The EU provides 45% of the costs of the PNA. Should it continue asks Phyllis Starkey at Chatham House, as this relieves Israel of the responsibility for the welfare of Palestinians in the oPt and underwrites the status quo of the occupation.

This article by Phillip Weiss will not be as embarrassing for Hillary Clinton as it should be. Her strategy seems to be to schmooze the richest people (not all Jewish) and assure them that she will always put Israel’s interests first including preserving its monopoly of nuclear power in the region.

Moshe Ya’alon, previous defence minister, was right when he warned ‘extremists’ were taking over Israel and he feared for his country: Foreign policy handed to proud racist This week, May 23-29, the media focus has been almost exclusively focussed on the possible reasons for, and consequences of, the replacement of Moshe Ya’alon with Avigdor Lieberman. […]

Avigdor Lieberman is in, Ya’alon and Labour’s Herzog are out. The turmoil in Israel’s government is being read as not just a reshuffle but as the epitome of Israel’s diplomatic status – and it’s not favourable.

The heart of Israeli state bureaucratic control is the prevention of movement. With movement there are exchanges of information, emotion, publicity, plans. Omar Barghouti is well-known outside Acre, his home town, as co-founder and speaker on BDS. Now the bureaucracy which has swelled as its managers seek to control all movement has denied him a travel permit. It’s a form of house arrest but Glenn Greenwald managed to reach him for an extensive interview.

Love and knowledge of poetry is embedded in Palestinian society. A growing number of novel and prose writers has joined the pantheon. Obviously there is an annual festival to celebrate this and to invite in other writers from home and abroad. Who knew? The only media coverage was attached to the speech of the ascetic JM Coetzee, who likened control over Palestinians to apartheid in his native South Africa. But with better English language PR perhaps Palestinians would get, for one week at least, the attention and respect they deserve.

It’s taken a long time for judicial authorities in the west to acknowledge and act on sex crimes against children. In taboo-ridden Gaza it is striking that the fact has been aired – if only by an Israeli paper, though there is nothing in Ynet’s report to justify the term ‘epidemic’. Several Palestinian NGOs are onto the issue offering training and shelter for children already traumatised by bombing.

Despite pleas from the UN and NGOs Al Mezan and PCHR, Gaza Prime Minister Haniyeh has insisted the execution of 13 Palestinians will take place soon. Per capita. so to speak, its use of capital punishment is amongst the highest in the world.

Turmoil in the Israeli government, anxiety about its direction among even conservative Jewish groups plus an initiative from the Israeli Policy Forum prompt serious steps towards a 2-state solution. The alternative is no end to violence. Plus where Adelson is putting his money. Articles from JTA and Intercept.

The USA has been the guarantor, not of Israel’s existence which is not under serious threat, but of its military supremacy in the region. This support has been bipartisan with Christian evangelicals the most fervent. Now the Pew Research Center has found an increasing number of young people are open to the Palestinian demand for recognition of their human and political rights.

Young Palestinians have a fierce loyalty to Palestine – but none to any political authority – except, perhaps, Hamas and jihadi groups. This two-year old article from sociologist Jamil Hilal is full of insights into why the so-called ‘third intifada’ has taken the form it has.

Peace talks between the Israeli government and PLO are suddenly at the front of business for Egypt and France. Secret meetings are reported, and denied. Netanyahu insists it is no business of any foreign government and the PLO says the reports are false. We’ll wait and see.

On 26th May 2016 the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) adopted  a working definition of antisemitism based on, and very close in its wording to, that published in 2005 as the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism. Here is a link to the IHRA document downloaded via https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/press_release_document_antisemitism.pdf

Two people who don’t fit their prescribed identities – Avraham Burg who wants to repeal the law of return and Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, a secular Palestinian – both with long histories in peace movements, explore what they may have in common.

Avigdor Lieberman has no admirers. But in a sign of his desperation Netanyahu is poised to put him in the position which requires most finesse, diplomacy and knowledge – foreign minister. Perhaps the universal outcry will make him change his mind.

Once the political establishment in Israel restrained the IDF’s gung-ho approach to conflict. No more. Military commanders have urged talks with Hamas and are concerned Netanyahu presents a real and present danger. He acts only to serve his own security as PM and has surrounded himself with bellicose right wingers.

Almost all reports from Israel are full of alarm at the shift of people in leading positions. Netanyahu has accepted pressure from the far right and is no longer a block against their advancement.

It’s being called the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history . Although the old Ashkenazi elite and IDF commanders have enforced the occupation says Jonathan Cook, they are being replaced by zealots from the religious right.

Israel’s state prosecutor has taken Breaking the Silence, the organisation of former soldiers who cannot rest until they tell what they have seen and heard, has prosecuted BtS and an Israeli court has ruled BtS must name its informants. Under what law? Is this court abandoning law at the government’s whistle? Reports from BtS and two others.

In his latest column Mike Cushman identifies a new battalion in the Israel/Palestine conflict: troops from the Labour Party of a Trotskyist or of a Blairite tendency. They are alike in caring nothing about Palestine and vilifying a new invisible army: left antisemites. Watch out – they’re behind you, under the bed, everywhere!