three short days Obama seems to have been able to address core issues that appeared to be straining the US-Israel relationship and press ‘reset'.

Prof. Alan Johnson, Senior Research Fellow at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), addressed an AIJAC luncheon in Melbourne on March 15 on the new Israeli Government's likely approach to the Peace Process.

Following the Israeli elections and just ahead of US President Barack Obama's first visit to Israel, last Tuesday The New Republic published a lengthy feature examining the current state of the peace process, penned by Ben Birnbaum.

In part, the essay "The end of the two-state solution: Why the window is closing on Middle-East peace", looked at the prospective problem of Fatah uniting with the terror group Hamas, which remains in sole control of Gaza and maintains considerable support among the population in the West Bank.

After six weeks of haggling, Israel's thirty-third Knesset was reported on Wednesday to include 22 cabinet ministers (down from 30 in the previous cabinet) and several deputy ministers from the 68-strong coalition of Likud-Beiteinu, Yesh Atid (There is a Future), HaBait Yehudit (The Jewish Home) and HaTnua (The Movement) The new government is due to be sworn in on Monday, and there are already signs that its agenda will be administered with pragmatism.

When Australia's federal government decided to abstain and not oppose a UN vote to upgrade Palestinian representation, Foreign Minister Bob Carr justified the move explaining how "a good friend will share with his friend reservations about that friend's behaviour".

It would be interesting to know if Carr feels similarly after reading the Australian foreign editor Greg Sheridan's very public and eye watering critique of his and predecessor Kevin Rudd's attempts "to put more distance between Australia and Israel" (March 9).

The take down was even more startling given Sheridan's acknowledgement that he is broadly admiring of both Carr and Rudd in most respects.

Through resource management, innovation and planning, the Israeli water authorities ... have now beaten the intense drought which has gripped the country for several years. Now, the Israeli example stands ready to help others in the region to do the same. Unfortunately, not everyone is ready to take advantage of this opportunity.

How did the story about a goodwill gesture by Israel in the form of increased Palestinian employment inside Israel, combined with another goodwill gesture of improved bus service for some of these workers, became twisted into another story of Israeli "injustice" against Palestinians? 

Maybe it's the fact that Hamas' outgoing leader Khaled Meshal and Fairfax's Paul McGeough both have a penchant for beards, or that they are both persona non grata in Israel but their bromance spilled over into three separate articles in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald on March 2 and 3.

Who are Samer Issawi and Ayman Sharawneh, the hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners that have become the latest "cause célèbre" for pro-Palestinian activists?

(See our update on how the prisoner issue appears to be a deliberate pretext for creating unrest in an effort to push the Palestinian agenda prior to US President Barack Obama's visit to the region later this month).

Unfortunately, many recent news reports on the pair have neglected to report on the background of terror activity of these and other Palestinian prisoners. In doing so, the media has omitted crucial information to give perspective and balance to their coverage on a very contentious issue.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday dedicated their front pages to a profile of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal - interviewed in Qatar by Fairfax senior journalist Paul McGeough. There were also a number of subsequent articles on Meshal by McGeough over the weekend in those papers.

McGeough's articles over the weekend with photos to match, provided a glorified picture of Meshal - painting him as a resistance leader capable of moderating but also an ‘every man' - a grandfather who plays with his grandchidren, a man who plays table-tennis and goes to the gym. McGeough does not detail Meshal's reported funding and organising of terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis.

This Update features three pieces providing background to the growing - though still limited - West Bank demonstrations. While presented by Australian media as primarily the result of the death in Israeli custody of Arafat Jaradat on Saturday, and Palestinian claims he was tortured, this ignores the fact that demonstrations were already escalating last week, amid PA calls for the release of prisoners and threats of a new "Intifada". As all three of the pieces in this Update make clear, the death of Arafat Jaradat has simply become the latest justification for a campaign of demonstrations already being encouraged by the Palestinian Authority.

On January 24, many Sunni Muslims celebrated the birth of Islam's founder Muhammad. As the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh reported, Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh announced during a ceremony to mark this occasion that Hamas was planning to establish a "military academy" that would offer training to children as young as 12. The children attending the school would be able to "graduate with a diploma or a BA in military affairs."

Following the North Korean nuclear bomb test earlier this week, and the failure of the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting with Iran, this Update discusses the potential implications for the ongoing problems of preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capabilities.

First up is an editorial on the subject from the Jerusalem Post, which notes that at the very least, the North Korean test was a morale-booster for Teheran.

Are NGOs imposing a double standard when it comes the demolition of Palestinian houses?

That is the question that Elliott Abrams asked Wednesday on his blog on the Council of Foreign Relations' website.

On Tuesday, the Palestinian news website Ma'an reported that Hamas was moving ahead with plans to demolish 75 homes belonging to the Abu Amrah clan in the al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza. The Hamas government claims the homes were built illegally. The family is protesting the move, and resisting relocation.

This Update features two pieces related to the increasing street violence in Egypt, and the Muslim Brotherhood-led government's response to it, plus an important piece on the sad reality behind the Palestinian Authority's state building efforts in the West Bank, led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Gaza is under siege and Gazans are struggling to get in basic items to feed their families, right? You might think so if you follow most of the coverage and comment and you see on the Gaza situation, but it is actually far from the reality. Don't take my word for it - read the Al-Monitor article by Rana Baker, who lives and studies in Gaza and writes for the vehemently and violently anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada.

Israel's attack on a Syrian weapons convoy generated considerable interest on ABC Radio.

Radio National's "Breakfast" (1/2) spoke to Ehud Yaari via telephone in Israel.

Yaari told Fran Kelly that Israel attacked a convoy carrying weapons that would give Hezbollah capabilities such as the "Yakhont coast-to-sea missiles that could threaten, for example, the Israeli gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean."

He also said that the Assad regime accused anti-government Islamist rebels in Syria of co-responsibility for the Israeli attack, "a collusion, which does not exist, of course."

AIJAC policy analyst Or Avi-Guy appeared on Sky News "NewsNight" with Stan Grant on February 4, discussing Israel, including Syria, elections, the UN Security Council, relations with the US and the two state outcome.

ABC Radio's Melbourne host Jon Faine (23/1) should hang his head in shame for his line of questioning to Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the results of the Israeli election.

Even though the evidence showed the opposite, Faine claimed that "the Coalition likely to be elected in the new Knesset in Israel looks like it is going to oppose the peace process."

In a story for the Age/Canberra Times/Sydney Morning Herald (21/1) on Israeli Arab voters Ruth Pollard spoke to the controversial anti-Zionist Israeli MK Haneen Zoabi - an interview best described as softer than cashmere.

The ballots have been counted for Israel's 19th Knesset, and Israelis have demonstrated once again why the Middle East's first genuine democracy is still the most mature and successful - a country where every citizen, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion or political persuasion has an equal opportunity to decide the nation's future.

On Friday January 18 at the close of the Australia-UK Ministerial Consultations (AUKMIN) conference in Perth, Foreign Minister the Hon Senator Bob Carr and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague released a joint statement on the Middle East peace process, condemning Israel's settlements as "illegal under international law".

AIJAC released the following media statement to the press in response on Friday 18 January.

In a speech on January 4, marking the occasion of the anniversary of Fatah's establishment, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority President and leader of both the PLO and the Fatah movement, expressed a political vision about the aspirations for the future of Palestinians.

The speech was described by leading Israeli analysts as espousing "a radical political doctrine" expressed "using extremist rhetoric" that "may have marked a turning point in the relations between the Palestinian Authority president and the State of Israel".

Up to 100 million Christians are facing persecution globally, mostly by Islamic extremists, and especially in the Middle East and African regions, according to a new report by the Christian NGO Open Doors.

According to the organisation, of the top 10 countries on their list - North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Maldives, Mali, Iran, Yemen and Eritrea - eight are majority Muslim states threatened by Islamic extremism, with North Korea and Eritrea being the sole exceptions.

The report puts a spotlight on the underreported plight of minority Christians worldwide, particularly in the Islamist-dominated Middle East, where the number of Christians relative to the global Christian population has plunged to less than one percent. This is in contrast to a century ago, when the Middle East was home to 20 percent of the world's Christians.

Ehud Yaari addressed an AIJAC luncheon on Monday 14 January 2013 on the following topics:

• Australia and Israel, including Woodside's successful bid for developing Israel's gas reserves
• Israel's elections
• Egypt and challenges for the region
• Syria
• Israel, the Palestinians and the Two-State outcome
• Iran's march towards nuclear weapons capability and American and Israeli strategy

This Update features some information and argument related to the always contentious issue of Israeli West Bank settlements.

First up is noted Israeli international law expert Alan Baker looking at the arguments about the legality of the settlements. He summarises the case that they are legal in the most concise way I have yet seen. He also has a strong discussion of the relationship between the settlement question and the Oslo accords, noting that the Palestinian demand for a settlement freeze as a precondition for talks is actually a violation of Oslo, just as the recent UN decision to upgrade Palestinian status to a "non-member state" was.

Everyone knows that, while Israel has eased its blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza, it is still blocking the import of almost all construction materials, arguing they can be used for military purposes, right?

You would certainly think so if you read the Australian and New Zealand press coverage of a recent deal between Israel and Egypt to allow 20 trucks worth of construction material into Gaza this week... But it is just not true that Israel has banned construction materials entering into Gaza...

Since the Second Intifada, which commenced in September 2000 there has been an ongoing debate as to its origins.  This debate has finally come to an end, with Yasser Arafat's wife Suha admitting on Dubai TV on December 16 that her husband planned the Second Intifada and told her about it before he launched it.

This Update includes two pieces analysing some of the innovations in military technology and tactics which affected the Gaza conflict/Operation "Pillar of Defence", which occurred in November.

First up is an evaluation by Dr. Uzi Rubin, the father of Israel's missile defence program, discussing both Israel's Iron Dome missile and rocket defence system, and the innovations in rocket design and use on the Hamas side of the Gaza conflict.

The most heartbreaking consequence of any conflict is the unavoidable toll taken on the local civilian population. Sadly, in the hyper-politicised realm of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, these events seem unable to remain mere tragedies. Instead, each civilian killed takes on the additional mantle of a propaganda point scored in the conflict of public opinion.

This leads to the unfortunate tactic that Hamas and other Gaza-based groups seem to have adopted of cynically exploiting international sympathy...

Why do news reporters often get their reporting about Israeli-Palestinian issues so badly wrong?

A new wrinkle to the controversy surrounding Israel's decision to approve housing projects in Jerusalem suburbs and east Jerusalem neighbourhoods (following up on my earlier blog posts on the subject on December 4 and December 11) suggests one answer.

Now that the dust has settled on the Palestinian UN upgrade bid; now that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has received his applause and kudos from the UN Plenary, from the Europeans, and from many Israelis as the hero and saviour of the Palestinian people; now that the UN General Assembly has returned to its regular and wasteful agenda of repetitive, pointless, and inane resolutions; now that some Israeli legal and non-legal commentators are already forecasting that Israeli leaders, officials, officers, and settlers are about to be put on trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity; now that Palestinian lawyers are busy preparing their criminal charges against Israel - now it is perhaps the time to place things in their correct proportion, without misleading exaggeration, imaginative embellishment, wishful thinking, and false predictions.

CLAIMS that Israeli settlement building has made a two-state outcome impossible are completely untrue. Settlements are only one of many contentious issues that must be addressed - along with water, Jerusalem, refugees and security arrangements - and far from the most difficult to resolve.

This Update features two good pieces on the pitfalls in the upcoming phase of the Syrian civil war, especially in terms of US policy.

First up, repeat visitor to rebel-held regions of Syria Jonathan Spyer discusses the recent US decision to recognise the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), recently formed in Qatar, as the rightful Syrian government in waiting. Spyer argues that this decision appears to be a part of a larger strategy he feels is misguided, namely working with Muslim Brotherhood Islamists against the more extreme Salafists.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy awarded its 2012 Scholar-Statesmen Award to Dennis Ross and Elliott Abrams on December 6. Ross served as special Middle East negotiator to President Clinton and Iran policy adviser to President Obama, and is currently counsellor to the Washington Institute. Abrams, served as Deputy National Security Advisor in the George W. Bush Administration, and is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In a post-award panel discussion, Ross and Abrams reflected on their careers in foreign policy and provided insights into the challenges of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran's nuclear program and the 'Arab Spring'.

The United Nations General Assembly vote on November 29, upgrading the Palestinian mission at the UN to the status of an "observer state" was a unilateral move which violated a core tenet of the Oslo Accords, stipulating that neither party would attempt to unilaterally change the legal status of the West Bank and Gaza.

While the UN vote may lack the authority to effect such change, it's clear that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is hoping to use the vote as a political crowbar in order to pry away the West from their allegiance to the principles set in place by the vastly more weighty UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal made international headlines on Dec. 7 when he made a particularly uncompromising speech in Gaza promising never to recognise Israel and to liberate all of Palestine "from the river to the sea" via armed "resistance".

It's worth specifically parsing what he had to say about why all of Palestine must be liberated by armed violence. He said "Palestine - from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, from its north to its south - is our land, our right, and our homeland. There will be no relinquishing or forsaking even an inch or small part of it... Palestine was, continues to be, and will remain Arab and Islamic... Palestine belongs to us and to nobody else."

Questions have been raised by some members of New Zealand's Jewish community over the country's recent vote in favour of the United Nations (UN) resolution that Palestine be given "non-member state" status at the international organisation.

There has been some surprise, and even annoyance, that - under Prime Minister John Key's Israel-friendly government - New Zealand did not abstain on the vote.

This Update deals with three pieces of analysis on the state of Israeli-Palestinian relations in the wake of the UN  vote on "non-member state" status and other recent events.

First up is noted Israeli academic analyst and former UN Ambassador Dore Gold, offering some advice on Israeli diplomacy in the wake of the UN vote. He notes that, despite hints to the contrary prior to the UN vote, there is no sign that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is at all prepared to drop its preconditions and resume peace negotiations with Israel - and indeed the long-standing pre-conditions for talks have now been publicly re-affirmed by PA President Abbas.

December 7th was a big day for Khaled Meshal, head of Hamas political bureau. Hamas marked its 25th anniversary, and on the occasion Meshal made his first ever visit to Gaza, which was not only a personal experience, but also his opportunity for a political resurrection.

In his speech, Meshal proved once again that he is just as committed to the "resistance" and "liberation" of Palestine as the most extreme voices. He also proved that not much has changed in the 25 years since Hamas first emerged, with its hateful, antisemitic charter and the call for the annihilation of Israel.

In an update to my blog post from December 4 on the controversy surrounding Israel's decision to allow the planning of a new neighbourhood for the Jerusalem suburb of Ma'ale Adumim in an area known as E1, we look at some new developments to the story.

Recently it has been reported that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, blaming Israel for allegedly targeting Palestinian journalists during operation "Pillar of Defence" in the Gaza Strip. New York Times journalist David Carr went even further, as he accused Israel of intentionally targeting journalists.

Two main issues are mixed up in the story. Firstly, the use of journalists and press as human shields for terrorist activity, further endangering journalists reporting from conflict zones. And secondly, terrorists' use of journalist status to cover up for their violent activities.

This Update deals with the aftermath of the UN vote to upgrade Palestine to "non-member state" status last week, the Israeli response in terms of announcements of preparations to build new housing units in east Jerusalem and settlements, and the strong reaction this decision has promoted from many foreign governments, including Australia's.

In order to fully understand all the implications of the upgrade of Palestinian status to non-member observer state at the United Nations, it is worthwhile to begin by revisiting their more ambitious first attempt to bring Palestinian UN membership to a vote in the United Nations Security Council last year.

At the time, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the notion of bringing a resolution to the General Assembly naming "Palestine" a "non-member state" as too weak a gesture - not worth the damage such a move would cause the PA, especially regarding US aid.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was honoured at the Saban Forum in Washington on November 30, where she delivered an insightful speech on the challenges confronting the Middle East and Israel in particular. It's worth reviewing because Clinton offered a number of insights and historical reminders that anyone seeking to unravel the Middle East Gordian knot should understand.

An international furore has arisen over Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to move forward with the long-stalled planning of a new Jewish neighbourhood in the area between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim known by the name E-1. Construction on the project itself would not begin for, at the earliest, one or two years, and would require additional political approvals...

Beyond the exaggerated rhetoric, however, evidence shows that the reality of the E-1 plan, which was originally developed by the Rabin government in the early 1990s, is far less sinister than these reports would suggest.

"Mr President: independence, freedom, the right to self-determination; these are principles that have been enshrined in the United Nations Charter." Those words were spoken by Daffa Alla Elhag Ali Osman, the Sudanese Ambassador to the UN as he introduced the draft resolution at the General Assembly to recognise the non-member state of Palestine.

Nothing could better signify the absolute farce taking place before the representatives of the international community than the government of Sudan pontificating about justice and human rights. As Osman spoke, the government that he represents was busy waging a brutal campaign to deny the Nuba people the rights to independence, freedom and self-determination.

Western countries that abstained or voted for the United Nations General Assembly resolution on Thursday upgrading the Palestinian representation in the UN to that of a non-member state have depicted their decision as a vote in favour of a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians and a two-state solution.

However, Palestinian officials have been telling their own people that the vote was a substantive step towards forced Israeli capitulation, not compromise. Significantly, Palestinian officials say they intend to argue that their increased recognition of statehood automatically entitles them to massive political dividends, including a presumption of final borders.

It appears that Australia chose to abstain from the UN General Assembly's vote to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation from "observer" to "non-member state". This was reportedly due to lobbying from within the Labor Party - particularly by former foreign minister Gareth Evans - to the effect that Australia would be on the "wrong side of history" if it were to "resist the tide of international sentiment now in favour of recognising Palestinian statehood".

The Palestinians introduced a much-anticipated resolution giving "Palestine" a status of "non-member state" at the UN General Assembly on Monday.  A vote is expected today, New York time, which is Friday here, and the Australian Government's decision to abstain has been much in the news given that Prime Minister Julia Gilliard was reportedly forced by cabinet and caucus colleagues to abandon her own preference to vote "no". This Update is devoted to analysis of the significance and likely effect of the resolution - which is widely expected to pass easily.

BARRING a last-minute change of heart, tomorrow the UN General Assembly will vote on upgrading Palestine's representation in the forum to the status of non-member "observer state".

On these pages, former foreign minister Gareth Evans (November 24) encouraged Washington, and by implication Australia, to support the measure.

Evans notes, correctly, that the resolution will certainly pass, given the automatic pro-Palestinian majority in the General Assembly, and that it contains little extreme language.

Yet no matter how you sugar-coat it, this resolution is a poison pill for the peace process. It should not be supported by any country that supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel.

Israel's eight-day "Operation Pillar of Defence", which ended with a ceasefire agreement on November 21, was a limited operation with a primary objective - to staunch the flow of rockets launched from Gaza and landing on southern Israel's cities and villages.

Some 764 rockets had struck Israel from the beginning of this year until the onset of the operation, 150 in the four days before the operation commenced. A further 1,506 rockets struck Israel during the operation itself, bringing the year's total to more than 2,200.

In the recent Gaza conflict, as in 2008-2009, the media was obsessed with "disproportionate" body counts - the fact that more Palestinians were dying than Israelis. Such counts of course, have nothing to do with the actual international law principle of "proportionality", which says that the damage from military attacks must not exceed "the direct military advantage anticipated." That is, anticipated non-military damage and casualties must be proportionate to a legitimate military goal. Nothing to do with relative casualty counts.

Tel Aviv tends to revel in its image as a bastion of hedonism and frivolity that defies Middle Eastern tensions, but as autumn's seagulls overflew its fishermen's piers the city received a stark reminder of where it is situated.

As sirens ululated across the cosmopolitan metropolis, sending thousands running for cover, Tel Aviv's elegant boardwalk absorbed what it had last heard in 1991, when Saddam Hussein lobbed Soviet-made Scud missiles in its direction. Saddam and his supplier are now long gone, but the urge to target Israel is alive and well, and it now produced a week-long military conflict whose military, political, and diplomatic repercussions will become apparent in upcoming months.

In mid-November, Israel embarked on "Operation Pillar of Defence", the second time it's gone to war against Hamas in the past four years. The proximate cause of this campaign, according to Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, was "the incessant rounds of artillery rockets and mortars into the heart of our southern communities." But that rationale was surely coupled with a build-up in Hamas' weapons arsenal - including the Iranian-made Fajr-5 missile, capable of striking Tel Aviv, and Kornet anti-tank missiles, one of which was fired on an IDF jeep and injured four soldiers on Nov. 10.

The twentieth century experienced some of the worst instances of population displacement in history: the 15 million ethnic Germans forced out of their homes in Eastern Europe after World War II; the millions of Muslims and Hindus fleeing the newly established states of India and Pakistan during the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947; the millions of Armenians, Greeks, Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Jews, and Kurds, among others, driven from their lands and resettled elsewhere.

By contrast, the 600,000 Arabs who fled their homes in mandatory Palestine and the nascent state of Israel during the 1947-48 war have been kept in squalid camps for decades by their Arab hosts as a means of derogating Israel in the eyes of the West and arousing pan-Arab sentiments. And as if to add insult to injury, the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), established in December 1949 as a temporary means for relieving the plight of the newly-displaced refugees, has transformed into a permanent organisation that has substantially exacerbated the problem whose resolution it was supposed to facilitate.

Now the terms of a ceasefire have been agreed upon, Israel hopes this means the rockets from the Gaza Strip will stop, despite the fact rockets have already been fired into Israel from Gaza since the ceasefire came into effect.

But, when a ceasefire was negotiated between Israel and Hamas in 2009, it did not bring an end to rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza. In fact, even before this conflict hundreds of rockets were launched at southern Israel this year alone, disrupting and terrifying the lives of Israelis who had to flee to bomb shelters on a regular basis.

From the moment Israel's Operation Pillar of Defence began last week, news of Syrian President Bashar Assad's bloody suppression of the rebellion against his rule was pushed down the news page, and in some cases knocked out of the paper entirely.

This, in spite of the fact that more Syrians than Palestinians were killed over the same period and that the death toll in Assad's crackdown is approaching 40,000 - many times more than the total number of Palestinians killed during fighting with Israel in decades of conflict.

In the first few days of the current escalation in Southern Israel and Gaza (which hopefully may now be coming to an end) most of the media reported that the violence escalated after a Kornet anti-tank missile was launched at an Israeli military jeep on November 10, injuring four soldiers. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took responsibility for the attack. Shortly afterwards, a barrage of dozens of rockets aimed at Israeli cities and towns was launched from Gaza.

Perhaps the 10 days that have passed since that incident has blurred the memory of some reporters. Some media reports are now framed around the assumption that this whole thing began on the 14 with the strike on Jabari. And even more bizarrely, other reporter and commentators are stating or implying that it was the death of 13-year-old Hamid Younis Abu Dika on Nov. 8 near Khan Younis that sparked the current round of violence.

This Update offers more top-flight analysis of how the Gaza conflict got to this point - with more than 1150 rocket hits on Israel since Wednesday (on top of the 150 in the few days before that) and over 1400 Israeli strikes on terror targets in Gaza - and what the end of the conflict might look like. (Report now say a deal on a ceasefire being negotiated in Cairo might be close to completion, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now in the region to try to assist in a ceasefire deal.) Good constant updates on what is going on militarily are being provided by the IDF's website.

Human rights organisations are supposed to advance a universal approach, according to which every person in entitled to certain rights and liberties, based simply on his or her humanity. The most basic of these rights is the right to life. Yet time after time those very same organisations prove that some humans - those from groups they personally identify or sympathise with - have more rights than others. Most recently, this double-standard was evident in the response by various human rights organisations to the ongoing rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on Israeli cities and towns. In between 'code red' sirens, you could almost hear the silence of human rights organisations.

The most unfortunate consequence of any war is that innocent people are invariably caught in the crossfire. The current conflict in Gaza is no exception, as can be seen by the tragic deaths of members of the Dallu family on Sunday from what appears to have been an erroneous airstrike on the part of the Israelis. The IDF were trying to target Hamas commander Yihya Abayo and, for reasons still unclear, hit the nearby Dallu household instead. The incident is currently under investigation.

Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence that the human toll that the war is taking is being exacerbated substantially by the tactics that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad ('PIJ'), and other Gaza militant groups are employing...

Dr. Colin Rubenstein from the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council discussed the latest Israel-Gaza conflict with Sky News reporter Helen Dalley, 19 November 2012.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is also being played out in the media including social media, with Hamas and anti-Israel activists attempting to demonise Israel with false accusations.

The latest fabrication exposed concerns the tragic death of four-year-old Mahmoud Sadallah from Gaza - whose picture made international headlines when his body was cradled by the Egyptian Prime Minister. News agencies including CNN wrongly reported that the child was killed by Israeli missile fire. However, it has now been revealed that he was killed by a Palestinian rocket fired from within Gaza that did not reach Israeli territory.

AIJAC's Dr Colin Rubenstein discussed the latest Israel-Gaza conflict with Nick Grimm on ABC News 24, 16 November 2012.

Following on from Daniel Meyerowitz Katz's news roundup yesterday, this Update looks at the reasons for and the possible trajectory of the current round of violence sparked by Gaza rockets, which the IDF has dubbed Operation Amud Anan ("Pillar of Defence").

Since the targeted killing of Hamas' military commander in Gaza on Wednesday, there are now reported to have been around 340 strikes by Israel on targets in Gaza - reportedly killing 15 Palestinians (it is unclear how many are combatants versus civilians) - and 305 rockets fired into Israel, killing three civilians, including a pregnant woman. This also included perhaps four rocket attacks on the Tel Aviv area - the first since the 1991 Gulf War - which fortunately caused no damage or injuries. Israel claims to have neutralised most of Hamas' medium range Iranian-made Fajr-5 missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv in its initial strikes.

Last night's Update dealt with the escalating violence between Israel and Hamas over Israel's border with Gaza, and included a number of analyses predicting that if the constant rocket fire on southern Israel did not cease, Israel would launch a large-scale military operation to destroy terrorist infrastructure there associated with Hamas and other violent groups.

The operation was actually launched very shortly after. This post rounds-up all of the important information that has been coming out since the Israeli airstrikes began...

This Update deals with the latest major outbreak of violence from Gaza - resulting in more than 140 rocket hits on Israel since Saturday, a number of Israeli retaliatory strike on Gaza targets, and rocket attacks still occurring as of a few hours ago, despite claims of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Details of the rockets and the injuries that they have caused are summed up in this pdf document prepared by Israeli security officials.

The West-Bank village of Nabi Saleh has become a battleground for local Palestinians and international activists. But this is no ordinary battleground, it is a battleground in a propaganda war. Based on what could now be called the "Bil'in model", every Friday a supposedly "non-violent" demonstration takes place, in which protesters intentionally confront and clash with Israeli soldiers in front of dozens of photographers, who document the soldiers' every move. The most disturbing aspect of these staged demonstrations is the involvement of Palestinian children in the weekly "production". A new video shows just how far Palestinian children are prompted to go in this effort to provoke a reaction by Israeli soldiers that can be used for propaganda purposes.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he is determined to go forward with an exhumation of the remains of Yasser Arafat for forensic tests following a controversial investigation by al Jazeera earlier this year. 

According to reports, French investigators, Swiss experts and a Russian government team will take part in the probe following the November 26 exhumation of the former Palestinian leader, who died in France in 2004.

The original al Jazeera documentary on the subject, which reignited the controversy over Arafat's death, was shown here in Australia for the first time on free-to-air channel ABC 24 this week.

Five UNRWA employees have been killed in the Syrian conflict and shells have hit and damaged both an UNRWA health centre and an UNRWA school. However, UNRWA has only issued weak statements deploring the deaths and calling for "all sides must refrain from conducting the conflict in civilian areas..." This significantly contrasts with the condemnations and calls for war-crimes investigations that occurred when an Israeli shell struck outside an UNRWA school during the 2009 Gaza conflict. Analysts Asaf Romirowsky and Alex Joffe explore UNRWA's obvious "double standards".

Last night, the long-awaited Draft Resolution for the Palestinian UN statehood bid was filed by the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine. The Draft's most substantive point is the request to alter Palestine's status in the UN General Assembly (UNGA). This is contained in the third paragraph, which reads that...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad once painted himself and his father as the champion of the Palestinian cause. But now the situation appears to have changed, as Assad's army reportedly fired on the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk killing 20 on November 4, raided Hamas offices and there are fears of mass Palestinian deportations from Syria.

Over 400 Palestinians have been killed in the Syrian civil war, with little to no coverage by the Australian media. The self-proclaimed Palestinian advocates have also been all-but silent.

Palestinian debate has been touched off by comments Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made on Thursday appearing to accept concessions on the Palestinian "right of return" to pre-1949 Israel.

Earlier this year, I was standing at the top of a ridge in the Wadi Ara Valley in Israel, overlooking the Arab settlement of Arara. I was with representatives from Givat Haviva, an Israeli-Arab reconciliation organisation. In the town below, I was told, lived a man who represented a new trend within Israel's Arab citizenry.

On reaching 18, some form of national service is mandatory for non-ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, but Arabs are exempt from the requirement. As a rule, members of the Druze and Bedoin communities voluntarily serve in the Israeli Defence Forces, however the vast majority of Israel's Arab population refuses even non-military national service...

Emboldened by its increasing acceptance among Arab governments, Hamas has changed its tactics in Gaza and is openly leading the rocket fire against Israel and moreover, making it clear that it effectively uses the Gaza population as human shields to do so.

At a time when the Middle East is in upheaval, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been pushed to the margins of the diplomatic agenda. The Islamist surge in the region has emboldened Hamas' political ambitions and is making Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party feel ever more isolated and anachronistic. The loss of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, and the Arab uprisings more broadly, have relegated Abbas to the back burner. As crisis escalates with Iran, the bloodbath in Syria continues, Egypt undergoes unprecedented change, and the region as a whole finds itself in a period of profound uncertainty, the goal of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel seems, to many, neither possible nor pressing.

Last year, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas went to the UN Security Council (UNSC), attempting to have "Palestine" admitted to the UN as a member state. It soon became clear, however, that the Council was not going to approve the bid, as "Palestine" does not yet meet the criteria for statehood.

Southern Israel suffered through an intense rocket barrage from Gaza earlier this week, with more than 80 rockets fired in a 24-hour period, before an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire took hold yesterday. Hamas has been itself taking credit for many of the rocket launches, a break with its behaviour over most of the past year. This Update explores why, and whether the visit to Gaza by the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, the first by any Arab leader since Hamas took power there in 2007, had anything to do with it.

As a matter of course newspapers make changes to stories. Some of these can be spelling or cuts for length.

But a number of questionable alterations were made to a story from the New York Times' Middle East correspondent Isabel Kershner that appeared in Fairfax papers noting Gilad Shalit's first major interview.

The issue of Palestinian refugees is arguably the single largest impediment to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. None of the other 'final status issues' -- borders, security, and sovereignty over Jerusalem -- seem to leave such a gulf between the positions of the two parties that a compromise is difficult to imagine. Yet, as new research demonstrates, the refugee situation could have been solved very early on.

The solution to the borders issue is relatively clear: Israel will hold on to the major population blocs in the West Bank in exchange for equivalent land from Israel proper. Similarly, current security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ('PA') has already gone most of the way towards resolving this issue. Jerusalem is a little more contentious, however there are several proposals that could be adopted...

This Update takes us to New York, at the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Taking centre stage is a headline grabbing speech by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu following the predictably defiant, caustic and offensive anti-Israel speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas once again announced a renewed effort to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority at the UN to non-member observer state. The gathering also offered US President Barack Obama an opportunity to speak out on US foreign policy ahead of November elections, while Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi had his first turn at a UN podium. Finally, for Australia, this session was fraught with import, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s speech before the plenum culminating her government’s intensive effort to secure Australia’s first temporary seat on the UN Security Council since the 1980s.

The summer of 2005 was especially hot in Israel, but not just because of the high temperatures and Middle-Eastern climate. That summer the heat was political, as Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. It wasn't long before Hamas took over the strip. The showers of rockets into Israel proper never stopped.

Seven years later, Mahmoud al-Zahar, co-founder of Hamas finally admitted the obvious. In a recent (18.9.2012) interview to the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency he declared that "Gaza is free of occupation."

What do the Palestinian Authority's (PA) deep-seated economic problems have in common with its unstinting hostility towards Israel and reluctance to work towards resolving the conflict?

They are each symptomatic of a failure of Palestinian leadership. And, if you feel a sense of déjà vu over the PA's intention to circumvent the peace process by again seeking to upgrade its status at the United Nations, you may also appreciate the repetitive character of these failures. Those who fail to learn from their past mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

There is no doubt that "5 Broken Cameras" is a moving, emotional and powerful film. It tries to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by telling the story of one Palestinian town, Bil'in, which became a symbol of what the film describes as the non-violent resistance against the security fence. In the film, Bil'in is presented as a metaphor for "Palestine", while the security fence is cast as "the occupation". This is achieved via a sophisticated, almost subtle, technique - focusing on one very personal story of a man, Emad Burnat, the film's co-director, a self-proclaimed Palach [farmer], journalist and now filmmaker, along with his youngest son, Gibreel, who was born around the time the construction of the fence had begun.

Anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappe told Geraldine Doogue on ABC Radio National's "Breakfast" program  (17/9) that the "mainstream Zionist leadership from the very beginning understood that... they could not have a Jewish state as long as the Palestinians remained in Palestine".

The fact is that the mainstream Zionist leadership accepted and still accepts partitioning the disputed territory into Jewish and Arab states - in 1922 (when Jordan was created), 1937, 1947, 2000, and 2008.

Moreover, Zionist documents have always discussed the expectation that the Jewish state would have a non-Jewish minority.

Sydney Morning Herald/Age correspondent Ruth Pollard's report (10/9) on protests by West Bank Palestinians angry at increases in the cost of fuel essentially offered up a one-word explanation - Israel.

ABC Radio National's "360documentaries" series (9/9) featured a 50-minute program from Australian anti-Zionist activist Peter Slezak with interviews he recorded on a recent trip to Gaza and the West Bank.

The program's producer was Cathy Peters - the Marrickville Councillor from the NSW Greens party who was instrumental in proposing the notorious BDS motion in 2010.

Despite this pedigree, ABC presenter Kirsti Melville meekly introduced Slezak as a "Jewish writer and commentator" without mentioning his activism.

The program itself is the equivalent of "the best of the worse of the anti-Israel" NGO and UN brigade featuring the usual array of one-sided claims. Neither Hamas nor any Palestinian violence was so much as mentioned.

Recently two Israeli commentators have focussed on a disturbing trend in Australian media, and its problematic coverage of the delicate issue of the role of Palestinian children in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This Update features material on the growing demonstrations - sometimes violent -  in the West Bank against both cost of living pressures and against the Palestinian Authority (PA) more generally. (A report on the demonstrations yesterday, which left 50 injured is here. PA PM Salam Fayyad response in withdrawing unpopular austerity measures is discussed here.)

Israel came under some criticism lately when Israeli authorities were refusing to allow entry to a group of Eritrean asylum seekers stuck at the Egyptian border. The Israelis eventually relented after one week and permitted some of the asylum seekers to cross the border.

One of the most prominent critics of this incident was William Tall, the local representative from the UN High Commission for Refugees ('UNHCR'), one of the two UN bodies tasked with catering to the world's refugee populations.

The other body is, of course, the UN Relief and Works Agency For Palestine Refugees -- which regularly goes by the acronym 'UNRWA'.

The omission of the 'FPR' from the acronym makes it sound as though UNRWA were simply another arm of the UN, rather than an organisation established soleley to cater to one population. Unfortunately, the 'FPR' is a part of UNRWA's name and mandate, which must be glaringly apparent for the unfortunate Africans who attempt to find refuge in Israel...

Hanan Ashrawi has caused controversy by recently writing in an article intended for an Arabic-speaking audience that there were no Jewish refugees from Arab countries. She wrote, "the emigration of Jews was a voluntary act that was influenced by factors of pressure and temptation by Zionist movements and the Jewish Agency." Ashrawi explained that: "If Israel is their homeland, then they are not ‘refugees;' they are emigrants who returned either voluntarily or due to a political decision."

However, Ashwrawi is clearly ignoring history for political reasons. In 1945, there were more than 870,000 Jews living in the various Arab states, some communities dated back 2,500 years. From the 1940s onwards many of these Jews were persecuted, their property and belongings confiscated and in some countries they were expelled - including Egypt, Libya and Algeria.

Mud-slinging allegations by the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq that Israel had committed "war crimes" by purportedly allowing the Israeli Dead Sea cosmetics company Ahava to "plunder" Dead Sea resources inside the West Bank became the focus of a controversial article by Fairfax's Middle East correspondent Ruth Pollard this week.

In the September 4 article "Cosmetics firm accused of plundering Dead Sea", Pollard regurgitated uncritically allegations from the Palestinian group that Ahava has been using materials in its products supposedly excavated from an undisclosed mining site in the jurisdiction of the Megilot Regional Council, where Ahava maintains a factory and outlet store.

During his recent visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr showed true statesmanship by giving the moribund Middle East peace process a shot in the arm.

Stressing the need to ''bring the two parties together'', Carr met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah, nudging the Palestinian Authority back towards the negotiating table and emphasising the need for a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians negotiated directly between themselves.

With the cost of living skyrocketing as falling revenues forces the Palestinian Authority ('PA') to stop paying salaries to its employees, the PA is struggling to hold onto what legitimacy it has left amongst its people. In spite of this, the PA is reportedly increasing the money it pays in support of terrorists who have murdered innocent Israelis.

This blog has been following the PA's escalating financial crisis as foreign aid donations have dwindled over the past few years. We have also been following the repeated attacks on the pipeline through the Sinai that used to supply Israel with natural gas from Egypt and the Egyptians' eventual decision to unilaterally call-off the trade agreement.

It seems that these two issues are now coming to a head...

A series of articles in Fairfax newspapers focusing on the gifts and trips received by Australian Federal MPs offered sweeping and problematic generalisations on trips parliamentarians have made to Israel.

Australian Palestine Advocacy Network vice-president Robert Newton offered up a series of red herrings in the Canberra Times (21/8) to justify why "Unless Israel stops the illegal construction of settlements in the West Bank there will be no resumption of negotiations which have been stalled since December 2010".

Between 1993 and 2009 the Palestinian Authority (PA) did not insist on a settlements building freeze as a precondition to peace talks.

An anthology of stories by former IDF soldiers regarding the treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza assembled by the controversial left-wing Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence has drawn the attention of Yediot Ahronot in Israel, the UK's Guardian and Independent, Iran's PressTV, as well as News Limited's John Lyons and Fairfax' Ruth Pollard here in the Australian press - but few other journalists worldwide.

This isn't really surprising, as there is evidently little new information contained in the report, which is essentially a repackaging of some 30 self-styled "testimonies" cherry picked from the organisation's 850-case archives (collected gradually over the past seven years) in an attempt to portray the IDF as systematic abusers of Palestinian children.

Yesterday, Israeli Judge Oded Gershon of the District Court of Haifa handed down his verdict in the civil case between the State of Israel and the parents of a young American woman killed in Gaza in 2003, acquitting the State on all counts. The circumstances surrounding the death of then 23-year-old Rachel Corrie are well known, however there has been a long-standing dispute regarding some key facts. 

Corrie's parents had claimed that the IDF either deliberately killed Corrie or was guilty of gross negligence. Judge Gershom dismissed the claim on the grounds that the IDF could not be liable for civil damages that occurred in a 'war zone' during the course of armed conflict.

Nevertheless, he went on to...

It is very disappointing to read reports that Australia has announced it plans to send two senior Australian diplomats to Teheran to participate as "guests" in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) conference there from August 26 through 31. This forum is being exploited by the Iranian regime to gain support for its non-existent "right" to enrich uranium, and to erode the increasing isolation Iran has experienced as sanctions mount because of its defiance of the UN Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency over its illegal nuclear weapons program. Moreover, it is highly likely that the conference will be used by the Iranian regime to promote their unconscionable efforts to demand Israel's destruction - following on from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's August 17 claim that "The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour" which must be "excised," as well as various other antisemitic and Holocaust denying rants.

There is a strong case for saying that the Fatah-led Palestinian national movement, as we have known it from the late '60s onward, is fading from the scene.

But while, in practical terms, the Palestinian national movement is an increasing irrelevance, the symbolic cause of Palestine nevertheless retains great emotional appeal both for the Muslim world as a whole and for a wide spectrum of Western leftists. The result is that a new, loose, global, Islamist-led movement is emerging in its stead to carry the Palestinian banner.

Time's Karl Vick (13/8) offered a simplistic account of the effect of the growing population of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem.

Vick implied that Jewish control over Jerusalem since 1967 has been bad for Christians and Muslims: "Millions visit the Holy City each year. Most are pilgrims to the signal sites of Christianity, though Muslims gather at their own great shrine above the Western Wall. Neither, however, are terribly welcome as residents. Since 1967, Jerusalem has become a resolutely Jewish city."

Except that Jerusalem has been a majority Jewish city since the 1850s. Furthermore the 68,000 Palestinians living there in 1967 have quadrupled to 288,000 in 2012, with Palestinian Arabs now making up 37% of Jerusalem's residents, compared to 25.8% in 1967.

Israeli leaders have responded with outrage at a pair of unrelated, racially-motivated attacks against Arabs last Thursday. Calls for swift justice, soul-searching and a new co-existence education campaign were voiced within the government, opposition and Israeli media commentators. Police responded with numerous arrests.

The Times of Israel reported an official statement from the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday accusing Israel of "incitement". The source of the alleged incitement was a call from opposition MK Aryeh Eldad, from the hard-line National Union party, demanding that Jews be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount/al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.

In an ironic twist, this statement was reported on the same day as reports emerged of a new mausoleum that the PA is building to honour the eight terrorists responsible for an attack on an Israeli hotel in 1975, which resulted in the deaths of eight civilian hostages and three Israeli soldiers...

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA, 2.8.2012), published some statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made last Wednesday night in a meeting in Teheran with ambassadors and diplomats from Muslim countries . These reveal that while the Iranians love to claim they are only critical of Israel and "Zionism", and have nothing against Jews per se, the Iranians in fact simply and transparently use the word "Zionism" to paper over dangerously antisemitic views directed against Jews generally.

The media's unwillingness or failure to probe glaring contradictions in pro-Palestinian propaganda was apparent in a Deutsche Presse-Agentour story in the Canberra Times and Sydney Morning Herald (28/7).

This Update features two pieces of analysis which discuss worrying signs for the secular nationalist Fatah movement that dominates the Palestinian Authority -  emanating from both current Middle East trends, as well as developments in the West Bank itself.

First up is academic expert and recent visitor to Australia Dr. Jonathan Spyer, who sees the entire Palestinian nationalist movement as looking very vulnerable to the Islamist trends which are eclipsing Arab nationalist regimes across the Middle East.

When Hamas is criticised for its antisemitic and genocidal rhetoric, the common trend is to refer to its 1988 charter, which repeats traditional antisemitic conspiracy theories, specifically cites notorious antisemitic propaganda document 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', and contains some explicit calls to murder Jews. In return, apologists for Hamas have alleged that the charter is no longer a relevant document and accused Hamas detractors of using the document deceptively to demonise an innocent organisation.

Unfortunately, repeated statements from Hamas indicate that the spirit of the charter pervades the organisation to this day. A recent episode concerning Palestinian Authority (PA) official Ziad Al-Bandak is a case in point...

Hamas officials, who had responded with elation over the election of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Muhammad Morsi to Egypt's presidency in late June, have come calling in Cairo twice over the past week, seeking to collect on Morsi's campaign promises to open Gaza's border to more trade and easier freedom of movement.

There is little doubt that the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's presidential and parliamentary elections has been a major setback for Israel's foreign and security policy. It is too early to tell how bad this setback is - much will depend on how much control over Egypt's foreign and defence affairs the Muslim Brotherhood succeeds in wresting from the military, and how much the Brotherhood chooses to focus on consolidating its internal power versus courting popularity and distracting the public from domestic problems by sparking crises with Israel. But at the very least it is possible to say that the situation will not be an improvement.

Except perhaps in one respect, and it concerns Gaza.

In January 2012, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Yaakov Neeman, the Justice Minister, turned to former Israeli Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy to head a panel of legal experts that would look into questions of land ownership in the West Bank. The initiative came about when it was discovered that a housing project in the settlement of Beit El, north of Jerusalem, had been built years earlier on Palestinian private land, and the government decided to adhere to the judgment of the Supreme Court to have the Israeli building project removed. The panel was intended to study how Israeli decision-making had been made in the past and what could be done to avoid such situations in the future.

The "Levy Report" (officially the "Commission to Examine the Status of Building in Judea and Samaria", led by retired Supreme Court judge Edmond Levy) had been released in Israel for barely two hours when critics began accusing it of "undermining Israeli democracy" and signifying the "final death blow" to the peace process. (So many "final death blows" seem to have struck the peace process over the past decade that I can only conclude that it is continually reanimating in some form of undead state, only to be killed again by yet another announcement or report released by one party or another.)

Despite calls from the victims' families and world leaders across the globe, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will reportedly not honour the memory of the 11 Israeli Olympians and one West German police officer murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich at the opening ceremony for the London games tomorrow.

The plight of Christians in the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip has recently been in the spotlight following allegations by the Orthodox Christian Church, that a group of armed Islamists kidnapped five Christian Palestinians and forced them to convert to Islam.

On July 16, hundreds of Christians staged a rare protest in Gaza's main church, demanding the return of members of their community. A solidarity protest was held at the same time in Bethlehem on the plaza of the Church of Nativity.

This Update features pieces covering the rising regional and financial clout of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas as a result of the changes re-shaping the Middle East over the past eighteen months in what is sometimes called the "Arab Spring."

First up is noted American Palestinian Affairs analyst Jonathan Schanzer, who focuses on the financial signs of Hamas' growing clout compared to the Palestinian Authority (PA). He notes that while the PA is effectively broke, Hamas is riding high financially thanks to growing support from two new benefactors - Qatar and Turkey - despite the weakening of Hamas' ties to traditional patrons Syria and Iran.

Ruth Pollard in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald (2/7) asserted that former Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir's "most criticised decision...was to undermine the 1987 agreement on Palestine reached by his foreign minister Shimon Peres and Jordan's King Hussein".

Contrary to Pollard's implication, the agreement would not have created an independent Palestine but seen a resumption of Jordanian rule over the West Bank.

A petition calling on Australian Jews to denounce Israel's administrative detention policy has apparently been circulating for some weeks without attracting much attention. The handful of signatories, including most of the regular anti-Israel crowd, claim that "the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike" highlights the policy - not seeming to have realised that a deal to end the strike had been reached more than a month before the petition was launched.

Hamas and its rival Fatah-run Palestinian Authority (PA) have learnt well the old dictum "Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man", with both groups running annual summer camps that prime the next generation of Palestinians to hate Israel and become desensitised to terrorism.

Israel has slammed a UNESCO decision to endow a science chair at a university in Gaza which is a Hamas stronghold involved in weapons production and storage, terrorist training and vile anti-Israel and antisemitic indoctrination.

Joseph Wakim revealed on ABC "Unleashed" (27/6) the true cause of internecine violence that has roiled Syria since February 2011 and blackened the good name of the Assad dictatorship:

There is nothing civil about the war in Syria - it is a proxy war to protect Israel from a nuclear Iran. This was confirmed when Israel's defence minister Ehud Barak declared that toppling Assad 'will be a major blow to the radical axis [Iran] ... It's the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world ... and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza'.

But this hardly amounts to a smoking gun for proving Israel is fomenting civil war in which more than 13,000 people have been killed; more a desperation to blame shift onto the usual scapegoat.

As the Arab and Palestinian media went into the usual conspiracy-theory frenzy over yet another attempt to crack the mystery of the death of former PLO head Yasser Arafat, locals in Ramallah, his former city of residence, were not as excited about the "news."

After the media excitement over the allegation polonium poisoning might have caused Yasser Arafat's death in 2004, some sober and cogent analysis is debunking the thrust of the al-Jazeera report - that the radioactive levels that were reportedly found recently on Arafat's personal effects, could have come from Arafat himself.

Dr. Ely Karmon, of the Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya's Institute for Counterterrorism, a specialist in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear terrorism, told the Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the half-life of the substance would make it impossible for polonium to have been discovered at such high levels after eight years.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has denied Israel’s request for a loan to assist the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority (PA). Conflicting numbers have been reported regarding the precise amount of the loan that Israel requested, with some news outlets reporting that it was for US $1 billion and others reporting that it was for US $100 million. Regardless of the exact amount, Israel’s request highlights not only its interest in preventing the collapse of the Palestinian economy but also the precariousness of the funding situation the PA currently faces thanks to a global economic downturn that has decreased the ability of donor countries worldwide to make good on their funding promises.

Last Friday at the 36th meeting of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee, held in St. Petersburg, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List as an endangered heritage site, registered under the location "Palestine."

You may be thinking "Another pro-Palestinian vote at the UN, so what else is new?" But the baffling and telling part of the story is not simply that the motion passed, but that it passed despite the better judgment of UNESCO's own advisory body and secretariat, and even against the wishes of the church's own custodians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Israel last week, as part of a larger Middle East tour by the newly re-elected leader, is seen by analysts as a productive diplomatic exercise between the two countries.

At the same time, analysts agree, the visit demonstrated the limits of diplomacy in persuading Russia to change its policies regarding matters of key national interest to Jerusalem, especially regarding Iran and Syria.

A June 14 speech by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's leader Mohammed Badie in which he dreams of a Muslim leadership ready to make the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem "the sole goal" does not engender hope the world's leading Sunni Islamist organisation is ready to moderate its extremist positions now that it's candidate has won the country's presidency.

In the speech, Badie, who selected Mohammed Mursi to run for the Egyptian presidency, says:

"How happy would be the Muslims if all Muslim rulers made the Palestinian cause a pivotal issue, around which Muslims, rulers and the ruled, would line up [and ally to make] the sole goal for all of them the recovery of al Aqsa Mosque, freeing it from the filth of the Zionists, and imposing Muslim rule throughout beloved Palestine."

Age/Sydney Morning Herald (June 23) Middle East correspodent Ruth Pollard reported on an NGO study claiming that Gaza drinking water is "too contaminated", "never in continuous supply because of daily power shortages," and the infrastructure distributing it is in disrepair because Gazans have lived under an "Israel-imposed military blockade for five years."

Nowhere in the article was Hamas mentioned, which is astounding given that it has been the sole governing authority in Gaza since 2007 and has been effectively at war with Israel while doing little for its own population's welfare or water needs.

Furthermore, she ignored or was unaware of IDF reports documenting at least 27 water and sewage purification projects in place in Gaza - all of them facilitated by Israel, and not a single one funded by Hamas.

There are a lot of things to worry about following the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood's Muhammad Morsi in the Egyptian Presidential election. The Brotherhood is of course effectively the parent organisation and model for all radical Sunni Islamist groups - from al-Qaeda, through Hamas, to Somalia's al-Shabaab, Nigeria's murderous Boko Haram and Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah. It also comes with a worldview which places absolutely no intrinsic value on democracy - to them, democracy is tactically valuable only as long as it helps achieve Islamist ends and the moment other ways of doing so appear to be better, it becomes an obstacle to be eradicated. Even if the Brotherhood allows relatively free elections to continue, its theocratic worldview makes it unlikely to encourage the development of the free public square which is essential for genuine democracy to flourish.

Since Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr announced on May 28 that he would be increasing funding to the UN Relief and Works Association for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), there has been a great deal of focus on the true nature of UNRWA and its activities.

UNRWA is the single biggest influence on the current situation of Palestinian refugees (or more correctly, ‘Palestine refugees'), which itself is perhaps the most serious outstanding issue in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians insist that the millions of descendants of Palestinians who fled the 1947-1948 war have a "right" to return to what is now Israel. This would mean, in effect, the destruction of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. For this reason, it is a condition that no conceivable Israeli government could accept, but on which Palestinians refuse to compromise.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), formed as a temporary organisation in 1949 to take care of the immediate needs of the Arab refugees from Israel's existential War of Independence, has evolved into a sprawling, politically compromised advocate of the Palestinian narrative, according to Asaf Romirowsky, an adjunct scholar at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Romirowsky, who has devoted a decade of post-graduate studies to UNRWA, visited Australia in early June.

For the first time in many years there has recently been an intense media focus on how international aid is spent on the Palestinians and why the number of Palestinian refugees in the world is constantly increasing.

Phillip Adams interviewed United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner General Filippo Grandi, who visited Australia in June. Whilst Grandi was here, the Australian Government agreed to gift UNRWA A$90 million over five years.

One comment by Grandi partly showed how UNWRA helps delay an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He said "To be a refugee, to maintain one's rights as refugees does not mean that you don't have a right to a better life, to better opportunities." If assistance comes wrapped in a promise that you are entitled to maintain your "rights" as a refugee even if you have citizenship in another country, then no realistic peace plan will ever satisfy Palestinian refugee demands.

From the tastefully placed pavement plaques to the grand museums, from the confronting and disorientating Holocaust Memorial to the larger than life-sized photographs of citizens fleeing Communist dictatorship, Berlin is a city steeped in memory.

It is also a lively, vibrant locus of arts and anarchic extravagance. In a way, the east of the city, which I visited this June, feels as if it is consciously contradictory and self-mocking - acknowledging the cruelty which has emanated from, and engulfed, the metropolis.

Did Israel's government covet the land it captured as part of the defensive war of June 1967, which ended with Israeli forces in control of the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza?

For the most part, not at all, according to 200 pages of newly declassified transcripts from cabinet and committee meetings in the days following the war, released by Israel's National Archive this month.

A Sydney Morning Herald story (16/6) on the Egyptian Supreme Court overturning a ban on the presidential candidacy of former Mubarak-era Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq featured a picture of a male protester holding a poster of Shafiq covered in at least five Star of Davids.

The paper's accompanying caption stated: "Hatred....protesters hold a defaced poster of presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq". Perhaps "Stereotypical antisemitism that is a feature of Egyptian political discourse" might have been a more apt description.

Fifty international charities and UN agencies have made a joint media appeal to lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Some of the charities that have signed the petition have Australian branches including: Amnesty International, Oxfam, Care International, War Child and HelpAge International.  The petition states:

"For over five years in Gaza, more than 1.6 million people have been under blockade in violation of international law. More than half of these people are children. We the undersigned say with one voice: 'end the blockade now'".

The petition appears to overlook a number of key issues which are discussed in this blog post.

Dozens of rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel during a new outbreak of fighting this week. Also, in a new twist, Hamas has taken responsibility for the attacks, rather than merely passively permitting other groups such as Islamic Jihad to launch rockets from its territory - a policy that had been in place for the past year.

In a famous incident on an episode of ABC's QandA, almost exactly one year ago, comedian Sandy Gutman (aka Austen Tayshus) berated Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon for her defence of the NSW Greens’ decision to adopt a boycott of Israel.

In 1985, following the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists aboard the cruise ship Achille Lauro, Palestine Liberation Organisation Foreign Secretary Farouq Qaddumi famously denied responsibility for the attack, suggesting that perhaps his terminally ill wife had killed her husband for insurance money.

This unique brand of chutzpah resurfaced again this week.

Five years ago this month, Hamas militants turned their guns on Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) forces in the Gaza Strip. Following eight days of fighting, during which time over 160 people were killed, Hamas completed its purge of the PA from the Gaza Strip. In response, PA President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved a Fatah-Hamas unity government, replaced Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh with technocrat Salam Fayaad, and consolidated his control of the West Bank. Israel and Egypt instituted a blockade of Gaza, while the US and EU lifted diplomatic sanctions on the PA while at the same time imposing harsher ones on Hamas in Gaza.

With help from Iran, Hamas built a stockpile of smuggled imported arms - including longer-range rockets - and increased its rocket production as well as the number of attacks it launched against Israel. This eventually lead to Israel's strong military response in the form of Operation Cast Lead, launched in the final days of 2008.

None of this context, however, has found its way into recent coverage of the anniversary of the Hamas takeover in two UK newspapers, the Guardian and the Independent.

In his recent article, Robert Newton of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network offered Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr ("Carr should press Obama on peace for Israel and Palestine", June 4) some poor advice on moving forward with the Israeli-Palestinian Peace negotiations.

Newton suggests that Israel alone is wholly to blame for the current ‘impasse' in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, ignoring the element of Palestinian responsibility for perpetuating the conflict which has been all too apparent in the events of recent months. He neglects to tell readers that Israel has been continually stating that it seeks the "immediate resumption of peace talks without any preconditions whatsoever", but it is the Palestinian Authority that is refusing to talk with Israel, and has been doing so, with a few minor exceptions, over the past three years.

A Gaza-bound convoy organised by rabble-rousing British MP George Galloway's pro-Hamas British group Viva Palestina failed to reach its destination last month after being blocked by Egyptian authorities from entering the Sinai.

ABC radio's "World Today" reported on the growing recognition that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) may actually be perpetuating the ongoing Palestinian refugee issue (see AIJAC's update from June 6 2012 for more on the issue).

Unfortunately, a serious issue suffered from the not-so-subtle insinuation that the enterprise is essentially a right-wing plot to deprive aid to Palestinians rather than a question of who should rightfully be deemed a Palestinian refugee and how it might just be hampering solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

There has been considerable comment of late, both in Australia and the UN, about the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the wake of a legislative proposal being discussed in Washington, and a recent grant of increased aid provided to UNRWA in Canberra. This Update provides some background on the controversy over UNRWA, and the idea behind the UNRWA-related legislative amendment which passed out of a Committee in the US Senate last week.

First up is a backgrounder on the American UNRWA proposal, sponsored by Senator Mark Kirk, written by American scholars Alexander Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky (Mr. Romirowsky is currently visiting Australia to speak at the annual Limmud Oz conference of Jewish educators.) They make it clear that the intent of the Kirk legislation is not to cut off Palestinians from needed aid, but to provide some clarity about the state of UNRWA's clients, the vast majority of whom are not refugees by the standards applied to every other refugee population in the world.

In the Australian (2/6), Greg Sheridan questioned Australia's ongoing support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that is ostensibly "the lead UN agency for helping Palestinians" but is actually a major prop for perpetuating the Palestinian refugee issue.

La Trobe University lecturer Luca Anceschi had a rather nonsensical piece today on academic opinion website The Conversation, concerning the Islamist parties in the Arab world. From the very beginning, Anceschi makes some basic factual errors...

In the Australian (25/5) academic Philip Mendes analysed the conceptual and practical flaws underpinning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement noting that it "is a by-product of the second Palestinian intifada and the collapse of the Oslo peace process.... It is essentially war by other means...and intended to coerce Israel into surrendering to Palestinian demands".

In a move intended to encourage the Palestinians to return to peace negotiations, Israel returned the remains of 91 Palestinians on May 31, most of whom were killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said:

"We hope that this humanitarian gesture will serve both as a confidence-building measure and help get the peace process back on track... Israel is ready for the immediate resumption of peace talks without any preconditions whatsoever."

The recent plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt has been the subject of significant attention since last year's revolution. The community suffered yet another outrage last week, as an Egyptian court sentenced 12 Copts to life-imprisonment, while acquitting eight Muslims, for their involvement in an incident of mob violence that resulted in dozens of Coptic homes burned and destroyed.

This incident did not receive the coverage that it deserved, however the world is at least broadly aware of the struggle that the Copts in Egypt are currently facing. What has been receiving even less press coverage is the similar situation in which Palestinian Christians are reportedly finding themselves in....

A lot of international commentators have been taken in by Hamas claims to be ready to accept a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders as part of a deal with Israel (though most commentators gloss over the fact that Hamas always also demands a Palestinian "right of return" - which would lead to Israel's demographic destruction.) And Hamas has made enough ambiguous noises about accepting the results of a referendum of all Palestinians on a peace deal that some have rushed to argue that Hamas will agree to a permanent two-state peace if such a referendum can be passed.

But Hamas' deputy political leader Moussa Abu Marzouk made it very clear in an interview with the New York-based Forward published on April 27 that Hamas is saying nothing of the kind. He did say that any Israel-Palestinian agreement must be ratified by a referendum, stating "All of the Palestinians should vote about this." But he was explicit that even if such a referendum passes, it will still be merely a temporary ceasefire - a hudna in Arabic - to Hamas. He said "When we reach the agreement, our point of view is, it's a hudna." Abu Marzouk went on to mention ten years as an appropriate time frame for such a ceasefire.

Secretive elections for new Hamas leadership bodies unofficially continued until the end of May, but even before then, it was already safe to point out some emerging trends as the movement struggles to cope with fierce debate over its future course. Top leader Khaled Meshaal has been considerably weakened as his rivals in Gaza gain more influence and commanders in the military wing assume a much broader political role. In all likelihood, these developments will further complicate the group's stalled reconciliation efforts with the Palestinian Authority (PA), accelerate its dash to achieve mass self-production of longer-range, more accurate missiles, and prevent - at least for the foreseeable future - a political divorce from Iran.

Peter Beinart's call for a boycott of Israelis in the West Bank opposes the policy advice of almost everyone involved in the debate on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Similarly, the choice of my friend and former colleague in AUJS, Liam Getreu, to adopt Beinart's policy has place Liam at-odds with everyone in Australian Jewry bar the handful who fall far enough to the fringe of the political spectrum that they would consider a boycott, but are not quite ready to boycott Israel in its entirety.

New New York Times Middle East Correspondent Judy Rudoren wrote yesterday that:

The rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed an agreement late Sunday in Cairo that paves the way for elections and a new unity government for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, officials said.

If that sounds a little fimiliar, that's because it is...

Before the deal that ended it last week, the recent Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike in Israeli prisons was being presented as some kind of grand, Gandhi-esque "resistance" movement, pitting peaceful Palestinian "political prisoners" against cruel Israelis. This is certainly the impression that Randa Abdel-Fattah attempted to give in her recent piece on the subject.

As with many claims in the sadly still-unresolved Arab-Israel conflict, this general narrative is little more than a propaganda exercise, aimed at winning undeserved sympathy for people who are far from innocent.

This Update is focussed on Palestinian politics - and especially the significance of the recent, secretive elections within Hamas which chose that organisation's leadership bodies.

First up is Ehud Yaari, leading Israeli journalist renowned for his sources in both Palestinian and other Arab governments, offering unique insights into both how the Hamas elections were carried out, the results, and what they likely mean. The key trends Yaari notes are an increasing predominance of the military wing over politics - as has occurred in Iran - and a growing dominance of the internal leadership in Gaza over Hamas leaders in exile, including especially the increasingly side-lined theoretical top leader Khaled Mashal.

Even as some Australian Palestinians and their supporters spent Tuesday evening disrupting commuters in Sydney in the course of their Nakba Day protests against Israel, SBS World News ran a segment on the recent resettlement of several dozen Iraqi Palestinian refugees in Australia.

(While the video will only be accessible on the SBS website for the next week, a transcript of the segment has been created for the purposes of this blog and can be referenced here.)

While the segment was framed by the SBS presenters as an opportunity to raise awareness of the issue of Palestinian refugees on the anniversary of Israel's creation, in reality the story had very little to do with Israel.

Go figure

An unattributed Age story (12/5) on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails stated that a "fifth of all Palestinians living under occupation - some 700,00 people - have served time in Israeli jails, according to activist groups."

Although the article did not include the origin of the claim of 700,000, it is a number pushed by the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO, and is not credible.

Following my previous blog post about the hypocrisy of media freedom under the Palestinian Authority (PA), new reports reveal that an independent Palestinian television station is facing legal charges over an investigation into corruption allegations at a Palestinian university, after claims that a son of a senior PA official was accepted into the university despite having failed to meet the academic requirements arose. The station in question is Wattan TV, a not-for-profit station founded in 1996 by civil society organisations. According to its mission statement, it "advocates democracy, peace, justice and political pluralism" and "promotes human rights and a transparent government accountable to the Palestinian people". Despite the station's claim that it has evidence to support the allegations, it was sued for one million dollars, and it is feared that its executives could face prison sentences. Imposing crippling legal sanctions on a television station for investigating corruption allegations seem like yet another blow to the 'democracy watchdog'.

The Australian's John Lyons (5/5) reported on an Israeli law passed during the Second Intifada in 2003 designed to prevent terrorists exploiting family reunion laws to enter Israel.

This has meant Israeli Arab Taiseer Khatib's wife, Lana, who is from Jenin on the West Bank, can only stay in Israel on a temporary residency visa, something Khatib denounces as "beyond apartheid".

The newspaper offensively headlined the piece Living under the cloud of Israel's cruel apartheid implying this was a statement of fact rather than Taiseer Khatib's opinion. The online edition has since rectified this error.

Palestinian refugees and the claims made of "right of return" for them have long been a major issue within the debate over a 'just solution' to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The claimed "right of return'" is still seen as a core obstacle to overcome in any future peace negotiations. Yet the refugees question is even more complex. Palestinian refugees actually represent the smaller of the two refugees groups created by the regional conflict between the Arab countries and Israel - the larger group being Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries.

The voices of these Jewish refugees, sadly, have hardly ever been heard or are generally too quickly dismissed. Listening to these voices could potentially shed light and new perspectives not only on the refugees question, but also on the nature and history of the regional context of the conflict. It might even promote reconciliation.

The latest edition of the Weekend Australian has provoked outrage over an offensive and unprofessional headline used to accompany an article by its Middle East correspondent John Lyons that failed to include some vital facts, resulting in some very questionable journalism.

As World Press Freedom Day approaches on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) looks to be headed in the other direction.

The PA has come under widening criticism of late for its worsening record on press freedom (as reported in a recent blog post by Or Avi-Guy). Part of that story centres on a number of Palestinians arrested after making critical comments about the PA or its leaders on Facebook. Now reports say the PA is also blocking off access to critical news websites.

According to the Palestinian Ma'an news agency, Palestinian internet providers have been instructed to block access to news web sites critical of Fatah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

In what was was considered another sign of the rapidly deteriorating ties between Israel and Egypt, a visit to Jerusalem by Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa -- accompanying Jordanian officials -- caused outrage in Egypt's new Islamist-dominated Parliament last week. The Parliament demanded Gomaa's resignation for behaviour that risked "normalising" relations with Israel.

Despite Gomaa's statements that the visit was unofficial and that it took place under the supervision of the Jordanian authorities, the visit angered those opposed to normalizing relations with Israel.

Parliament Speaker Saad al-Katatny read out...

Give him credit for his candour. In an extensive interview with the Forward published on April 19, Mousa Abu Marzook, Deputy Director of Hamas' political bureau and the group's second-highest-ranking official, told the Jewish newspaper that Hamas would not respect a peace treaty with Israel signed by the Palestinian Authority, even if the agreement was endorsed by a referendum of all Palestinians, as Hamas has always demanded.

Moreover, Abu Marzook vowed that Hamas would never recognise Israel. The most Hamas would consider would be a ceasefire agreement, he said.

This Update features some analysis of the aftermath of the meeting between Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian negotiators last week, where he was given a letter from Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. Also included is a long but informative interview in which Netanyahu discusses several recent controversies in a German newspaper.

Jerusalem Post Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh has recently been writing prolifically on the oppression of the Palestinian people. Unusually for an Arab writer broaching this subject matter, while he does have some criticisms of Israel, the Israelies are not the primary objects of his criticism. In fact, the oppression that he is exposing comes at the hands of the Jordanians, the Syrians and even fellow Palestinians.

One of these pieces noted the redoubled efforts by the Jordanian King to marginalise Jordan's Palestinian population -- which he sees as a threat to his hold on power:

In 2009, Amman quietly began revoking the Jordanian citizenship of thousands of Palestinians, triggering strong protests from human rights organizations and pro-Palestinian groups around the world. ...

This Update deals with the "P5+1" talks with Iran that occurred on Saturday - with reports suggesting little diplomatic progress accomplished beyond agreement to another meeting in five weeks in Baghdad. On a separate issue, it also contains a look a the significance of the planned meeting tonight between Israeli PM Netanyahu and Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad to present a letter outlining the Palestinian position.

During a recent CNN interview, former Israeli Prime Minister and current Defence Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak noted that the all too common perception of an historically high rate of settlement expansion taking place is just wrong - not a single new settlement has been built under the current Netanyahu government. Barak also notes that construction in settlements is actually currently occurring at a slower rate than under previous Israeli governments.

The recent controversy over a house in the West Bank city of Hebron is having severe consequences for one unfortunate Palestinian. There was an outcry when Israeli settlers purchased and moved into a house in the "Arab" section of Hebron, ending with their eviction in a controversial move by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak. While the evicted settlers are unhappy about the result, the man who sold them the house is facing a far worse outcome.

[Muhammad Abu] Shahala  reportedly was sentenced to death for his part in selling what has become known as the Machpela House to a group of Jews. He reportedly confessed to the sale after...

The Middle East Quartet (the US, UN, EU and Russia), which met in Washington on Wednesday, issued a statement on Middle East peacemaking following the meeting that is notable for its constructive tone.

Hypocrisy frequently rears its ugly head in the Middle East, but the Palestinian Authority (PA) has just succeeded in producing something close to a new examplar on the issue of media freedom. As a Jerusalem Post editorial ("Palestinian responsibility", 2/4/2012) has documented, the Palestinian Authority is intensifying an ongoing crackdown on journalists operating in the West Bank, while at the same time it's introducing a new award honouring press freedom.

Each year thousands of Christians make their way to Jerusalem to celebrate Easter. Israel's Tourism Ministry expects 125,000 visitors during Holy Week and 300,000 throughout April.

Over the weekend as Catholics and Anglicans celebrated Easter, there were media reports that claimed many Palestinian Christians were being denied entry into Jerusalem for their pilgrimage, claims which Israel strongly denies.

A deal signed Tuesday between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas may or may not herald the end to the Gazan fuel shortage as discussed in my previous blog post on the subject, but a recent television interview with Hamas' Minister of the Interior and of National Security Fathi Hammad offers a glimpse into the strain the situation was causing within Hamas...

In its first story since December 2011 looking at Iran's nuclear program, ABC TV "7.30" (21/3) reporter Michael Brissenden described the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as "the most powerful Jewish lobby group in the United States". This may surprise the many non-Jews who attended AIPAC's recent annual conference, including pro-Israel Latinos, African-Americans and Christian delegates.

An annual Palestinian day of protest commonly known as Land Day has been rebranded this year as the Palestinian camp seeks to maximize international exposure to their agenda with a "Global March to Jerusalem", scheduled for later today, March 30.

What groups are behind it? There is growing evidence that Iran has a significant role behind the event, as GLORIA Centre analyst Jonathan Spyer wrote for PJ Media this week...

On a family rip back to Australia, Gidon Bromberg, an Australian environmental activist now living in Israel, picked up a copy of Chris Hammer's book The River: A Journey Through The Murray-Darling. Bromberg was inspired by Hammer's description of the process that led to the Federal Government passing legislation in 2007 to protect the river basin; so inspired, in fact, that he decided to bring Hammer to Israel and attempt to replicate the feat and help the long-suffering Jordan River.

Bromberg has written about this in today's Jerusalem Post...

A fuel shortage in Gaza Strip has created some genuine hardships in the Hamas-run entity, affecting power generation as well as transportation. 

The crisis has produced a rare glimpse into the state of play between Hamas, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, as each side has begun blaming one another for the situation, with no role for Israel, except for Hamas to conspiratorially smear against its political opponents.

In four days in early March, well over 200 rockets were fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, injuring several people, sending up to a million Israelis to the bomb shelter, and cancelling school for approximately 200,000 students. Israeli air strikes targeted the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) - the groups responsible for the rocket attacks - killing 25 Palestinians of whom 22 were terrorists, mostly from Islamic Jihad, and many hit in the act of firing rockets.

The violence was triggered when Israel carried out a targeted killing of Zuhair al-Kaissi, the leader of the PRC, whom it said was planning a major attack on Israel through Sinai. This was the fourth major outbreak of conflict around Gaza over the past year. 

The Finkelstein Inquiry into the Australian media has provoked a great deal of comment in the Australian media, most of it critical. And I share the view of the majority of commentators that the major proposal put forward by Finkelstein - for a government-funded body empowered to make legally enforceable and unappealable rulings on any alleged failure to meet agreed standards by any media outlet (including small blogs) - is, at the least, problematic. Any cure worse than the disease would be a mistake.

The "Israel Apartheid Week" festival continues to excite students on campuses across Europe (forget those pesky events in Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Iran). But while Apartheid Week has come and gone for another year, the BDS campaign - Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions - plods relentlessly on. Why has the Jewish state, the only liberal democracy in the region, become the obsessive focus of vilification, demonisation and delegitimisation? Why is it considered so uniquely evil - a "racist, genocidal state," in the words of one of the leading Israel Apartheid Week celebrants in London?

After a week of intermittent barrages of mortars, rockets, and missiles, relative quiet befell southwestern Israel, in bizarre synchrony with a blessed winter's belated departure.

The weather has been one happy story in Israel this year. After seven years of drought, the skies opened up and by early March, the Water Authority reported that overall rainfall for this year had already exceeded by more than 10% the annual average. 

When Israeli jets pounded the Gaza Strip on March 9-12, in the latest round of major fighting around the enclave, they were not fighting Hamas, Israel's traditional bête noire in Gaza. Though radical factions fired more than 300 rockets at Israel, the self-described Islamic Resistance Movement did not claim responsibility for a single attack. It may be the first time the organisation has refused to lead the charge to battle against Israel.

Hamas has a different fight on its hands. Iran, through the use of its proxies, is fomenting instability in Gaza that it is ill-equipped to handle. Indeed, Teheran is punishing Gaza's de facto rulers for leaving their long-standing alliance.

With the self-confessed murderer, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origins named Mohamed Merah, now having been killed by French police, this Update looks at the aftermath of the horrific shootings of three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, earlier this week. (Some chilling details of the murderers actions at the Ozer HaTorah school, as revealed on security camera footage, are here.)

Over the past weekend, over two hundred rockets were fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, injuring several people, sending up to a million Israelis to the bomb shelter, and canceling school for approximately 200,000 students. Israeli air strikes targeted the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad - the groups responsible for the rocket attacks - killing 26 Palestinians of whom 22 were terrorists, many hit in the act of firing rockets.

Terror sponsorship has been around for as long as terrorism.

It's a phenomenon that has been widely recognised, which allows a group to use terrorism as a tool while insulating themselves from direct responsibility. As an added benefit, in some cases it allows for additional logistical possibilities in planning a terror attack.

Naturally, nobody should be fooled: a terror sponsor who provides planning and support for a terror attack is as responsible as those who are sent to pull the trigger.

As has been widely reported in the Australian press today, on Wednesday the Guardian went public with a trove of messages that they had obtained which purportedly had been mined out of Syrian President Bashar Assad's personal email account.

What was less widely reported was that, as a key strategy, in the emails the Iranians told the Alawite Assad to shore up his image among the country's majority Sunni Muslim population by fashioning himself as an uncompromising opponent of concessions to Israel and as a defender of Jerusalem.

The United Nations' Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) has done it again - in its annual session it condemned only one country - Israel, while ignoring the human rights violations of women around the world, including especially the current crisis in Syria - where women are being raped and murdered...

Just days after being exposed for fraudulently blaming the accidental death of a 15-year-old boy on an "Israeli airstrike", Hamas officials have again attempted to implicate Israel in the death of a Gaza youth -- this time, seven-year-old Baraka al-Mughrabi. Just after Mughrabi passed-away last night, reports started emerging that he had been killed by an Israeli strike.

Not long after, however, these remarks were retracted as the truth of his death emerged...

Israel, which has sometimes been criticised in the media for targeting terror kingpins in Gazan airstrikes, has received a validation of the policy's effectiveness in curbing terrorism from an unlikely source: A Gazan university professor.

Mukhaimer Abu Saada, professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, told the AFP in an article published March 12 that Israel's strategy has been very successful.

The Kony2012 campaign was not the only viral campaign in recent days that spread some dubious information. A number of allegations of Israeli targeting of civilians that surface over the past few days have been outed as downright lies.

The most glaring example is the death of 15-year-old Nayif Shaaban Qarmout, who was killed in northern Gaza on Monday. The first reports emerged from Palestinian Authority-controlled media outlet Ma'an News, citing unnamed "witnesses" who attested that the boy was hit by an Israeli airstrike.

The claim caught the eye of the Israeli military, who were understandably confused, given that they had not launched any airstrikes on northern Gaza during the time that he was killed. An AFP reporter confirmed that there did not appear to be any evidence of an airstrike in the area, but the dead boy did seem to have been killed by an explosive device, albeit apparently one that he himself was carrying...

This Update deals with background to and details of the intensive flare-up over the weekend around Gaza, which saw over 200 rockets fired into southern Israel from Gaza (sending up to 1 million Israelis into bomb shelters) and Israel staging numerous counter-attacks at terrorist targets and rocket sites which reportedly killed around 25 Palestinians, all but three of them armed combatants, according to Israel. The violence was triggered on Friday when Israel assassinated Zuhair al-Qaissi, the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), and an assistant, who Israel said were planning attacks into Israel from Sinai...

While the fractured rule of the Fatah-dominated PA in the West Bank and the Hamas-led Gaza Strip has been an obstacle to a two-state peace solution with Israel, it does not follow that this move towards Palestinian unification will improve the chances for peace. On the contrary, though the prospect of a functioning Palestinian unity government is by no means assured and indeed looks like being postponed yet again, even if it can be realised, any such government may carry with it dangerous implications...

Context is king and without it the most outrageous slurs can be given legitimacy.

Unfortunately, some pro-Palestinian activists are prone to only offer facts in isolation to give their false allegations the air of authenticity and aid the ongoing campaign to delegitimise Israel.

The most recent example of this appeared on Tuesday in an op-ed hosted on the ABC "Unleashed" website from Professor Stuart Rees called "Palestine matters, not Gillard-Rudd soapies"...

As official estimates of Syrian civilians killed in the Assad regime's bloody crackdown climb steadily past the 7,500 mark, a couple of recent Op-Eds in the Arab media have compared the Arab world's strong outrage to Israeli military actions in the West Bank, Gaza and southern Lebanon to their muted response to Syrian slaughter of their own people.

Putting aside the moral inequality of such a comparison (the pieces make no effort to differentiate the defensive nature of Israeli military campaigns from the cold-blooded ruthlessness of the Syrian dictatorial regime suppressing dissent from its own citizens) the pieces nevertheless mark a significant break from the traditional narrative in Arab media that the Palestinians are the region's principal human rights victims...

This Update features two new and penetrating analyses of the ructions and political disagreements currently roiling Hamas, as well as an important new expression of Israel's dilemmas vis-a-vis Iran's nuclear program in the lead up to Israeli PM Netanyahu's trip to Washington next week.

First up is the always excellently informed top Israeli journalist, Ehud Yaari, sorting out the power struggles within Hamas. Yaari says that the once unassailable Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal now seems to be in deep trouble, cut off from a base of operations and with increasingly public denunciations of his policies from within Hamas' senior ranks...

Recently, detailed accounts were published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of the January round of Israeli-Palestinian "negotiations about negotiating" held in Amman, Jordan.

According to the Haaretz account, Israeli negotiators offered a somewhat vague but important statement of the principles which would underly a peace agreement to include a Palestinian state in the vast majority of the West Bank plus Gaza - one which Haaretz described as "similar, if not identical to that which was presented by [then Foreign Minister] Tzipi Livni during the negotiations that took place in 2008 after the Annapolis Conference."

On February 6, 2012, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal signed a new agreement to create a Palestinian national unity government for the West Bank and Gaza.

The Doha Declaration, like previous Fatah-Hamas agreements, emphasises the need to implement the agreements between the sides - once again demonstrating the difficulty of achieving institutional unity in the Palestinian arena in light of Hamas' declared ambition to assume senior status in representing the Palestinian people. The two sides will have to show great creativity to overcome the many obstacles facing the holding of elections, from unifying the separate civilian and security institutions in the West Bank and Gaza, to budget allocations.

While peacemaking visionaries talk about a future Israeli-Palestinian peace dividend - the concept that peace between Israelis and Palestinians will usher in a new era of mutual prosperity - the two peoples aren't waiting, as both Israeli and Palestinian stock markets continue to impress.

On February 20, the financial news organisation Bloomberg named Israel's stock market number one in the world in its Riskless Return Ranking - a measure of the safest investments for investors over the past decade...

Did you hear the one about the shipments of fuel from Egypt to Gaza stopped by Hamas because they refused to let them pass through the Israeli crossing at Rafah?

No? Well, that's because stories of Palestinian suffering caused by Hamas and Fatah rarely make the grade in most Australian and Western newsrooms. It's a case of news editors saying: "No Israel angle? Then there's nothing to see here folks"...

The large crash sounded like something very big and heavy had fallen, hard - at least for those of us at the front of the bus. One friend at the back had grabbed his girlfriend and gone for cover, the loud bang and shattering glass made him think of a gunshot. Thankfully, we were not under fire. We were, however, under attack.

We were 13 Australian students on a tour through Arab East Jerusalem, there to learn about the situation in which the local population finds itself. Our bus was a clearly marked tour bus (albeit from an Israeli company) of a kind that is hardly rare in one of the world's most popular cities for tourists. We had nothing at all to identify us as anything other than Western tourists and, at that moment, we were between stops and not even paying much attention to our surroundings. What, then, motivated a local youth with an impressive arm to hurtle rocks at us as we drove past?

With the Syrian city of Homs dominating news from the Middle East as shelling there continues, (excellent reporting on the ground from Homs comes from Richard Spencer of the London Telegraph - see here and here.)  and international calls for action to put a stop to the bloodshed in Syria growing, this Update looks at some careful analysis of what could be done, and what could not be done, if a decision to intervene was made...

A political storm in Malaysia over controversial remarks by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's on Israel has not yet come to a close.

Back in January, a war of words erupted between Anwar and several top government officials, including his former mentor Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, regarding Malaysia's policy on Israel - a raw nerve among the country's Muslim-majority population...

PROPAGANDA comes in many forms. The British/French mini-series, The Promise, recently shown over four consecutive Sundays on SBS TV, is a particularly insidious example. It tells the story of a British girl, Erin, just out of school, who stays with the family of her closest friend in Israel during the second intifada.

She has taken the diary of her grandfather Len, who served as a British soldier in mandate Palestine from 1945 to 1948, so the action switches between the British battling the treacherous Jews in the 1940s and the brutal Israelis oppressing the Palestinians today.

Following up on yesterday's post on the extreme statements of Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyah in Iran, The Jerusalem Post reports that Haniyeh made some additional extreme statements on his final day in the country - vowing Hamas will continue to rely on violence against Israel and reject compromise.

In the aftermath of the recent Qatari-brokered reconciliation agreement between Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, many have suggested that Hamas is moderating both its long-standing goals of Israel's destruction and its traditional rejection of any negotiations with Israel. But Hamas' leadership in Gaza, spearheaded Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, has been making it very clear that they do not support any such change...

Literally Earth-shattering, according to Iranian state media outlet Press TV:

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the powerful feelings of the regional nations towards Gaza have been instrumental in the eruption of the region's volcano.

There is, of course, a chance that he was speaking figuratively, although this would not be the first time an Iranian cleric linked a natural disaster with global politics. There was, for instance, those earthquakes two years ago caused by promiscuous women, or the time that European countries stole Iran's rain, leading to a widespread drought. The more sinister part of Khamenei's statement, which emerged from a recent meeting with Ismail Haniyeh -- Hamas' leader in Gaza -- concerned Iranian support to Hamas...

It's time to clear the air on an issue which has been the source of a misinformation campaign for years - Israel's environmental record in the West Bank...

This Update is dedicated to the latest Fatah-Hamas unity agreement, signed in Doha, Qatar on Monday, which calls for current PA President Mahmoud Abbas to also become Prime Minister.

First up is Robert Danin from the Council on Foreign Relations, who examines the actual significance of this agreement, the latest of many, as well as the key questions that will have to be settled if the agreement is to stick. He is sceptical Abbas can succeed with Hamas and says Abbas is likely to have to make the tough choice between the two he has been seeking to avoid.

Why does the United Nations continue to consider the Gaza Strip to be "occupied territory" when Israel dismantled all settlements and withdrew the IDF from the area as part of its disengagement in September 2005?

Even Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since it overthrew the Palestinian Authority in June 2007, concedes that Gaza is no longer occupied...

Daily summary of news stories that readers may have missed otherwise.

While they come from opposing Muslim factions, Palestinian Sunni group Hamas and Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah have much in common: they are both designated terror organisations in most Western countries, Australia included; they both hold extremist and violent ideologies; they both fought wars with Israel in the second half of the last decade; and they have both received significant backing from Iran and Syria. That said, they seem to be diverging on that last point. With the ongoing violence in Syria, the last Hamas operative from the Damascus-based political bureau seems to have fled for Gaza, however it seems that Hezbollah is unwilling to follow suit and remains resolutely behind the ruling Assad regime...

An AFP report yesterday indicated that, as predicted, Hamas and Fatah are dragging their feet on actually implementing the latest reconciliation deal.

This suggests that the current deal will go the way of the three previous deals: all have been introduced to much fanfare and then quietly lapsed as, once away from the public eye, no agreement could be reached on how to actually implement the requirements. The reason for this is that while "Palestinian unity" as an idea is appealing to both factions, they...

To its great discredit, the Melbourne Age has republished a Guardian newspaper feature that alleges mistreatment by the Israeli judicial system of West Bank Palestinian youths detained on suspicion of terrorism.

As a previous AIJAC blog post revealed, many allegations of Palestinian children being tortured, kept in solitary confinement, denied legal representation, and forced to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, rely on half-truths, manipulation of facts and figures and unsubstantiated claims by anti-Israel organisations.

That is, organisations with anti-Israel political agendas that extend beyond the remit of the specific goals they profess to be concerned with and into areas of delegitimising the Jewish state.

Two news stories emerged today, both reporting positive steps forward in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. The first of these concerns an online conference being held by a group called YaLa-Young Leaders, designed to bring people together from both sides and have a productive conversation about the conflict, hoping to form some genuine reconciliation efforts.

As Kel Si Loos reported in the Miami Herald, the group has been attracting a large number of members from the Middle East and...

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas swung through Europe in January he was feted by European leaders for pursuing the two-state formula, while obloquy was, as usual, heaped on Israel - if not for settlements then for roadblocks or water or the wall or the tunnel or the occupation or, most recently, for being niggardly about handing out citizenship on demand to Palestinians... the list goes on.

Lead Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho met with his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat in Amman on January 9 for the second time in as many weeks, with the aim of restarting direct peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. These were the first direct contacts between the parties since the breakdown of peace talks in September 2010.

The claim of Israel maliciously depriving Palestinians of water, in order to steal more for its own citizens, has been often repeated amongst Israel's critics. To Jerusalem Post blogger Petra Marquardt-Bigman, the accusation is reminiscent of Medieval accusations of Jews poisoning water supplies:

I think of it as the "water libel" because it often echoes the medieval accusations that Jews were poisoning wells.

Most recently, it surfaced in a formal report by the French parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, which described...

This update looks at the latest sanctions imposed by the US and European Union on Iran’s oil industry and Central Bank; how an Islamist-controlled Egyptian Parliament will affect the country's ties with Israel; and the chances of Hamas winning Palestinian elections mooted to be held in May.

This weekend's Fairfax papers included a report on an all-female Palestinian racing team by Ruth Pollard. While the piece was an interesting read overall, there are one or two small inconsistencies that are worth noting. In addition to this, there were a number of instances where the Age inserted small changes to make the tone of the article seem more anti-Israel. Some of these have been noted below.

Pollard profiles Noor Daoud, a Palestinian woman who won an Israeli formula-three competition last month. In the interview, Daoud explains how it is that she can no longer drive on the road.

''It is not the first time I have driven 200km/h - I lost my licence in 2009 when...

According to a recent AP report, after facing criticism from Israeli Knesset members for hosting two Hamas MPs at its recent conference, the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) has reportedly apologised to Israel.

Israel objected because the militant group has killed hundreds of Israelis in attacks over the years. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the EU. and U.S.

The union's secretary-general, Anders Johnsson...

It is lucky that freedom of speech is not the main selling point for Palestinian statehood because the stabbing of a human rights activist in Gaza who dared criticise the Hamas government and resistance groups would undermine the enterprise’s bona fides.

Mahmud Abu Rahma, international relations director at the al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, was “stabbed multiple times by several masked attackers on Friday evening”, according to an AFP report.

This Updates leads with two articles on the likely policies of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood now that it has won the parliamentary election, gaining approximately 41% of seats with other Islamist groups taking the Islamist bloc up to something like 2/3 of all seats.

First up is Washington Institute expert on Egyptian politics Eric Trager, looking at the likely agenda of the Brotherhood in power. He says that the agenda will be theocracy internally, and confrontation internationally, and that expectations that the group will moderate are very unlikely to be met - offering some behavioural evidence for this.

The last two weeks have seen two meetings in Amman Jordan between Israeli and Palestinian representatives, in what are being called "preparatory talks", but are the first direct public contacts between the two sides since 2010. (Some more details on the latest rounds of talks are reported here, here and here.)

A good backgrounder from BICOM on both the significance of the talks and the political factors influencing them is first up. It puts the meetings in the context of the Quartet efforts to restart talks and significant pressure on the Palestinian side to renew negotiations, and discusses what is known about the contents of the two meetings.

Recently Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader in Damascus, agreed during reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas on December 22, that "there will be no military resistance" and also agreed that "the permanent solution is on the ‘67 borders." Abbas and Meshaal also agreed to a new temporary leadership for the PLO, for the first time in tandem with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

However, it is unclear both the extent to which Meshaal accepts what Abbas said they agreed to and more importantly, whether Meshaal is speaking for Hamas - as many in Hamas have openly denied this new strategy, suggesting a rift between the Hamas leadership in Syria and the Gaza strip.

A Palestinian human rights activist has inadvertently confirmed what Israel has always insisted, that terrorist groups live, train, operate and run riot throughout the Gaza Strip's residential neighbourhoods.

In a piece written for the Palestinian website Maan, Gaza human rights activist Mahmoud Abu Rahma reveals that the "resistance movements" are so entrenched and widespread in residential areas that civilians are suffering frequent injuries because of their activities.

A young Italian journalist named Ruben Salvadori has prepared a film about how he and other photojournalists reporting from the West Bank not only report what they see but help to create the clashes and dramatic scenes which helps them sell photographs...

This document looks at the Israeli legal process regarding Palestinian minors in the West Bank (hereinafter, the "Area") accused of using stones as weapons, including a specific analysis of a recent two month period, August and September 2011.

Two recent stories in the Australian newspaper by Middle East correspondent John Lyons - "Stone cold justice" (Weekend Australian Magazine, Nov. 26) http://tinyurl.com/6puavp9 and "Rudd seeks action on torture allegations involving Palestinian children" (Australian, Dec. 17) http://tinyurl.com/6rdzqjr - have generated a degree of controversy about Israel's judicial treatment of Palestinian minors in the West Bank accused of using stones and rocks as weapons.

On Dec. 3, the Australian published an opinion piece from NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg that provides context for the treatment of Palestinian minors and largely disputes the substance of the claims made in Lyons' stories. Steinberg's article can be read here - http://tinyurl.com/7m6j3wf...

Despite its claimed opposition to terrorism, the PA continues to glorify terrorists.

This was reinforced again when Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas met with freed Palestinian terrorist Amna Muna in Turkey on December 21, along with ten other Palestinians freed and exiled to Turkey as part of the deal to release kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in October.

Muna is a 35-year-old West Bank woman who was serving a life sentence for using an Internet promise of romance to lure 16-year-old Israeli Ophir Rahum to the West Bank, where he was killed by waiting militants in 2001.

According to a PA statement Abbas "praised the prisoners for remaining steadfast in the face of Israeli wardens' mastery."

Today's Update features three pieces looking at the choices currently being made by  the Palestinian political leadership - both those associated with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah in the West Bank, and with Hamas in Gaza.

First up is veteran Israeli Palestinian affairs analyst Pinhas Inbari, who looks at the push by Fatah and PA head Mahmoud Abbas for preparations for the election scheduled for May in which he says he will not run. Inbari notes that Fatah seems to be resisting Abbas' call to name a successor candidate and argues this is because Fatah is totally ill-prepared for either succession or elections.

There is good reason for being sceptical of reports suggesting Hamas is shifting from armed resistance to non-violent resistance and will settle for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders.

Both Palestinian groups and pro-Palestinian Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) often accuse Israel of seeking to "Judaise" Jerusalem. For instance, following their admission to the UN cultural organisation UNESCO in October, one of the things the Palestinian Authority said they wanted to do was sue Israel in international forums for supposedly "systematically destroying and forging Arab and Islamic culture in Jerusalem." Similarly, at a controversial rally in Cairo on November 25 at which there was also recitation of a hadith [saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad] about killing all Jews, Sheikh Dr. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of al-Azhar University, proclaimed, "we shall not allow the Zionists to Judaise al-Quds (Jerusalem)."

In December 2011, reports from several directions converged to suggest that Hamas is abandoning the sinking ship of Syria: that many senior cadres have already settled in Gaza and only the upper echelon of leadership that bears symbolic meaning still remains in Damascus. By and large those reports are correct. At the same time, Iran has cut its subsidy to Hamas, which now relies mostly on revenues from commerce through the smuggling tunnels, which can hardly support the Gazan economy.

There has been much written about the impasse in restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in recent years. Most recently, US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta sparked controversy at the Brookings Institute on Dec. 2 when, following a speech, he was asked about what steps Israel "should take now" to move toward peace and replied "Just get to the damn table."

It wasn't even close. In fact it was a "landslide". That is how pro-Israel media watchdog Honest Reporting describes its decision to bestow the Guardian newspaper the 2011 "Dishonest Reporting Award" for its relentless anti-Israel coverage.

Readers of Fairfax newspapers will be familiar with the Guardian's news stories and one-sided selection of opinion pieces via their regular appearance in the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times.

SBS TV showed a four-part drama, "The Promise", from Britain's Channel 4 and France's Canal+ and Arte France, which was characterised by rampant and crudely propagandistic political messages directed against Israel and Jews, selective, distorted portrayals of historical events, and the sanitising of Arab behaviour throughout the past seven decades.

This Update features two pieces on how Damascus-dependent terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah have coped with the possible loss of President Bashar al-Assad as a key ally in the wake of the recent unrest in Syria.

First up is veteran Israeli Arab Affairs analyst Pinhas Inbari, who looks at Hamas' situation in the wake of the uncertain future in Syria and also Egypt. He notes that the leadership of Hamas is quite happy to be moving its alliance from Damascus to a Cairo dominated by their Muslim Brotherhood allies, as looks likely to eventuate.

Today both the Age and Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Harriet Sherwood regarding Israel's plans to relocate the Jahalin Bedouin from their camps on land which they do not own to a permanent Bedouin town.

The article, originally published in the Guardian does not provide a balanced understanding of the issues at hand. The Bedouin are living on land to which they have no legal title that has been within the municipal boundaries of Ma'aleh Adumim since 1977. Relocation has been periodically discussed with the Bedouin since the 1980s...

The US ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, has shown breathtaking ignorance, insensitivity and naivety by blaming Israel for Arab and Muslim antisemitism in Europe.

Despite the widely-trumpeted new reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah, the two factions appear to remain irreconcilable.

... The Palestinian Authority (PA) itself seems to resent these accusations of reliance on Israel. This was made clear by Adli Sadeq, the PA's ambassador to India, in an article written for PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. The article, translated by Palestine Media Watch, unequivocally rejects the "common mistake or misconception" that the PA in any way recognises the right of Israel to exist. As Sadeq explains, this is merely a line of thinking that Israelis have "fooled themselves" into following...

Following on from this post concerning an accusation of Israel supposedly "pinkwashing" its public image by spruiking its record on gay rights to hide alleged injustices, a number of gay writers have penned scathing responses in the Jewish and international media.

Writing in the Forward, Jay Michaelson gives a critique of the piece by Sarah Schulman in the New York Times that began the whole kerfuffle...

On 29 November 64 years ago, the UN General Assembly voted on the partition plan, and the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 was adopted by a vote of 33 to 13, recommending the establishment of two states - Arab and Jewish. The Jews accepted the partition plan, the Arabs did not and five Arab states went to war with Israel.

However, November 29, is not called ‘Israel day' but rather the ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People'. Marking this day at the UN was a General Assembly resolution on the "Question of Palestine" which condemned Israel, pre-empted the results of final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and failed to acknowledge Israel's legitimate security rights, amongst other concerning features of the resolution.

In response to the UN resolution, Ron Prosor, UN Representative to Israel delivered a stirring speech that condemned the UN's consistent attack on Israel and outlined the real reasons that have so far prevented peace...

On Sunday night, SBS-TV screened the first of four episodes of a controversial British historical drama set in pre-state and contemporary Israel, entitled "The Promise". When it was screened in Britain by Channel 4 in February, it led to an official letter of complaint by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, as well as strong critiques from Booker prize winning novelist Howard Jacobson, noted British academic expert on the Holocaust David Cesarani, and others....

I include below some of the critiques of "The Promise" from Britain for the benefit of Australian audiences.

Rioting in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011 unleashed a tidal wave of unrest across the Arab world that was soon designated the "Arab Spring." Enthusiasts in the West hailed a new birth of freedom for a giant slice of humanity that has been living in despotic darkness for centuries. But historians in 50 or a hundred years may well point to the 1979 events in Teheran - the Islamist revolution that toppled the Shah - as the real trigger of this so-called "spring" (which is looking more and more like a deep, forbidding winter). And the Islamist Hamas victory in the Palestinian general elections of 2006 and that organisation's armed takeover of the Gaza Strip the following year probably signified further milestones on the same path.

World-renowned Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz gave an important speech at "The Perils of Global Intolerance: the United Nations and Durban III" conference that took place on 22 September 2011 - designed to coincide with and counter the UN Durban III conference which promoted an anti-Zionist agenda and focussed on Israel as the world's sole nation mentioned as a source of "racism." It has just been made publicly available.

In his speech Dershowitz condemned the UN for failing to live up to its own Charter, and began his speech with this statement:

"One important reason why there is no peace in the Middle East an be summarised in tragically in two letters - U.N. That building dedicated in theory to peace has facilitated terrorism, stood idly by genocide, given a platform to Holocaust deniers, and disincentivised the Palestinians from negotiating a reasonable two state solution."

Fast becoming a viral sensation, a new YouTube video (below) shows two Spanish men "photobombing" an al-Jazeera broadcast by engaging in a long, passionate kiss in frame as the reporter is talking. 

The irony of the video is that while the two were supposedly making a point about marriage equality in Spain, they happened to do so on a state-owned network from a country in which homosexuality is punishable by lashings and imprisonment. Indeed, a report from the UN High Commission for Refugees has this to say on homosexuality in Qatar:

Homosexual behavior is illegal [in Qatar]. Islamic laws against homosexuality are applied. [In Qatari society], homosexuality is taboo. There is no visible social support for gay and lesbian rights.

On the topic of homosexuality in the Middle East, Sarah Shulman has written in the New York Times on the prominence of the gay community in Israel and Israeli officials speaking out against the intolerance shown to homosexuals in...

One of the many admirable characteristics of the Australian archetype is a propensity for plain speaking.

So it is to Prime Minister Julia Gillard's credit that Australia sent the Palestinian Authority a clear message by voting against admitting the non-existent state of Palestine to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In essence Australia was reaffirming its repeated stance that the only way to end the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is through negotiations.

As it is, the Palestinians will now apply to 16 other UN affiliated bodies for admission on the specious basis of being a state, which they are not yet according to the criteria set out under international law.

Former DFAT head Richard Woolcott wrote a piece for the Age (11/11) critical of Australia's vote against Palestinian membership of UNESCO. Having spent more than half his article setting out the merits of Australia obtaining a seat on the UN Security Council, he then wrote, "In these circumstances, I find it both surprising and a decisive setback to our election prospects that the Prime Minister decided Australia should vote against the admission of Palestine to UNESCO."

A media stunt by a group of Palestinians trying to falsely tar Israel as an apartheid state not only caused some in the fourth estate to fall hook, line and sinker but to abrogate basic journalistic standards.

Six Palestinians called The West Bank Freedom Riders cynically tried to lay claim to the legacy and imagery of African Americans who fought against segregation in the 1950s/60s in the United States by "proving" they are banned from using Israeli public buses to cross over from the West Bank into Jerusalem.

But an analysis by Simon Plosker from Honest Reporting of the claims made by the six "Freedom Riders" and the media coverage shows the absurdity of the stunt and how easily it could be proved as dishonest propaganda.

A constant talking point on the Middle East is that Israeli building in settlements in the West Bank is supposedly taking up more and more land and supposedly making Palestinian statehood unviable...

So how much of the West Bank is covered by settlements?..

The Palestinians appear to have failed in their bid to even force the US to veto a UN Security Council decision to recognise them as a UN member state, and seem a bit confused about their next step. PA President Mahmoud Abbas seems to be now pushing for a unity government with Hamas following secret talks in Cairo. He is planning to meet Hamas head Khaled Meshaal next week, and it seems likely PA Prime Minister Salem Fayyad may be forced out of office.

This Update deals with the general state of play in terms of where the Palestinian could head next.

Australians should be proud of the fact that our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have consistently and publicly supported, with bipartisan agreement, a genuine, negotiated two-state resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is why Australia wisely voted against the admission of Palestine to UNESCO and why Australia should vote against Palestinian 'statehood' if and when it comes to the United Nations General Assembly.

Eric Falt, assistant director general for external relations and public information at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has issued an official letter of protest from UNESCO's director general, Irina Bokova regarding a cartoon which UNESCO claimed constituted incitement.

This could have been an encouraging sign that UNESCO is finally acting against incitement, racism and specifically antisemitism prevalent in Arab and Muslim media, especially in the state-sponsored press. However, the cartoon that so inflamed UNESCO officials was published in Haaretz, an Israeli independent newspaper, which is protected under Israel's laws regarding freedom of the press. Moreover, the only incitement that seemed to concern UNESCO is incitement against UNESCO.

Just after the Palestinian Authority admitted that they are not going to win the votes needed to secure UN Security Council recognition as a state, a report prepared for the Security Council on the subject has been leaked to the media. The report, written by the UN's Committee For the Admission of New Members, has has been leaked to American Arabic news network Al Hurra and published by Foreign Policy's Colum Lynch. The general impression from the report is that the Committee was unable to determine whether or not Palestine can qualify for statehood, but there were a few points that were a little curious.

For starters, see if you can pick what stands out from the following paragraph...

A breaking report from the AP reveals that the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s Foreign Minister, Riyad al-Malki, has admitted that they have failed to muster the nine votes needed in the UN Security Council in order to approve their statehood bid.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki told The Associated Press Tuesday, "It is clear now, with the U.S. counter effort and intervention, that we are not going to have these nine votes." They can still apply to the General Assembly.

That the US has been campaigning strongly against the bid is unsurprising given the difficult situation that the PA has been placing the Obama administration in through its recent UN antics...

The acceptance of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was criticised within the UN by none other than the Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

In an interview during the G20 summit in Cannes, France, he warned against further attempts by the Palestinians to join other UN bodies and agencies and stated that such efforts are "not beneficial for Palestine and not beneficial for anybody." He warned that "millions and millions" of people could be affected if UN agencies suffer budget cuts as a result of the Palestinian bids: "This will have implications for all the agencies of the United Nations. When an organisation is not properly functioning because of a lack of resources, you have to think about the millions and millions of people who are being impacted and affected," he said.

Ban's concerns are based on actions by the United States and Canada, which contributed 25% of UNESCO's funding, and have cut off their funding following the PA vote.

On Wednesday a flotilla of two ships - the Canadian ship Tahrir and the Irish ship Saoirse quietly left a Turkish port with the aim to breach the Gaza blockade by Friday.

News of this latest flotilla "Freedom Waves to Gaza" was kept secret until the ships reached international waters.

According to the organisers, the 27 activists on board came from Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United States, and included Palestinians and at least one Israeli Arab citizen.

This Update features two comments on the vote by the UN Educational, Social and Culture Organisation (UNESCO) to admit "Palestine" as a full member on Monday, a measure opposed by the Australia (see AIJAC's media release on the Australian vote here).  It also contains some comments on reports originating in the Israeli press alleging that the Israeli Government is stepping up preparations for a possible military strike on Iran's nuclear program.

A whole series of events last night made an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities suddenly seem far closer than had previously been the case. After a week of speculation in the Israeli press, Haaretz reported yesterday that the Prime Minister and Defence Minister are trying to gain cabinet support for a strike.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran, a senior Israeli official has said. According to the official, there is a "small advantage" in the cabinet for the opponents of such an attack.

Netanyahu and Barak recently persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who previously objected to attacking Iran, to support such a move.

This report coincided with the test-firing of a new long-range Israeli missile, which could be capable of reaching targets in Iran...

As Fairfax's Ruth Pollard reported this morning, now that they have been admitted to UNESCO, the Palestinian Authority (PA) will begin pushing for heritage protection of holy sites in the West Bank.

JERUSALEM: Significant religious sites throughout the West Bank, including the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, will be among the first to be pushed forward for world heritage status now Palestine has been granted membership of UNESCO.

A Palestinian Authority spokesman there were many sites and shrines in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that until now had been unprotected because of a lack of recognition and funding.

''Now we will be able to protect them and make sure they are known around the world,'' he said. ''We believe that becoming a member of the UNESCO is an overdue right for a country that has such a significant amount of heritage sites.''

This follows from a bid launched earlier this year to gain heritage status for the Church of Nativity, believed to be the site where Jesus was born. The idea of the PA being responsible for the care of this church and other non-Muslim holy sites should raise a few eyebrows amongst those who are even vaguely familiar with their recent history...

South African Judge Richard Goldstone has written an op-ed in this New York Times on 31 October condemning the false allegation that Israel is an ‘apartheid' state. He writes:

"The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony."

This is the same Goldstone who did a great deal of damage to Israel by lending his name to the biased UN fact-finding mission into the Gaza conflict in 2009 which condemned Israel for deliberately killing civilians and war crimes while all but ignoring the Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel.

Goldstone later recanted his support for the report after realising that much of the information relied upon in the ‘Goldstone Report' was not credible and biased. In an op-ed in the Washington Post in April this year he stated, "if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

The decision of the General Assembly of UNESCO to "further the folly and fiction" that there is a State of Palestine which can participate in international organisations "undermines genuine progress towards peace", the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council said today, while stressing that "it is heartening to see that the Australian government was not party to the cynical and destructive political decision".

"The Palestinian leadership is fully aware that they do not control a 'State' and rather than work on state-building and peace building are indulging in self-defeating grandstanding" Mark Leibler, National Chairman of AIJAC said.

The admission of Palestine into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, little more than a symbolic victory for the Palestinian Authority (PA), has severe repercussions on the largest funder of both the PA and UNESCO: The United States. As AFP has reported, US legislation prevents US funding of any UN body that admits the Palestinians as a member.

"We were to have made a $US60 million ($A57.11 million) payment to UNESCO in November and we will not be making that payment," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Monday.

Nuland said the Palestinian admission "triggers longstanding (US) legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO."...

Finally Gilad Shalit, who became known in Israel as ‘everyone's son', has returned home. His liberation led to what can only be called a sense of national euphoria across the Jewish state.

The costs to gain his release after five years of captivity were, objectively, enormous. Among the 1,027 prisoners freed were those estimated to have the blood of 599 people, mostly civilians, on their hands. They include the masterminds of some of the most horrific terror bombings in Israeli history.

The Gilad Shalit deal led to the release of many heinous murderers, and one cannot but feel enormous sympathy for the distress this caused the families of those they murdered.

But if there is one individual who symbolises the incomprehensibly ugly belief system, the determination to murder at all costs, behind the Palestinian cult of suicide terrorism, it is female releasee Wafa al-Bis.

Four hundred and seventy seven Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel in the deal to free IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, held captive by Hamas since 2006, with another 550 to be released in November. The prisoners include some of the most notorious terrorists perpetrators against Israel including individuals involved in the Sbarro and Café Moment suicide bombings, murderers of Nachshon Wachsman and the videotaped October 2000 lynching of IDF reservists Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami in Ramallah.

According to AP reports, the Palestinian Authority (PA) envoy to Canada, Linda Sobeh Ali, was recalled yesterday after she tweeted a link to a Youtube video calling upon "millions" to "destroy the Jews".

Of course, the Canadian Authorities were very hostile towards the video and pressured the PA into recalling Ali. The PA, however, not only made excuses for the poem but went on to blame the "Jewish Lobby" for having to bring their envoy home.

Joseph Lavoie, a spokesman for Canada's foreign affairs minister, said Monday it was a serious enough matter for the Palestinian Authority that they recalled Sobeh Ali...

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Many reactions in the Palestinian street and media to the release of prisoners in exchange for the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit reveal a worrying and disturbing narrative of glorification of the returning terrorists and support for their heinous crimes and violent ways. Calls for future abductions of Israeli soldiers as bargaining chips for future prisoner releases were also common.

Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is free after five years and four months in captivity in Gaza, and the elation in Israel is overwhelming. (An excellent collection of news and analysis on the release and its aftermath has been assembled by Britain's Telegraph. Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu's remarks welcoming Shalit home are here.) This Update focuses on the significance and aftermath of his release.

Interviewed last night by ABC Lateline's Ali Moore, former Haaretz editor David Landau, who once infamously told then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he wished to see Israel "raped" in a US intervention forcibly imposing a settlement to the conflict, expressed his horror at the "weakness" that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is displaying to the world. According to Landau, Netanyahu did so through his sudden reversal of his previous refusal to agree to a prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit.

I find myself in a strange and invidious situation because I'm not naturally of the right. I'm very much of the peace camp of the side of the sort of, so to speak, political spectrum that's always encouraged dealing with the Palestinians in the hope of making a final peace deal with the Palestinians, yet I find myself frankly horrified and, as an Israeli, also mortified by this shameless turnabout by the prime minister, Mr Netanyahu...

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As the five-year hostage ordeal of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit draws to a close, we offer up some of the standout commentary from the last week on the merits of the deal reached by the Israeli government with Hamas.

The tension in the debate concerns the personal interest and the national interest and how these two forces interact have caused intense heartache and headaches for Israel.

Israel released the names of the Palestinian prisoners to be released in deal to free IDF soldier Gilad Shalit who has been held captive by Hamas since 2006. The prisoners include some of the most notorious terrorists perpetrators against Israel including individuals involved in the Sbarro and Café Moment suicide bombings, murderers of Nachshon Wachsman and the video taped October 2000 lynch of IDF reservists Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami in Ramallah.

Yesterday, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected four petitions against the prisoner swap deal to free Shalit. The petitions were filed by the Almagor Terror Victims Association and relatives of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks.

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Media commentators on the Palestinian prisoner swap deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas have at times wrongly insinuated that there is a degree of moral equivalence on both sides.

For example, in Ruth Pollard's "Israel names prisoners to be free" on The Age (17/10/2011), she writes:

"For Palestinians, who have at least 6000 loved ones in Israeli prisons, some for serious crimes, some for political activism and many held without charge or trial, the release of 1027 is not enough. Anxious relatives of prisoners gathered in town squares throughout the West Bank at the weekend, holding photographs of family members and praying their names would be on the list of those to be released."

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It would appear that there is no room for Jews in the Arab Spring.

Last year, before the Arab Spring, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas caused outrage when she recommended that Israeli Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else."

As an American of Lebanese descent, the 89-year-old Thomas should have known that the Arab Middle East was home to approximately 850,000 Jews known as Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews for thousands of years.

It won't stop the revisionist propaganda underpinning the Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence campaign, but newspaper accounts from 1949 prove that the nascent State of Israel supported the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza and opposed the land being absorbed by surrounding Arab countries.

The Israeli Government confirmed that a deal has been reached with Hamas for the release of 25-year-old IDF soldier Gilad Shalit - kidnapped by Hamas on 25 June 2006 - in exchange for 1027 Palestinian prisoners.

As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced:

"In the coming days we will return Gilad to the bosom of his parents, Aviva and Noam, to his brother Yoel, his sister Hadas, his grandfather Tzvi and the entire people of Israel".

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AIJAC's Jamie Hyams explains the Palestinian UN bid on Melbourne community television program "The Shtick"

As readers are hopefully aware, the big news out of Israel is the approval given overnight by the Israeli cabinet to a deal that will see long-captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit released by Hamas in exchange for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners. (The reported details of the deal have been summarised by AIJAC's own Sharyn Mittelman.) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's statement on the Egyptian-German mediated agreement is here. AIJAC's statement on this news is here.

Speaking to ABC "Lateline" recently, Palestinian Authority (PA) official Nabil Shaath lamented that the Israelis have been "in full occupation of [his] country for years, 62 years." There is a subtle but profound message in that number. Going back 62 years, Israel existed in the territory set by a 1949 armistice agreement with the surrounding Arab countries, within the so-called "Green Line" that now delineates what is internationally recognised indisputably as Israeli sovereign territory.

Until June 1967, the West Bank was occupied and annexed by Jordan and Gaza was placed under military rule by Egypt. That Shaath considers Israel's existence in 1949 as an "occupation" speaks volumes about the true mindset of the PA - for all of the rhetoric about a return to the "pre-1967 borders", even mainstream PA figures consider Israel's existence, even within the 1948 borders, as illegitimate...

Today's Update looks at Syria, Iran and Turkey against the backdrop of the veto by China and Russia of sanctions by the UN Security Council against the Assad regime in Damascus for its ongoing violent crackdown against anti-government protesters. The resolution was supported by nine members but, significantly, Lebanon, which occupies a temporary seat on the Security Council, abstained from the vote, as did South Africa, India and Brazil. After the vote the EU indicated it intended passing its own sanctions against Syria. Meanwhile Turkey's PM Recep Erdogan continues to use the Syria issue and relentlessly attacks Israel for his own regional ambitions. We offer a number of articles that reveal the changing dynamics in the Middle East that are are not receiving sufficient attention in Australia and elsewhere.

The PLO ambassador to Brazil, Alzeben Ibrahim, has told a group of Brazilian university students that "Israel should disappear," according to a Portuguese-language media report.

AIJAC Senior Policy Analyst Jamie Hyams interviewed on ABC News24 (28/9/11) explains why Palestinian intransigence and not Israeli settlement building is the real reason peace talks have not resumed since 2008.

He also discusses why the announcement of approval for a proposed application to build 1,100 homes in the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo does not warrant international attention or condemnation.

On October 5, the Palestinians passed the first stage towards full membership at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), when the UNESCO board voted in favour of a Palestinian state being given UNESCO membership.

Forty of the 58 countries voted in favor, 14 abstained and the four countries that voted against were the US, Germany, Romania and Latvia.

The Palestinian application for UNESCO membership will now move to the General Conference, where UNESCO's 193 member states will vote on it. The next General Conference is scheduled from October 25 to November 10. A two-thirds majority of conference members is necessary for membership.

The Palestinian application to UNESCO has been highly criticised. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

"I ... would urge the governing body of UNESCO to think again before proceeding with that vote because the decision about status must be made in the United Nations and not in auxiliary groups that are subsidiary to the United Nations."

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Today's Update looks at last week's controversial approval for a proposed plan to build 1,100 homes within the boundaries of the Jewish suburb of Gilo in Jerusalem. Gilo lies just over the Green Line and is now home to 40,000 Israelis. As Commentary's Jonathan Tobin explains, Gilo is a symbol for many Israelis, having been a target for numerous terrorist sniper shootings during the Second Intifada and "was the laboratory where Palestinian terrorists sought to discover whether they could force Jews into abandoning their homes. They failed".

The latest news on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has focused on the announcement of the planned construction of new homes in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Gilo, which is located over the 1967 Green line.

Meanwhile, on October 1, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal also made an announcement that is a serious blow to peace efforts, yet this announcement was barely reported by the media.

Meshal told an international conference in Iran called the ‘5th International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada', that: "Palestinians must resort to resistance no matter how costly it is, until Palestine is free and Israel is destroyed". Hamas' founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and a Palestinian state in all of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

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Today's Update focuses on the recent events at the UN. The Palestinians submitted their formal application for full membership of the UN, and both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly. The Palestinian application is here, the speech by Abbas is here and the speech by Netanyahu is here. Following the speeches, the Quartet of the UN, the European Union, Russia and the US released a proposal for the resumption of negotiations. Israel has decided to accept the proposal, but the Palestinians seem likely to reject it.

ABC TV Lateline's Ali Moore interviewed Palestinian Authority official Nabil Shaath last night about the PA's UN statehood bid. Shaath , an experienced statesman, gave what on the surface may be perceived as a compelling argument for supporting the statehood bid; however, further analysis reveals inherent problems in his argument.

A key point that Shaath was attempting to put across was the PLO's supposed recognition of Israel:

Up till this minute, Israel have not recognised the right of the Palestinians to a Palestinian state on the border of '67. We still recognise Israel as an Israeli state...

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On 23 September, when the Palestinians presented their application for full membership to the UN, the Middle East Quartet (consisting of the US, EU, Russia and the UN) announced a proposal to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to direct negotiations.

The Quartet statement urged the parties "to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions."

The operational paragraphs of the Quartet proposal included:

"1. Within a month there will be a preparatory meeting between the parties to agree an agenda and method of proceeding in the negotiation.
2. At that meeting there will be a commitment by both sides that the objective of any negotiation is to reach an agreement within a timeframe agreed to by the parties but not longer than the end of 2012. The Quartet expects the parties to come forward with comprehensive proposals within three months on territory and security, and to have made substantial progress within six months..."

Tony Blair, the Quartet's envoy to the Middle East, said that if the Israelis and Palestinians are serious about peace, they should respond positively to the initiative.

Israel did immediately respond positively to the Quartet's proposal, however, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas did not, responding instead negatively.

The Question Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations via the resolutions adopted by its various organs and agencies and via the essential and lauded role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East - UNRWA - which embodies the international responsibility towards the plight of Palestine refugees, who are the victims of Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) that occurred in 1948. We aspire for and seek a greater and more effective role for the United Nations in working to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in our region that ensures the inalienable, legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people as defined by the resolutions of international legitimacy of the United Nations.

The AIR has previously canvassed numerous critical arguments concerning the Palestinian bid to have their "statehood" recognised at the UN. These include: that it avoids badly needed negotiations, violates the Oslo Accords, feeds Palestinian illusions about achieving their goals without compromise, courts violence, may damage the standing of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in its competition with Hamas, endangers Israeli-Palestinian cooperation on which the valuable Palestinian economic achievements of recent years rest, and risks the financial collapse of the already fiscally shaky PA government.

The unilateralist gambit by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to ram through a resolution on Palestinian statehood in the UN General Assembly will produce little more than the mirage of a fleeting diplomatic triumph.

No matter the hoopla surrounding it, the UN vote will certainly not represent a watershed moment for Palestinian statehood. Like a well-camouflaged detour leading nowhere, the diplomatic kabuki theatre may, in reality, do more harm than good for the cause of Palestine - a cause I have passionately supported since my formative years living in the Middle East.

The Unilateral Declaration of Independence, or UDI, initiative was reportedly born in May 2005, when Abbas attended the summit of South American and Arab states in Brazil, where he met with President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva. Lula is said to have promised Abbas that, toward the completion of his second term ending January 1, 2011, he would rally support among Latin American states for the Palestinians to declare independence at the United Nations.

As expected, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas submitted an application for Statehood to the UN Secretary General. The application can be downloaded HERE. In addition to this, both Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly and their two speeches (below) have provoked international uproar, especially in light of the speech one day earlier by US President Barack Obama. As The Australian reported, this was a different Obama from the one who spoke previously in the same forum.

That persistence has put the Palestinians on a collision course with the US and Israel. A frustrated Mr Obama told world leaders yesterday in his UN speech that "there are no shortcuts" to peace...

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US President Barack Obama's UN Speech yesterday was a milestone, in that it Included an unusually lucid explanation of Israel's strategic situation and its right to normal relations with its neighbours.

As readers are aware, the UN General Assembly session for 2011 has begun in New York amidst considerable drama of various sorts. While the media focus has mainly been on the status of the Palestinian bid to gain UN recognition as a state, there's a great deal more going on. This Update focuses on the various dramas occurring.

KEY ISSUES

It will not establish a Palestinian state under international law

• It is expected that the UN resolution will be blocked in the Security Council by US veto, and will pass in the General Assembly where it is non-binding.  The General Assembly cannot by itself establish or recognise a state, it can only admit new members after being nominated by the Security Council.
• The General Assembly has already recommended the creation of a Palestinian State previously and the resolutions have not created a Palestinian state.
• the Palestinians do not meet the traditional test for statehood – particularly the test of effective government – premature and unilateral recognition of an “unripe” Palestinian state could have a prejudicial effect on other regional conflicts. 
• While it is arguable that the West Bank, or Gaza could meet requirements for statehood, the resolution being sought does not meet requirements for statehood as it seeks recognition of a united and independent Palestinian state on Gaza, West Bank and east Jerusalem.

As the day of reckoning for the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN, now reportedly slated for Friday, draws ever closer, there is a frantic last-minute effort to avert the potentially disastrous showdown in favour of peace talks. Such talks are widely recognised as the only possible way to reach a genuine and lasting solution to the decades-old conflict. For example, Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair said yesterday that:

"What we will be looking for over the next few days is a way of putting together something that allows their claims and legitimate aspirations for statehood to be recognized whilst actually renewing the only thing that's going to produce a state, which is a negotiation directly between the two sides...

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AIJAC readers may be interested to read an interesting Q&A featured by the Guardian on the Palestinian bid to seek UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines.

Answering readers questions on this topic are Hussein Ibish is a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli journalist and writer who is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.

It interesting to note that Ibish is not enthusiastic about the Palestinian UN bid as he is concerned that it may result in economic turmoil for the Palestinians with the US threatening to cutoff of US aid

In addition, Klein makes a critical point regarding Israeli security and how the establishment of a Palestinian can be both an existential necessity and an existential threat.

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If a Palestinian state is not primarily for the benefit of the supposedly long-suffering Palestinian refugees, then what is the point of it? Nothing highlights the urgency of this question more clearly than the admission by a senior Palestinian diplomat that Palestinian refugees will not automatically become citizens of a new Palestinian state.

With September 20 the Palestinian Authority's proposed date to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state - also known as the "unilateral declaration of independence" (UDI) - we present selected quotes and links to a series of articles that explain everything a person might reasonably need to know about the issue.

According to a report by Oren Dorell in USA Today, the Palestinian emissary to the US has told a press conference that no Jews would be permitted to live in the planned Palestinian state.

"After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.

The territory to which Areikat refers would include places like the ancient city of Hebron. As Jeffrey Goldberg notes, Hebron is not just any city, but is the second holiest site in the Jewish faith...

There is no question that Israel's strategic environment at the moment is looking grimmer than it has in a while. Its long-standing good relations, at times something close to an alliance, with Turkey appear to be history. Meanwhile, following the Cairo embassy attack last Friday, it became clearer than ever that the cold peace that has prevailed between Israel and Egypt for more than 30 years - a core component of Israel's security planning - is at serious risk...

There is a tendency to assume among many editorialists and pundits that this deterioration must have occurred because Israel has supposedly been intransigent, particularly in terms of offering insufficient concessions to the Palestinians.

Noted American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg has pointed out that this automatic, conventional analysis actually has it backwards.

With the approaching Palestinian unilateral bid for statehood during the UN session which started this week, diplomats in New York revealed to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that pro-Palestinian pressure is a major factor underlying their countries' decision-making on whether to support or oppose the vote. According to the diplomats quoted by the newspaper, votes on the matter are largely based on countries' attempts to prevent retaliation against them from regional groups sympathetic or loyal to the Palestinian cause. Moreover, Australia was specifically mentioned in the article as a particular target for such efforts.

The influence of public opinion polls is having a significant impact on the politics of the Middle East, given that the ‘Arab Spring' has taught us that the will of the people can be stronger than the will of its leadership.

Further, one of the accusations often hurled at Israel by its most vehement critics is that it is supposedly intent on "Judaising" Jerusalem, supposedly forcibly evicting Arab residents from their homes or driving them out of the city. So what do the city's 300,000 Arab residents say about their situation?

The Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs has conducted a rigorous survey of east Jerusalem Arabs to find out their views. In east Jerusalem the total sample was 1,039, and it covered the entire city, every neighborhood and was based on face-to-face interviews. The sample was representative of the overall Palestinian population of the city by age, education, gender, occupation, neighborhood, and income.

Interestingly, the survey found that more Palestinians in east Jerusalem would prefer to become citizens of Israel than be citizens of a new Palestinian state. Moreover, 40 percent said they would probably or definitely move in order to live under Israeli rather than Palestinian rule.

The Canberra Times today published this letter which I wrote in response to a particularly ill-informed piece by former Australian Ambassador Peter Rodgers arguing for an Australian ‘yes" vote on the Palestinian bid to have the existence of a Palestinian state unilaterally recognised at the UN...

I think the letter does a reasonable job of answering his main argument, which is based on the historically absurd assumption that Israel is refusing to recognise Palestinian aspirations for statehood. But I did want to say a little more about the point I make in the second paragraph about the supposed Zionist slogan quoted by Rodgers "A land without people for a people without a land."

The European Union (EU) is divided on how they will vote on the upcoming UN resolution to recognise an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines.

This weekend, European foreign ministers are set to meet in Poland (the current president of the EU) in a final effort to find a unanimous position on the Palestinian UN resolution. However, it is clear that there are stark differences between the 27 members of the EU.

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It has s become increasingly clear in recent months that the Palestinian Unity deal signed by Hamas and Fatah in May is not leading to a lot of unity...

The extent of the ongoing differences between Fatah and Hamas was starkly highlighted in a recent dispatch from Reuters. Apparently, Fatah and Hamas cannot even agree on the time of day - literally.

The release of the United Nation's 'Palmer Report' into last year's flotilla incident aboard the Mavi Marmara has vindicated Israel by finding that its naval blockade of the Gaza strip is legal under international law. Moreover, Israel has the right to enforce that blockade - including in international waters. It has also rebutted many of the false claims and assumptions that have been made about the flotilla incident and about the broader situation in Gaza.

The UN investigative committee headed by former prime minister of New Zealand Sir Geoffrey Palmer, an expert on maritime law, was established by the UN to examine the Israeli raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on May 31, 2010.

Over the weekend, the UN's Palmer Report into the Mavi Marmara maritime incident last May was published - the full report is available to read here, a good summary of its key provisions is here.  That report - which takes Israel's side on most questions relating to the Gaza blockade and the background to the incident - has led to an intensification of the crisis in Israeli Turkish relations - with Turkey expelling the Israeli Ambassador and threatening to cut off trade relations.  The response of the Israeli Government to the report - it was accepted with some reservations - is here.

As reported by Al Jazeera, the US has begun a serious attempt to prevent the Palestinian unilateral statehood bid at the UN later this month. The Palestinian Authority, however, has remained steadfast and continued its refusal to back down.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that the US has launched an attempt to persuade the Palestinians not to seek statehood at the annual UN General Assembly meeting beginning on September 20.

"When it comes to going to the United Nations, I think the train has left the station," Muhammad Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah's central committee who is overseeing the UN bid, said on Sunday...

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The phenomenon of ‘Temple Denial' is a campaign led by Palestinian political leaders, religious figures, academics and journalists to delegitimise the Jewish historical connection with the area of Temple Mount and Western Wall in Jerusalem - which according to Jewish tradition is Judaism's most holy sites.

It also attempts to increase the importance of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and even the Western Wall in Islam as part of the effort to make Jerusalem a Muslim city under Arab governance - and to deny the need for any Palestinian compromise on Jerusalem with Jewish religious and national rights. This trend even includes the removal of archaeological material from the Temple Mount without archaeological supervision (see blog post by Allon Lee).

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Australia should vote against any United Nations resolution that attempts to replace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as the only route to Palestinian statehood.

If a "Yes" vote produced a Palestinian state that resolved all the issues of borders, refugees, settlements, and Jerusalem, Israel would be the first to support it.

Unfortunately, as it stands, the resolution the Palestinians are seeking absolutely will not help end the conflict and will almost certainly exacerbate it.

Clearly piqued by the incessant anti-Israel bigotry, Dr. Denis MacEoin, a former lecturer in Islamic studies, has come out in a passionate defence of the Jewish state in a letter to the Edinburgh University Student's Association committee and separately to the leader of the British Greens party over their support for BDS.

First up, MacEoin, who is not Jewish, expressed his outrage that his alma mater had passed a motion to boycott Israeli goods, services and people on the grounds that Israel is an apartheid regime.

He makes the case that Israel is not a perfect state but to compare it to Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa is not true "even as a metaphor".

Haaretz has reported on a new bill being introduced into US Congress which would see US funding for the UN substantially reduced if the Palestinian UN statehood bid wins the upcoming vote.

A republican congresswoman introduced a bill on Tuesday, along with 57 co-sponsors, asking Congress to block U.S. funds for any United Nations entity that supports giving Palestine an elevated status at the UN.

The head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is also seeking to ban U.S. contributions to the UN Human Rights Council and an anti-racism conference seen as a platform for anti-Israel rhetoric...

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In a hard-hitting analysis that raises some important reasons why the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has not been resolved, columnist David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen notes:

The Palestinians, so far as they are a people, have now a long history of being able to do things without consequences.

He compares this with how the world treats Israeli actions that are demonstrably undertaken in the cause of self-defence...

Rockets continue to be fired at Israel from Gaza, despite yet another ceasefire being called...

AIJAC recommends a new twitter feed - QassamCount - which provides realtime info on all of the rocket attacks, including where they hit and any damage done.

Most commentators seem to think that Gaza's Hamas rulers want a ceasefire and they certainly keep calling them... So why do rockets keep falling?

AIJAC guest Professor Efraim Inbar from Bar-Ilan University is in today's Australian on the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations.

He notes:

Unfortunately, General Assembly resolutions cannot fix a Palestinian national movement that is hopelessly fractured and dysfunctional.

The UN cannot turn the Palestinian factions into one political entity. Can the UN bring Gaza and the West Bank together to present reasonable interlocutors for Israeli negotiators? Can it mellow Hamas's lust to kill Jews and to eradicate Israel? Can it eradicate the "shaheed" death culture?

Is the UN in a position to infuse pragmatism into Palestinian political culture?

Israel's respected Middle East Analyst Ehud Yaari speaks to Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Weisenthal Centre on the main reason behind Iran's Gaza Missile Gambit; Why Hezbollah is quiet (so far); Post-Tahrir Sq trouble in Cairo, as over 100 groups urge government to sever ties with Israel; Iron Dome's surprising and promising results...

The terrorist attack in southern Israel on August 18 in which eight Israelis were killed - six civilians and two from the security forces - was initiated and executed by the Palestinian terrorist organisation known as the "Popular Resistance Committees", which operate as a terrorist arm of Hamas. The operation represents a change in the approach of Hamas toward the issue of the "Arab Spring", from acting only passively as an observer, limiting itself to damage control, to an entirely new stance in an attempt to reshape reality in the Middle East.

Early Monday morning eight people were injured in south Tel Aviv, when a 20 year old from Nablus in the West Bank, hijacked a taxi and rammed it into a police road block protecting a Tel Aviv nightclub.  He then exited the vehicle and stabbed additional people screaming "Allah Akbar" [god is great]. The suspect was tackled to the ground by Border Police officers and taken into custody.

Tel Aviv District Commander Aharon Eksol said the attack was "definitely an act of terror". Israel Radio reported that the attack was coordinated to target a large youth party being held in the nightclub.

From the Hebrew-language Israeli press comes this rare good news story, showing that the relations between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians is more complex that it often appears from the daily news-reports, which focuses on violence and confrontation.

This Update deals with some new writing exploring the problems and pitfalls associated with the Palestinian intention to unilaterally seek UN recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state - sometimes termed a "Unilateral Declaratation of Independence" or UDI - next month.

We lead with a short primer on the whole issue compiled by Uriel Heilman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Heilman has a useful summary of the various legal rules relevant to the effort, including what the UN General Assembly can and cannot do for the Palestinians. He also has a brief but helpful examination of the many uncertainties that will follow the UN effort and the various ways it could lead to violence or make peace more difficult.

This week the Palestinian Authority (PA) cancelled local government elections for the fourth time. This lack of democracy is a clear sign that the Palestinians are not ready for statehood.

Elections were scheduled for January 2009 but did not occur, then they were supposed to be held in July 2010, but were cancelled by the PA "for the sake of public interest." In February, elections were scheduled for July 2011 and then were cancelled "until better conditions are available" and rescheduled for October 22. This week PA President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree postponing them again - "indefinitely".

Sari Nusseibeh's "A Jewish rethink" (AFR, 19 August) is gravely disappointing from someone regarded as a pragmatic Palestinian moderate genuinely interested in peaceful co-existence with Israel.

It is understandable that he endorses J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami's call for the US to impose a solution, although he fails to mention that the proposal he sets out - a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with land swaps and a shared capital in Jerusalem - has three times been offered or accepted by Israel and on each occasion rejected by the Palestinians...

According to a potentially very significant news story, Hamas and its long-time key patron, Iran, have had a falling out over the unrest in Syria...

While it is much too early to predict that the Hamas-Iran split will be permanent, if this did happen, it would be a major re-alignment of the Middle Eastern map, with important implications...

THE Palestinian Authority's plan to unilaterally seek United Nations recognition of nominal statehood cannot lead to anything good for either Palestinians or Israelis.

It is unlikely to result in significant progress towards a genuine Palestinian state, and could produce several highly negative consequences.

From the Epic Revisionist Handbook 2011, comes the kind of story that the West and pro-Palestinian apologists prefer to gloss over, a documentary on official Palestinian Authority TV reveals a bright glorious future.... without Jewish people in Jerusalem.

Broadcast on August 10, the documentary apparently labels Jewish worship as "sin and filth" and that "Jews will disappear from the picture". The show conjures up a nightmarish future, promising that the Western Wall Plaza - the most holy place for prayer in the world for Jews - will disappear and be replaced by an Arab residential suburb.

As readers are probably aware, there was a major terror attack in southern Israel yesterday, the most serious in a number of years, in which 8 Israelis were killed by a group of terrorists who apparently crossed from Gaza into Sinai, and then into Israel (a useful timeline on the attack is here). Israel responded with airstrikes in Gaza that reportedly killed the leader of the group believed responsible, together with five other terrorists.

The attack raises questions about diminished Egyptian control of Sinai, as well as the growth of extreme Salafist Islamist groups in both the Sinai and Gaza. As Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak stated: " The incident reflects the weakness of Egypt’s hold over Sinai and the spread of terrorist elements."

Israel has been accused of many deeds over the years. Removed from their context, the below paragraphs from a report in The Guardian could almost sound like an exaggerated report on an Israeli military operation in the 2008/09 Gaza conflict - the kind that would be released by Palestinian state-controlled media outlets.

UNRWA, the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees, said the camp's residents fled after [the city] came under fire from gunboats and ground troops over the weekend. It was not immediately clear where the refugees were seeking shelter.

... The Local Coordination Committees, an activist group that helps organize protests... also confirmed troops fired at fleeing families. It said random gunfire erupted Monday in addition to a campaign of raids and house-to-house arrests...

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An Egyptian religious TV channel has broadcast a mock trial of former leader Hosni Mubarak, who appears as a puppet, and is accused by child prosecutors, of being, essentially, a puppet of Israel.

The clip on al Hekma TV, includes a number of anti-Israel slurs that feed into the recurring motif of Israel and Jews as spoilers and poisoners of Egyptian society.

Contradicting local boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) supporters who claimed their actions in preventing customers entering a Max Brenner chocolate store in Melbourne last month were peaceful, a prominent supporter of the campaign has condemned their behaviour as "indefensible" and "pretty stupid".

In an interview with the Australian, the president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Reverend Jim Barr, warned that heavy-handed tactics which resulted in 19 activists being arrested had backfired.

If called upon to march on Israel's borders from the West Bank in the event a Palestinian state is unilaterally established on the 1967 borders come September; are Palestinians going to spoil their leaders' party by not providing the numbers?

But what do you do if you hold a rally and the main beneficiaries of the event won't show?

Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh reports that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is worried because his own people are currently disinterested in attending anti-settlement protests.

Is it too much of a stretch to wonder if the Palestinian campaign to have the UN declare its support for a state on the 1967 borders on September 20 will spill over into the "Third Durban Conference" which starts two days later?

In other words, will Durban III, being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the first, descend into the abject anti-Israel and antisemitic hate fest that marred the original and overshadowed the second?

And will the debate about UN recognition of Palestinian statehood be used to stoke the fires?

This blog has been following events in Egypt over the past few weeks, as the Islamist groups seem to have been becoming far more assertive, resulting in increased weapons smuggling to Hamas in Gaza and, potentially, a cosier relationship between Egypt and Iran.

The Sinai Peninsula, inhabited mostly by various Bedouin tribes, sits between the Egyptian heartland and the Israeli border, and has long been an area which the central Egyptian government has struggled to fully control. Smuggling from Sinai into Gaza has been a constant source of Israeli-Egyptian disagreement over recent years, with Israel urging Egypt to make greater efforts to prevent this, and Egyptian efforts in this regard fluctuating.

Unfortunately, as Alex Joffe has observed in Jewish Ideas Daily, recent events in Sinai following the Egyptian  have been far from encouraging...

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Anyone naïve enough to divine any signs of Hamas moderation in its quest for Israel's elimination or that it will play nice for the Palestinian Authority's September UN statehood bid, needs the services of a top ophthalmologist (although preferably not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad, who is a little busy at the moment anyhow).

According to an August 4 briefing paper from the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, Hamas' top echelon repeated in different forums their opposition to Israel's existence or compromise in late July.

There are reports that the Palestinian leadership is again sending out mixed signals about how determined they are to press ahead with controversial plans to seek to have a Palestinian state recognised by the UN next month.

This Update features some additional pieces on those Palestinian plans - with a special focus on analysis of the possible meaning and implications of those plans for Palestinian society.

On August 9, the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) published an editorial "Fence-sitting, but the wisest course", which advocated that Australia abstain on the UN General Assembly resolution that is expected to seek UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines.

The editorial was commenting on news that Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd held different positions on the Palestinian UN bid. According to the Age's Daniel Flitton, Rudd wrote to the Prime Minister suggesting that Australia abstain on the Palestinian UN resolution, while Gillard has declared strong support for Israel. The SMH editorial declared, "we believe Rudd's advice is the sound course".

Abstaining on the resolution is not a "sound course" but rather a counter-productive course. Australia should not merely abstain but should vote against the resolution in the interests of Middle East peace and a two-state solution. Unilateral acts by the Palestinians will not achieve either peace or statehood, but are likely to escalate the conflict.

There is a tendency in the West to treat Palestinian society as if it were a full-blown democracy - after all, they appear to have elections, and Prime Ministers and Presidents and parliament and all the trappings.(This is despite the fact that election scheduled for two years ago still have not occurred and it remains unclear if and when they ever will.)

It is therefore worth pointing out that in many respects, the civil and political liberties that are the hallmark of genuine democracy are at best contingent and partial in the Palestinian Authority (PA) - to say nothing about Hamas-controlled Gaza.

For instance, media freedom is pretty limited in the Palestinian Authority, as a recent case reveals. Noted Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes about the plight of award-winning Palestinian journalist Majdoleen Hassouneh, who is in hiding after apparently upsetting local authorities by her reporting about a sit-in strike.

This blog post looks at the Palestinian UN bid and considers analysis from:

Veteran Washington insider Steven Rosen who writes that the current proposal for UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state does not meet the legal requirements for statehood.

Efarim Karsh and Asaf Romirowsky who have written an article in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the UN should not support the Palestinian UN bid, because it threatens to create a precedent of "land for war" rather than "land for peace".

Benedict Brogan, Deputy Editor of the Daily Telegraph who writes that Netanyahu's gesture to negotiate a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with land swaps demands a "swift and positive response from David Cameron and William Hague".

The Palestinian Authority's (PA) bid to unilaterally seek UN recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines in September appears to be losing momentum - not least among Palestnians...

The PA's plan to seek UN recognition of nominal statehood cannot lead to anything good for either Palestinians or Israelis, as even many Palestinians are now acknowledging. The US will likely veto any resolution on statehood in the Security Council, which alone has authority to grant UN entry, so the Palestinians will have to instead go directly to the UN General Assembly and seek recognition as a non-member observer state.

The unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, and its international recognition, would be a huge mistake.

A peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is essential, but can be achieved only through honest negotiations - not by one party imposing a unilateral decision.

Over the past two years, the Palestinian Authority has refused to sit at the negotiating table with the Israeli government, hiding behind the excuse of construction work on a few West Bank settlements. At the same time, it has been negotiating the creation of a national unity government with Hamas - a terrorist group whose stated aim is the elimination of Israel. A Palestinian "government" of a unilaterally established, self-declared "Palestinian state" in which Hamas is a member will make negotiations, to say nothing of a peace agreement, impossible.