‘Price-tag’ thugs – whose violent assaults on Palestinians is the price the settlers exact for any infringment of settlers’ ‘right’ to occupy what land they want – have increased their reach- more Palestinian homes, mosques, people and now an IDF base. Netanyahu wonders how to control the monster he has nurtured

An IDF reservist reports on the gulf between official policy – which includes enforcing curfews and not firing tear gas at civilians – and the reality of bored, anti-Arab soldiers and officers

West Bank settlers have moved from harrassment, land seizure and house demolition into acts to terrorise Palestinians into leaving. Two news reports from Ma’an News are followed by a blog from One Democracy

Three of many anniversary postings: in 1982 a camp in Lebanon for Palestinian and other refugees, surrounded by the IDF, was entered by a Phalangist militia who killed 800-3500 refugees. The horror of the event has been a potent factor for Palestinians demanding the right of return.

Disappointment with the Palmer report on the flotilla invasion has been intense – but, writes Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the OPT, one look at how the panel was constituted explains why it lacked the expertise to have found the IDF action and blockade of Gaza unlawful

Caught between hysteria at the prospect of ‘September’ and inertia as history moves on, Netanyahu’s government – and settlers – prepare for violence after the UN vote Thus they destroy hopes of reform writes Uvi Avnery

B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, responds to last week’s violence with a charge against ‘Palestinians’ (1st) of actual war crimes and a warning to the IDF (2nd) of potential crimes. Its data of Palestinian attacks covers a seven year period.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy proposes bill to take US subsidy from elite IDF units which, he alleges, commit acts that violate human rights in the Gaza strip and occupied territories

In a letter to the Israeli ambassador to the UK, the JfJfP expresses its shock and dismay at the violent arrests of Freedom Theater staff. A press release from the theatre follows, detailing the events. Last is a news report from Haaretz aking if the use of the army is connected to the murder last April of the theatre’s founder, Juliano Mer-Khamis

Despite criticism of the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara in 2010, (Aviel Magnezi) the UN commission, headed by Geoffrey Palmer, has, say Israeli media, also judged the raid itself, and Israel’s blockade of Gaza, to be legal. There is as yet no date for the publication of the report (Barak Ravid, Jonathan Lis)

As the navy prepares for the Stay Human flotilla to Gaza, the IDF tries to prepare for any Palestinian response to the September UN declaration of statehood

On Naksa day – the June 5 anniversary of the 1967 ‘setback’ when Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights etc – Lebanon and Hamas stopped people marching on the border. As the Syrian government now favours such protest, the IDF is preoccupied with stopping them

Uri Avnery, first, and then Ali Abunimah respond to the violence of the IDF against unarmed Palestinians trying to cross a border erected against them

IDF chief warns “In fighting groups operating out of urban areas, we shall be forced to exercise a lot of force, even if it will see the other side paying a painful price.”

Jonathan Cook offers his analysis of what the Palestinian energy and Israeli political inertia and reliance on military force on Nakba Day shows about the regional state of play

Larry Derfner predicts the end of the occupation. He writes that no good way of ending it was presenting itself: “And then came Tunisia. And Egypt. And Iran, and Yemen, and Bahrain, and Libya, and no one knows where this is going to stop.

And it became pretty clear to me that this is how Israeli rule in the West Bank is going to end – through Palestinian people power. Masses of Palestinians, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, marching to IDF checkpoints and outposts, marching to Israeli-only roads, to settlements, to the security fence – to the nearest Israeli presence and screaming, “Out! Out!””

The IDF has excelled itself this time – it is now on its fourth explanation for Jawaher Abu Rahmah’s death. She died after inhaling CS (tear) gas in Bil’in, but the army first claimed she wasn’t there, then that she had cancer and died; now it appears her doctors killed her with atropine, according to a new IDF “investigation published in Israeli media outlets. But the official IDF spokesman’s office denies it! The investigation, it says, is ongoing… The author if the earlier briefings was the commander of the Central Command, Major-General Avi Mizrahi. He seems to operate quite independently of the IDF Spokesman’s office, telling lies and sewing doubts and confusions which the Israeli hasbarista bloggers seize on with relish.

Your web-poster was away as the Abu Rahmeh story unfolded. He returned to a great gefaffel. The IDF, refusing to entertain the possibility that Abu Rahmeh had died from tear gas, threw in everything including the kitchen-sink, to divert attention from its possible complicity in this death. In this short posting Jeremiah Haber unravels what we know and what we don’t know of the event. As he shows, there is no “conflict of narratives” since there is no Israeli counter-narrative, merely a story the IDF doesn’t like…
We also carry some earlier postings on the story by Jeremiah Haber and others, and Robert Mackey’s overview of Israeli bloggers’ responses.

Breaking the Silence has released a new publication, “Occupation of the Territories – Israeli Soldier Testimonies 2000-2010”, as part of the organization’s wider goal of increasing access to information on the daily reality in the Occupied Territories. The 431-page volume is made up of testimonies from 101 male and female soldiers who served in the Territories over the past decade. Joseph Dana of +972 provides a brief commentary on the publication and its significance.

As news comes in that Breaking the Silence, now in its sixth year, is planning a major new publication to mark ten years since the start of the second intifada, we reproduce a substantial Ha’aretz feature article on the organisation and its work.