“Had the government approved the draft decision, it would have put an end to the ‘possibility of applying sovereignty in the coming months as promised by the prime minister, because Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz has already stated he would not agree to apply sovereignty without negotiations with the Arab world, and that is not possible at this time,’ Dagan said.”

[Reminder: Arutz Sheva is a pro-settlement/annexation outlet] “Immigration and Absorption Minister Pnina Tamano-Shata (Blue and White) told Reshet Bet Monday morning that Netanyahu’s sovereignty plan is not on the government’s agenda, as per her party’s request, adding that there is also no date for the sovereignty plan, leaving it unclear if or when the plan will be brought before the government.”

[Reminder: Arutz Sheva is a pro-settlement/annexation outlet]”According to the report, the US is urging the Likud to reach an agreement with Blue and White on the sovereignty plan, so as to maintain the Israeli government’s stability. In addition, the report claims that the White House is trying to extract Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, in the hopes of using the concessions to bring the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table.”

“It predicated a wave of violence and the freezing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and warned that Israeli decision-making on the issue is motivated by short-term tactical thinking rather than strategy. Unilateral annexation, it warns in summary, could prompt ‘dramatic steps that change the rules of the game’.”

“The Palestinian Authority on Sunday evening announced that it has decided to cancel a major rally planned for Tuesday in Ramallah to protest Israeli intentions to apply sovereignty to parts of the West Bank and US President Donald Trump’s Peace for Prosperity vision for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“Over the course of nine days, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Israel Defense Forces has nearly tripled, from 203 on July 4 to 568 on Monday, according to figures released by the military. The number of servicemembers in quarantine has similarly shot up over the past week and a half, from 5,039 on July 4 to 12,130, according to the IDF’s official tally.”

“The Palestinian Authority on Sunday imposed a night-time and weekend curfew on the occupied West Bank for the coming 14 days to try and rein in rising coronavirus numbers. ‘Travel will be prohibited daily from 8pm to 6am in all governorates,’ as well as from Thursday evening to Sunday morning, Palestinian government spokesman Ibrahim Melhem told a news conference.”

“After hundreds left the square after the event, they marched through the city’s main streets, blocking roads and junctions and chanting “Bibi go home!” Police arrested 20 after clashes erupted between law enforcement and protesters. Of those, 16 have been questioned and two will have court hearings regarding extending their detention.”

“The poll also recorded that if elections were held today, Netanyahu’s Likud Party would only receive 33 seats – a fall of six since the March 2 election. Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party would fall from 33 seats to nine, although that also takes into account the split with Yesh Atid-Telem, which would gain two more seats to reach 19. The Arab Joint List would also increase its standing from 15 to 16 seats. According to the poll, the next biggest party would be Yamina, led by Bennett, with 13 seats, up from six in March. Yisrael Beytenu would also increase the number of seats, up to eight from seven, while ultra-Orthodox party Shas would decrease to seven seats, compared to the nine it won in March.”

“US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Elan Carr, sparked a heated online argument among renowned global Jewish community contributors when he called out a tweet posted by J Street, a liberal Jewish Middle East lobbying group. “

“Daraldik wrote a letter to FSU’s student body apologizing for the post he made as a child, condemning antisemitism, and pointing to his support for Jewish issues on campus. He also explained that he made the comment in ignorance as a child. ‘I have since committed myself to learning more about antisemitism, and while I made my comments from the perspective of a Palestinian child who lived under military occupation I have since realized they were wrong and offensive. I would never frame my experience like this or make such comments today. I choose solidarity instead, and hope you join me in coming together to heal and move forward,’ he wrote.”

“The occupation’s putative temporariness is what has enabled liberal Zionists to see themselves as genuine liberals. It’s what allowed them to justify a policy position to themselves that in practice treats Palestinians’ human rights—considered universal and inalienable for everyone else—as conditional, to be held in perpetual suspension. Annexation, which would confirm that the occupation is permanent and inextricable from ‘Israel proper,’ would in theory force liberal Zionists to decide between support for democratizing the one-state reality, or support for apartheid.”

“Much of the narrative in international diplomatic circles around the issue of annexation has revolved around deterrence, with the rationale being the threat of tangible consequences to annexation will lead to a reconsideration of the move. Yet this narrative fails to acknowledge that we have reached a point, where Israel will annex yet another chunk of Palestinian territory precisely because deterrence has not worked. The threat of consequences has merely forced successive Israeli governments to innovate….Therefore, the international community must address the underlying root causes that have brought about this threat by ending its reluctance to hold Israel accountable for its continued colonisation of Palestine and take tangible action now. That action should take the form of targeted sanctions aimed at the entire economic incentive structure feeding into, and flowing out of, Israel’s colonial enterprise. Without an external force acting against Israel’s expansionist ambitions, the colonisation of Palestine will continue. If the function and the spirit of rule-based system of international relations is to be preserved, that force must be the force of law.”

“So, if we accept that at the federal level, Europe is impotent, what can individual EU member states do given the urgency of the situation before us? The answer is simple: recognise an independent Palestinian state, before Israeli annexation takes place. The EU states would not be making history; rather they would be joining the majority of the world, including Sweden, the first EU member state to recognise Palestine.”

“American Jews are beginning, if belatedly, to take a clear-eyed look at Israel, its darling. The Democratic Party is also doing so, slowly. Now we can hope that Beinart’s op-ed will motivate more and more intellectuals and others to look honestly and bravely at reality, as he has done, and to say what is still considered heresy, a betrayal of Israel and not politically correct in the United States…The standard weapon of the ‘realists’ for burying the last just solution is the threat of the terrible bloodshed that would occur in the binational state. The 53 years of the apartheid state generated the most terrible bloodshed of all. Things can only get better. Beinart, whose parents emigrated from South Africa, knows from history that when a government of equality is established in a binational state, and all its inhabitants win freedom and can exercise their rights, violence declines and even disappears. It happened in Northern Ireland as well as in South Africa. But the Zionist chorus will continue to paint a terrifying picture of the unknown and cling to the status quo, the steady, institutionalized situation of apartheid, which is the worst of all. Beinart misses the day when he saw Israel as a source of pride, like many Jews. Myself included. Now Beinart is himself a source of pride: an American Jew who heralds a change that gives hope.”

“Fortunately, there are Israelis and Palestinians who are giving Beinart, Baskin and, indeed, Israel itself, somewhere to go. The One Democratic State Campaign has formulated a political program that calls for a single democracy of equal rights, the homecoming of the refugees and the emergence of a shared civil society. It goes even further, recognizing that Zionism and Palestinian nationalism can co-exist within a pluralistic democracy – and both may eventually transform into something new, shared and vibrant. Will Israeli Jews buy into it? No, of course not. Why would they? To such a degree do they enjoy the benefits of an apartheid regime, that the occupation and Palestinian rights have been reduced to a non-issue. The refusal of most whites in South Africa to willingly dismantle apartheid resembles that of Israeli Jews. So Palestinians and the few Israeli partners that share the vision of a shared society must take a leaf from the ANC playbook. “

“According to reports that emerged on July 9, Israel sent Hamas a new outline for a prisoner-exchange deal through an intermediary. The Palestinian sources cited argued that the Israeli proposal was meager, offering only the return of bodies of Palestinian assailants in exchange for the bodies of IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, or the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel ‘with no blood on their hands,’ meaning those who were not involved in the killing of Israeli nationals.”

“The unnamed ‘Palestinian sources’ had claimed that a senior Hamas naval commander fled the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after suspicions arose that he was working for Israel, while another was arrested. The fugitive, said to have overseen the terror group’s divers unit, escaped on an Israeli military boat with a laptop, cash, surveillance equipment, and “classified, dangerous documents’.”