“Israel is reviving the E1 plan to build thousands of settlements in East Jerusalem, which would cut off the city from the rest of the West Bank and undermine any prospect for the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state.”

“A Border Police officer was lightly injured in clashes with a group of ultra-nationalist “hilltop youth” settlers during the demolition of illegal structures at an outpost in the northern West Bank on Wednesday. Meanwhile a rights group said settlers in the area also threw stones at Palestinians in two separate incidents on Tuesday. On Wednesday dozens of settlers, with their faces covered, threw rocks at police officers who had arrived to clear the Shevach Haaretz outpost near the flashpoint Yitzhar settlement. Rioters also hurled paint bottles at police officers, hitting a number of them, and punctured the tires on several vehicles, police said in a statement.”

Also See: “Dozens of Masked Israeli Settlers Hurl Stones at Police in West Bank, One Officer Wounded” (Haaretz)

“Israeli bulldozers today razed large tracts of Palestinian-owned land in Iskaka and Yasuf villages, located to the east of the West Bank city of Salfit, according to a local source. Head of Iskaka Village Council Fawzi Lami said that Israeli forces escorted bulldozers to the eastern area of the village, known as Khallet Ghanayem, where the heavy machines leveled the land to make room for the expansion of the nearby colonial settlement outpost of Nofei Nehemia, built on land confiscated from the village.”

“Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement construction in the northern West Bank, said that a group of settlers , protected by Israeli soldiers, hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles as they were driving on a road connecting Nablus to Qalqilya, causing damage to some and threatening the life of their occupants.”

“Dozens of Palestinians protested outside the German diplomatic office in the West Bank on Tuesday, seeking to draw attention to Israel’s arrest of a leading coordinator of the Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel.”

“On August 10, 2020, the High Court of Justice (HCJ), in a majority opinion of Justices Mazuz and Karra, accepted HaMoked’s petition and cancelled a punitive order for the demolition of a third story apartment, home of the man indicted for killing soldier Amit Ben Yigal on May 12, 2020, in Ya’bad village, Jenin District. The accused man’s wife and 8 children, 7 of them minors live in the targeted apartment; the apartments on the ground and first floors of the house are the homes of the man’s two brothers and their families.”

“These breaches in the fence are no secret, and B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories has documented cases in which soldiers shot and seriously wounded laborers who entered Israel through them. Yet the army, the lord and master on the ground, hasn’t closed them. It’s also well-known that these breaches have multiplied since the coronavirus pandemic began. They are now spread out along the entire length of the fence. Before dawn, laborers come through them. Israel needs their work, and they need a livelihood. Farmers whose land is locked away on the other side of the separation barrier also come through them. That way, when they go to and return from their fields, they don’t have to wait for soldiers to open the gate. And over the past two weeks, even before the Eid al-Adha holiday on July 31, they have been joined by a never-ending stream of vacationers – people who long for normalcy, freedom of movement, fun and visits to friends. “They’re hungering to travel around their homeland,” said Ehab Al-Jariri, editor and host of one of Palestinian radio’s most interesting talk shows. I decided to wait with the story and pictures of this exodus. I was afraid that any attention to it from the Israeli media would hasten the closure of the breaches. An opportunity for another few thousand Palestinians to exercise their right to travel around their homeland is much more important than any journalistic report. For the same reason, photographer Oren Ziv of +972 Magazine, whom I met during one of my visits to Far’un, decided to temporarily shelve his photographs. But now that the story has already been told on Israeli television, we have been freed from this decision. When so many breaches have remained open for around half a year, it’s clear that this is a decision from above. Israeli security officials have made some sort of cost-benefit calculation, once again proving the extent to which Israeli control over the Palestinians is present, invasive and capricious.”

“Israel has carried out multiple strikes in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the launching of incendiary balloons from the besieged enclave in recent days. The Israeli military said Wednesday it carried out overnight strikes on Hamas targets including “underground infrastructure and observation posts.” “Jets, attack helicopters and tanks struck a number of Hamas targets,” a statement said. The army said the strikes were “retaliation” for the launching of multiple balloons from the Hamas-run enclave. Fire services in southern Israel said the balloons caused 60 fires on Tuesday alone but reported no casualties.”

“Israeli helicopter gunships and tanks attacked at least three sites in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday in response to rash of airborne arson attacks sparked more than 60 fires in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces said. The IDF said its forces targeted “a military base, underground infrastructure and observation posts belonging to the Hamas terror group.”

“Two wildfires broke out Wednesday morning near the Gaza border due to balloon-borne explosives launched from the Gaza Strip for the seventh straight day.

“The Knesset passed in its preliminary reading Wednesday a bill to grant the government more time to pass the national budget, helping avert a fourth round of elections by pushing off the approaching deadline. The bill, proposed Derech Eretz MK Zvi Hauser, passed 56-41, but its fate in three future votes that are required for it to become law remains mired in the very same coalition disputes and wrangling that have prevented the budget from being passed to date.”

“The report by Channel 12 news claimed the budget was not the chief issue for Netanyahu, indicating he was using it as leverage to pressure Gantz into agreeing to changes to the existing coalition deal between the two sides. According to the report, Netanyahu is demanding that the accord be altered so elections are automatically called should the High Court of Justice disqualify him from serving as alternate prime minister after he hands over the premiership to Gantz in November 2021. The current deal only gives Netanyahu protection for the first six months of the government’s existence. Netanyahu is also reportedly demanding that the agreement to form a professional committee for appointing senior legal officials — such as the state attorney and the chief of police — be canceled, with that power returning to politicians.”

“Where do they pass such laws to prevent elected officials from running? The only place these laws are passed are dictatorships – in Iran, in North Korea,” said Netanyahu. “Yair Lapid, a thousand masks won’t be able to cover your dictatorship. You and [Joint List leader Ayman] Odeh will not beat us at the ballot box, so on one hand you encourage left-wing demonstrations, and on the other hand, you present an Iranian law to the Knesset, to disqualify me from running for prime minister.”

“[Naftali] Bennett is now riding the crest of the wave. The weaker Netanyahu gets, the stronger Bennett is. Two days after Bennett’s raging speech, Channel 12 created a stir by releasing the results of its poll on suitability for the position of the prime minister. The only person to come close to challenging Netanyahu as the top candidate to be suitable for prime minister was Bennett. Likud voters are shifting to him, and they are not the only ones. Even the soft right, which voted for Blue and White under Gantz, are suddenly realizing that they could live with Bennett as an alternative. The results of this poll are dramatic, and not just for Bennett. They show how deeply entrenched Israelis are in the right. Even when they are disappointed with the prime minister, they prefer to move further right by supporting a former Netanyahu protege, Bennett. Meanwhile, with the collapse of Gantz, the center-left not only lacks an alternative to take over the government from Netanyahu. It has also failed to create such an alternative. Try as he might, Lapid continuously fails to break through an invisible barrier. No matter what he does, he isn’t deemed suitable to lead the country.”

“Kahol Lavan is ensnared in a trap: On the one hand, it has committed itself in the last election to advance legislation to prevent Netanyahu from serving as prime minister once he’s indicted. On the other, Likud has presented an ultimatum to Kahol Lavan whereby any support for Yesh Atid’s bill will lead to the collapse of the coalition and a new election.”

“Ideological right-wing MK Bezalel Smotrich devoted his life to destroying the two-state solution. In an interview he says the left’s fixation with it is ‘like getting addicted to drugs to escape reality'”

“Sharon Epstein used to be a left winger. She believed in peace and giving back the occupied territories to the Palestinians. But then the anti-Netanyahu protests began and something changed. Fed up with the incitement against the prime minister, Sharon Epstein became, in her own words, a “Bibi-ist” — a supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu. Epstein, whose Facebook profile picture showed a young woman with brown hair and blue eyes, shared her transition from leftist to Netanyahu supporter on a Facebook page called “Zionist Spring.” Except that the story was missing one crucial detail: Sharon Epstein does not exist. Rather, she was a fictional character created as part of a political campaign. There are several Sharon Epsteins in Israel, but none of them are the “Sharon Epstein” who shared a story of political transformation on Facebook. The profile picture used was generated by computer software using technology known as “human image synthesis” — which processes photos of real people to create a composite image of someone who doesn’t exist, but which is deceptively realistic.”

“U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar held off a well-funded challenger Tuesday and won the Democratic primary in her congressional district, putting her on track for re-election in November along with other members of the “Squad” of four liberal freshmen. Omar defeated attorney Antone Melton-Meaux, who had accused her of prioritizing her celebrity over her constituents, and several other challengers, the New York Times said. One of the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress in 2018, Omar won 57.2% of the vote Tuesday compared with 39.4% for Melton-Meaux in Minnesota’s 5th district, the Times said. She is likely to win again in November in the solidly Democratic district.”

“Harris supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and believes in a robust US-Israel relationship, including the continuation of American military aid to the Jewish state. Harris supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and believes in a robust US-Israel relationship, including the continuation of American military aid to the Jewish state…Unlike some of the more liberal members of the caucus, such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she has not bucked the party’s traditionally supportive posture toward Israel, or called for fundamental changes to the nature of the alliance.”

“Palestine today recorded 499 new novel coronavirus cases and 346 recovery cases in the last 24 hours. Health Minister Mai al-Kaileh announced that among the 499 new confirmed cases, 140 cases were recorded in Hebron district, four others in Nablus district, 32 others in Bethlehem district and 23 others in Qalqilia district.”

“Health officials say there are several reasons that Hebron has been the focus of the pandemic, including the fact that many residents of Hebron work in Israel…The situation is complicated further by the fact that the West Bank is divided into three parts: Areas A, B, and C. In Area C, which makes up 60 percent of the West Bank, and where all of the Jewish settlers live, Israel maintains complete control. There are up to 300,000 Palestinians living in Area C, who have not had access to adequate health care because of the pandemic. “The West Bank has been under military occupation and the health care system does not have the necessary infrastructure or human capacity to really address a huge surge in COVID-19 cases,” says Aisha Mansour, the director of Medical Aid to the Palestinians (MAP). “For now, the number of cases that require critical care are a small number of cases, but should they rise it could be catastrophic.” Like in Israel, there has been growing dissatisfaction with the way the Palestinian Authority has handled the pandemic.”

“There are 375 people in serious condition, 110 of them on ventilators while new cases indicate 6.7% of 26,360 tests conducted found positive; Gamzu warns crowded gatherings must stop or lock-down inevitable”

“In a vote via telephone, government ministers on Tuesday approved the extension of the controversial measure that allows the Shin Bet security agency to track Israelis’ whereabouts as part of the coronavirus contact tracing effort. The electronic surveillance is carried out via cellphone triangulation technology. The current extension is to last another three weeks. Last month, the Knesset plenum, passed legislation to allow the Shin Bet to assist in the national effort to reduce to spread of the coronavirus, sparking debate about the possible infringement of privacy.”

“Coronavirus taskforce chief Prof. Ronni Gamzu warned during a debriefing on Tuesday that general lockdown may be imminent due to a drop in the number of Israelis getting tested for the virus, and the public’s failure to adhere to regulations. Coronavirus taskforce chief Prof. Ronni Gamzu warned during a debriefing on Tuesday that general lockdown may be imminent due to a drop in the number of Israelis getting tested for the virus, and the public’s failure to adhere to regulations.”