Eye on "Palestine"

Jenin District Governor Kadura Musa died Tuesday night of a heart attack after attackers opened fire on his home, according to a report by...

After being told that the Meretz activists who came to see their homes were looking to stop at a Palestinian store to buy water, residents of the Bet El neighborhood welcomed their guests with cold water and cookies.

After a teenage boy on Monday afternoon had been harassing a Jewish girl in a playground at Jerusalem's French Hill neighborhood, the girl escaped from the playground and called her father, who called the police. But the arriving cops ended up arresting the girl's father on suspicion of attacking the Arab boy.

The US Agency for International Development will pour $147 million into Palestinian Authority infrastructure, education, health projects, and humanitarian aid, just six months after a funding freeze was imposed by President Barack Obama.

The Supermarket chain Co-Operative Group, Britain's fifth-largest food retailer, is the first major European retailer to stop buying from companies that export produce from Israeli settlements east of the Green Line. The largest Israeli agricultural export companies affected by this move are Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin.

Egypt's decision to halt its already erratic natural gas supply to Israel was not, as the Egyptians claimed, due only to financial disagreements. Shareholders in East Mediterranean Gas Co have stated: "Any attempts to characterize this dispute as a mere commercial one is misleading." The supply of natural gas, its absence, has become a worrisome measure of the very future of Israel's peace treaty with Egypt.

Last Sunday night, a Palestinian woman arrived with her 12-day-old baby girl at an IDF post in the Benjamin region of Judea and Samaria. The infant was having trouble breathing and needed immediate first aid. Commanders from the Benjamin Regional Brigade explained that Palestinians in the region know that if they have a life-threatening emergency, they can come to the IDF post for assistance.

First obtained and published by Haaretz, the transcripts reveal his motivations for facilitating terrorist attacks against Israeli targets, his fears of losing the Palestinian street, and the extent of Arafat's autonomy.

Hamas number two Moussa Abu Marzouk said Thursday that if Hamas comes to power in a future Palestinian state, it will not uphold any peace agreements with Israel.

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and the European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine (ECCP) boasted a successful campaign and praised the EU on Tuesday for deciding not to renew a contract with the world’s largest security solutions company, because it also does business with Israeli prisons and security services.

Ranking Islamic Jihad official Khader Adnan, who went on a 66-day hunger strike over his detention by Israel, has been released in keeping with the deal reached with him to end his hunger strike in February. One day before his release on Tuesday, some 2,300 Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails began an open-ended hunger strike, synchronized with Palestinian rallies marking "Prisoners' Day."

Eighty-three reserves officers and soldiers yesterday sent the Defense Minister and the IDF Chief of Staff a letter supporting the Eisner, who had been suspended from his post. Additional support came from Hagit Rein, mother of Major B'naya Rein who was killed in the Second Lebanon War and whose body Eisner retrieved.

We would have expected the IDF brass, as well as Israel's government, to show restraint, perhaps count to 30, before throwing their own man under the media bus. But, alas, both IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned a senior IDF officer for the way he appears on a selectively edited Palestinian video on You Tube.

The latest Israeli Police figures: 43 activists altogether have been detained at Ben Gurion airport. Out of this number, 31 were transported to the Givon detention facility for processing and 12 were put on returning flights. Nine Israeli activists waving pro-Palestinian banners were detained for questioning.

Israeli security forces are preparing for a "fly-in" of as many as 2000 pro-Palestinian provocateurs, who will be trying to push their way in front of the cameras at Ben Gurion airport on Sunday. Those activists who will make it through, coming in mostly from Europe, will be turned around and sent right back to their ports of origin, but not before being handed a leaflet expressing the sentiments of their brief hosts.

IDF Soldiers and Military Police on Wednesday arrested a Palestinian armed with seven explosives at the Beka'ot crossing in the Jordan River Valley. The terrorist appeared suspicious and while searching him the soldiers discovered three knives and bullets, as well as the explosives. The terrorist was taken for further investigation by security forces.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told a delegation of Israeli leftists on Sunday that he would ask the UN General Assembly to recognize Palestinian statehood if Israel does not respond to his demands for the resumption of negotiations. Those demands include a total freeze of Jewish settlement construction in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem, and the release of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisoners.

Amal Hamad, a member of Fatah's central committee in Gaza canceled a visit to Ramallah on Sunday after Hamas police officers insisted on carrying out a physical inspection at Beit Hanoun crossing. Hamad said she headed to the Erez checkpoint where police stopped her and inspected her luggage. "Then they asked to inspect me physically and I refused."

The evacuated residents of Machpelah House in Hebron have erected a protest tent a few hundred meters from the Cave of the Patriarchs, in front of their empty property, which was locked by Border Police and will remain a closed military area until further notice, under order of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The Arab who sold them the house is held in a PA jail, as are members of his family.

The condition of Ismat Abdul Khaliq, the Palestinian woman who had been arrested over her critical writings about PA President Mahmoud Abbas, is deteriorating in an isolation cell in prison. Prosecutors accuse Abdul Khaliq of writing a Facebook status update criticizing Abbas. She has been held since last week after a court extended her detention for 15 days.

At a press conference Tuesday, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon announced a new state policy regarding dispossessed Jews who were forced to flee from their homes in Arab countries. A 2008 study indicates that Arabs lost 450 million dollars in property and assets ($3.9 billion in today's numbers). Their Jewish counterparts lost 700 million dollars ($6 billion in today's numbers).

In a key defeat for NGO "Lawfare", the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Tuesday decided that it does not have jurisdiction to begin an investigation over cases related to the 2008-09 Gaza War because "Palestine" is not a state. But this victory over Israel's Palestinian foes may not be long lasting.

Did you ever get the urge to go beyond just flaming someone who got on your case on Facebook, or elsewhere on the Internet for that matter, and wished you had a police force all your own you could use to put that person in his or her place? If you happen to be Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, you can do that!

At the Kalandia checkpoint, where Palestinian youths have been taunting Israeli security forces all day, activity fizzled down after TV cameras had left. Jordan mass sit-in remained 6 miles from the border. Lebanon's army restrained Iranian and Palestinian busloads of demonstrators. In this region things can change rapidly, but we're off to the mikvah, to prepare for Shabbat. Here's hoping for a peaceful evening.

One day before the commencement of 'Land Day,' organizers of the "Global March to Jerusalem" are deployment their troops. Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed security system chiefs "to be prepared for any scenario." Access to the MOJ official website, gm2j.com, has been blocked on Wednesday night, and organizers blamed Israeli hackers for taking down the site.

Palestinian journalists protested Wednesday in the city of Ramallah, in Judea and Samaria, demanding that the Palestinian Authority release Yousef al-Shayeb, a reporter who was arrested two days earlier, following a complaint of slander and deformation filed by the Palestinian ambassador to France and his deputy and Foreign Minister.

The organization says that in 2011, 676 people were executed with full public disclosure worldwide. The rise in Iran and Saudi Arabia alone accounted for the net increase of 149 recorded executions as compared to 2010. But the press release, which will be used by news outlets everywhere, is silent on executions which took place in the Gaza strip under the aegis of Hamas.

A new campaign is being launched these days by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights is so outrageous, it crosses well into the macabre and the cynical in ways that wouldn't have shamed, say, American comic genius Larry David on a particularly nasty day.

"We had to decide which patients to transfer to our better protected facilities," CEO Dr. Chezy Levy explained what working under fire actually meant. Barzilay has some shielded buildings, but most aren't. "We transferred about 100 patients, or 20% of the patient population… You should have seen them transporting a premature baby in the incubator, while resuscitating it on the way…"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton phoned President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, ahead of a meeting of the international Quartet scheduled for next month. Clinton's call to Abbas was to follow up on discussions between Abbas and Obama a day earlier.