A young Palestinian journalist and contributor to Middle East Eye says that he has been forced into exile because of death threats from the Palestinian Authority after he exposed police brutality in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has retracted comments he made this week about an alleged plot by rabbis calling on Jewish settlers to poison the drinking water of Palestinians.

“The relative quiet in the West Bank is largely due to a security coordination with Israel that — despite Abbas’s combative proclamations — is tighter than ever,” writes Avi Issacharoff.

“The residents of Gaza are being held hostage by a terrorist organization. That is what Rivlin claimed June 22 in the speech he delivered in Brussels,” writes Shlomi Eldar. “But the heads of the PA and other senior Fatah officials are also making cynical use of the people of Gaza for their own political needs.”

Khaled Meshaal, the long-serving head of Hamas’ political bureau, will likely abstain from the movement’s next internal elections, although close observers find it hard to imagine him withdrawing from the movement’s leadership permanently.

“After running Gaza for almost a decade, Hamas remains a pretender to power. It is firmly in the chair, but it has yet to meet the challenge of charting a path that will free Gaza, and Palestine, from a debilitating status quo, one that promises a new generation of Palestinians only misery and discontent,” writes Geoffrey Aronson.

The Amana movement that carries out settlement construction in the West Bank has been receiving tens of millions from a mystery company in the Central American tax haven, via a nonprofit that was also controlled by the movement.

Muslim rioters on the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem clashed with police for the second day straight as authorities allowed tourists, including Jewish groups, to visit the area during the sensitive last 10 days of Ramadan.

Netanyahu stressed that in the agreement Turkey obligated itself not to allow any preparation for terrorist attacks against Israel from its territory, including the raising of funds for Hamas.

The long-awaited Quartet report on the Middle East is expected to include a recommendation that Israel and the Palestinians begin bilateral negotiations, The Jerusalem Post has learned.