During a visit to Iran last week, Jibril Rajoub called for a return to armed resistance against Israel if Kerry’s peace talks fail, according to a report in Makor Rishon.

Armed Resistance is a euphemism for suicide bombers and other terror attacks, and Rajoub is one of the Palestinian Authority’s strongmen, as well as the current deputy chief of the Fatah (PLO) Central Committee.

During his visit, Rajoub met with the Iranian foreign minister Mohamad Juar Zarif.

The meeting signifies an end to the freeze between the Palestinian Authority and Iran that went on for many years.

On an “Al Alam” Iranian TV interview, Rajoub said that if the talks failed, “returning to armed resistance would be a good strategy for the Palestinians.” While the PA ambassador to Iran made sure to mention that the talks have reached a dead end.

No one from the Palestinian Authority denounced Rajoub’s pronouncements of renewed terror attacks, while Hamas responded and said the statement was a welcome positive change, and Islamic Jihad said they hoped [Palestinian Authority Prime Minister] Abu Mazen would visit Iran soon.

Abu Mazen released an official statement that, “It’s understood how important the renewal of ties with Iran are for the Palestinian nation.”

Israel has expressed concern that if a “Palestinian State” were to be created, they would immediately sign treaties with Israel’s enemies, such as Iran, and bring Iran onto the Israeli border.

It doesn’t look like they’re waiting for a state to do that.

Palestinian Authority Arabs from the village of Al Aroob rioted and blocked the only road connecting Gush Etzion with Kiryat Arba-Hevron Thursday night and then attacked IDF soldiers with firebombs and rocks before they were dispersed with tear gas and rubber bullets.

None of the soldiers were injured, an IDF spokeswoman told The Jewish Press, but she could not confirm a report from Arab sources that the soldiers wounded one protester with a live bullet in the leg. Other rioters reportedly were hit by rubber bullets.

Al Aroob is a frequent spot villagers use to attack passing Israeli motorists with rocks, foreign objects and firebombs.

Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah party strongman in Gaza, denied on Thursday that he recently met with Shlomo Molcho, one of Israel’s two negotiators with the Palestinian Authority and a confidant to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The Maariv newspaper reported that the two men met in Dubai to establish a closer relationship with Dahlan, who told European Parliament members in Brussels last month that he is planning to replace Abbas.

Abbas is in his sixth year as chairman since his term four=year term ran out following the Palestinian Authority’s first and, as of today, the only presidential election.

Given Dahan’s stated intentions in Brussels, his denial is worth as much as the word of any Palestinian Authority official.

Dahlan literally ran Gaza until Hamas overthrow the Fatah faction in a bloody militia war in 2007.

He was one of the most feared men in Gaza, known for total corruption and for close ties with Israeli leaders.

Dahlan told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency Thursday he has not met with Molcho since the late 1990s and called the Maariv report “fiction.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has sent an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry criticizing him for his threat that Israel faces boycotts if the American-backed peace talks with the Palestinian Authority do not succeed.

ADL’s director Abraham H. Foxman also sharply rapped Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas for his “unwillingness to accept Israel’s legitimacy and permanence as a Jewish state.”

Foxman’s open criticism of Kerry may be serve as a warning to the Obama that is has gone too far in pushing its agenda for a peace agreement at all costs to Israel. The ADL previously has stood up for Israel on such issues as dividing Jerusalem, but it is considered a centrist or even center-left group, far from the camp of the AIPAC lobby.

“In speaking about the price Israel will pay if the peace talks break down and Israel is blamed, you may have thought you were merely describing reality. But as the key player in the process, the impact of your comments was to create a reality of its own,” Foxman wrote.

“Describing the potential for expanded boycotts of Israel makes it more, not less, likely that the talks will not succeed; makes it more, not less, likely that Israel will be blamed if the talks fail; and more, not less, likely that boycotts will ensue….

“What is particularly troubling about your comments is the absence of similar tough talk about the consequences for Palestinians should the talks fail. We make this comment not in search of some theoretical balance. Rather, its absence suggests a historical amnesia about why there has been no peace and no solution all these years. Israel always must be willing to compromise for peace and at different times it is not unreasonable to ask Israel to do more”

Foxman told Kerry that the real core issue “remains Palestinian unwillingness to accept Israel’s legitimacy and permanence as a Jewish state. That is why the Palestinians rejected the 1947 partition, that is why they rejected recognizing Israel after the 1967 war, and that is why Israeli offers at Camp David in 2000 and Annapolis in 2008 were rejected or allowed to go unanswered.”

Palestinian Authority Arabs in a village near Shechem in northern Samaria lightly wounded an Israeli soldier with rock throwing and firebombs early Wednesday after the IDF entered area to arrests four suspected terrorists, according o Arab media.

An IDF spokeswoman told The Jewish Press that only one terrorist was arrested and that there were no reports of any soldiers being injured.

The soldiers also confiscated a machine gun and ammunition.

Jerusalem Municipality’s Committee for Planning and Building has approved the construction of another 350 residential units in Jerusalem neighborhoods that the United States and United Nations consider “illegal” and home to “illegitimate” Jews.

The neighborhoods are Har Homa, across the highway from the Gilo “settlement” in southern Jerusalem, and Pisgat Ze’ev and Neve Yaakov, both of them located on the northern end of the capital.

The city’s deputy mayor Pepep Alalu of the left-wing Meretz party sharply criticized the announcement by the committee and called it an intention ploy to prevent a final agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

Toa certain extent he is right if it agreed that anything Israel does without the approval of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is an obstacle to an agreement.

That is the one-way policy that the Obama administration has pursued and which assumes that Abbas’ demands are the basis for a final agreement, except perhaps for the demand to flood Israel with several million foreign Arabs under the hijacked phrase ”right of return.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s “framework: that is to be dumped on the Palestinian Authority-Israeli negotiating table some time in the near future undoubtedly will not tackle the issue of the Jewish neighborhoods that the West calls “settlements.”

No one in his right mind, not even PA negotiator Saeb Erekat seriously thinks that Israel will expel 300,000 Jews form Har Homa, Gilo, Armon HaNatziv, French Hill and Ramot neighborhoods.

The only reason that the United States makes a stink about every home that Israel announces will be built in these areas is that it wants to show Abbas it does not distinguish them from Arab neighborhoods in areas of Jerusalem that were occupied by Jordan before the Six-Day War in 1967.

If the West were to ignore new housing in Gilo and Ramot, it would be putting a silent stamp of approval on the right of Israel to exercise its right of sovereignty over the Jewish neighborhoods on land that was legally annexed to Jerusalem in 1980.

Israel’s VIP Protection Unit has warned Israeli government ministers that they should not travel on Road 443 due to escalating terror attacks. Those attacks include stones, firebombs, and a roadside bomb that was neutralized before it could explode, according to a report on Israel Army Radio this morning.

Road 443 is the second main highway connecting Jerusalem, Israel’s capital to Tel Aviv, Israel’s financial center.

When the Supreme Court ordered, just over 3 years ago, that parts of Road 443 be reopened to traffic by Palestinian Authority citizens, the more grounded Israelis warned that the road would return to being the terror zone it was before it was closed off to PA traffic and terrorism.

Before Road 443 was closed, six Israelis had been killed and more injured by Palestinian Authority Arab attacks on Jews travelling on the road.

Those on the left claimed that these Israelis were being paranoid and exaggerating (remember the warning about rockets on Israel from Gaza, before the disengagement).

It wasn’t long after Road 443 was reopened that the stone throwing attacks began again and escalated to the level it is now.

It raises the obvious question, since we know what prevents these terror attacks on Road 443, why are Israeli ministers being warned from traveling on the road, instead of the government resolving the terror problem the way it knows that works.

U.S. government employees are forbidden from traveling anywhere on personal business in Judea and Samaria except for Bethlehem and Jericho, according to the government’s latest travel advisory.

In language softer than previous warnings that scared the dickens out of anyone even thinking of visiting Israel, the advisory pointed out, “Over three million foreign citizens, including hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens, safely visit Israel and the West Bank each year for study, tourism, and business. The Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority make considerable efforts to protect U.S. citizens and other visitors to major tourist destinations. Nonetheless, U.S. citizens should also take into consideration the rules governing travel by U.S. government employees.”

For example, “U.S. government personnel are not permitted to use public buses anywhere in Israel or the West Bank due to past attacks on public transportation.”

That limitation was reinforced after a bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv late last year in which passengers were miraculously saved by quick thinking of a passenger and the bus driver, who evacuated everyone moments before the bomb left on the bus by a terrorist exploded.

According to that logic, Americans should stay off Interstate 81 in Maryland and Pennsylvania because of last month’s murder of a 28-year-old man who was gunned down on the highway near the border between the two states.