“A court in Israel delayed a ruling on Palestinian families facing eviction from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. A similar eviction issue involving the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood helped set off the most recent round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“The military admitted in its response that soldiers’ actions were improper, but said there was no need for a criminal probe.”

“What is happening in Sheikh Jarrah and Batn Al-Hawa exemplifies the overarching and the overall context of Palestine of Israel’s maintenance and expansion of its settler-colonial and apartheid regime. “

“Mona’s fears became reality when Israeli air strikes partially destroyed her family home. “I was looking forward to Wassim and I going back to Gaza and reuniting with our family but now, after they bombed and destroyed my house, where am I going back to? Where would we live?”

“Residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem opened a bookshop on Wednesday in honour of the one demolished by Israeli air strikes in Gaza earlier this month. The Samir Mansour bookshop was built 21 years ago and was known for being Gaza’s largest. Two storeys tall, it was home to tens of thousands of books. On 18 May, the store – along with most of its books – was destroyed by Israeli air strikes. Posts on the bookshop’s Instagram page showed the damage. Books could be seen to be strewn across the ground underneath the rubble.”

“Al-Khudeiri’s case is one of the dozens of recent arrests of Palestinian activists and university students by Palestinian Authority security forces in the occupied West Bank….According to Shaker Tameiza, a lawyer with the Addameer prisoners’ rights group, the campaign of arrests began following the end of the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, and after the West Bank witnessed popular protests expressing their support and solidarity with their brethren in Gaza.”

• Two Palestinians injured in an attack by settlers near Ramallah 
• Israeli settlers take over three acres of Palestinian land in Bethlehem
• Israeli settlers attack landowners defending their land west of Salfit
• Update- Some 20 Palestinians injured as Israeli forces quell anti-settlement rally south of Nablus
• Israeli forces detain four Palestinians, assault three others in West Bank

“Here’s a breakdown of the aid pledges so far”

Abraham Gutman writes, “Hours before the ceasefire was announced, Alaa couldn’t see much beyond life and death. She said that she cries when she looks at her daughters, not sure which one she might lose. “We are not asking for more life. We just don’t want to die.” But Alaa, Ahmed, and all Palestinians deserve more than not dying. They deserve a fulfilling life, free of occupation and blockades. They also deserve their pain, mental anguish, and despair to be recognized and addressed. That shouldn’t require a war.”

“Siblings in Gaza are mourning for their father who was killed in an Israeli air strike during the recent onslaught. A video of the father, Ahmed al-Mansi, went viral on social media in which he is seen trying to comfort his daughters as Israel attacked the blockaded Gaza Strip on May 12. Two days later, an Israeli air strike killed him leaving his three children orphaned.”

“Premier Shtayyeh extended his appreciation to the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, for announcing $500 million in support for the reconstruction of Gaza following the ceasefire that ended the worst Israeli onslaught on the besieged coastal enclave.”

“Egypt has invited Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for separate talks that aim at consolidating the cease-fire that ended an 11-day war between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s militant Hamas rulers, an Egyptian intelligence official said Thursday. The talks would also focus on accelerating the reconstruction process in Gaza. “We are seeking a long-term truce, that would enable further discussions and possibly direct talks,” said the official, who had close knowledge of the proceedings that had led to the ceasefire and who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to brief reporters.” Also See “Blinken Leaves Middle East With Cease-Fire Intact but Aid Uncertain” (New York Times) “U.S., Egypt working closely to reinforce Gaza ceasefire, Blinken says” (Reuters)

“Israel has conditioned the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip on promoting the issue of bringing back its citizens held by the Hamas terrorist group, Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported Thursday morning.” Also See – “Israel sets conditions for talks with Palestinians via Egypt” (Al-Monitor)

“Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi will visit Egypt early next week for talks on the recent ceasefire agreement to end fighting between Israel and the Hamas terror group in Gaza. Ashkenazi will meet with his Egyptian counterparts to discuss strengthening bilateral ties and plans to rebuild the Gaza Strip following the devastation of the recent conflict.”

“The top United Nations human rights body decided on Thursday to create an open-ended international investigation into Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, after the UN rights chief said Israeli forces may have committed war crimes and faulted the Hamas terror group for violations of international law in their 11-day war this month.

The 24-9 vote, with 14 abstentions, capped a special Human Rights Council session on the rights situation faced by Palestinians. The session and the resolution were arranged by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has strongly supported the Palestinians in their conflicts with Israel. The resolution called for the creation of a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” — the most potent tool at the council’s disposal — to monitor and report on rights violations in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It would be the first such COI with an “ongoing” mandate”

“The United Nations Human Rights Council agreed on Thursday to launch an international investigation into crimes committed during the 11-day conflict between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.”

Also See

• “U.N. Rights Council Orders Inquiry Into Israel After Gaza Strife” (New York Times)
• “Arab Parliament hails UN probe into Israel’s human rights violations” (Al Anadolu)
• “Palestine welcomes HRC resolution to probe Israeli crimes in occupied territories” (WAFA)

“The United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has said Israel’s recent attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip that killed more than 200 Palestinians may constitute “war crimes” if they are shown to be disproportionate. Bachelet’s comments on Thursday came as she opened a special session of the UN Human Rights Council, called at the request of Pakistan – on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation – and Palestine.”

“A new report documenting several violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israel during its recent military attack on the Gaza Strip from 10 – 21 May was released today by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. The report concluded that the International Criminal Court (ICC) must hold the Israeli leaders and soldiers accountable and not allow them to enjoy impunity.”

“More than 600 musicians, including members of The Roots and Arcade Fire, have issued an open letter in support of Palestinian rights. The group, calling themselves #MusiciansForPalestine, published the letter on Thursday, less than a week after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire ending 11 days of hostilities that left hundreds, mostly Palestinians, dead. “Today, we speak together and demand justice, dignity and the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people and all who are fighting colonial dispossession and violence across the planet,” the letter states.” Also see “Patti Smith and Julian Casablancas among over 600 musicians to call for boycott of Israel” (JTA)

“Israel’s top diplomat to the United Arab Emirates attended a ceremony in Dubai on the grounds of the Arabian Peninsula’s first permanent exhibition to commemorate the Holocaust. Hours earlier, he’d attended an event establishing a joint venture between an Israeli and Emirati company. The receptions on Wednesday were the clearest indication since a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip came into effect last week that the devastating 11-day war between Hamas and Israel and the violence that gripped Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque in the days preceding it have had no visible impact on the UAE’s commitment to establishing deep ties with the state of Israel. “What we see here is the exact opposite of what we see in Gaza… What we see here in the whole normalization process is a departure from the past,” Israeli Ambassador Eitan Na’eh said.” Also See – “UAE ramps up diplomacy following Israel-Hamas conflict” (Al Monitor)

“At a special session of the Jordanian Parliament to discuss the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, Jordanian lawmakers called to annul all agreements with the Jewish state.”

“Blinken said one takeaway from his trip in the region and the events of the last several weeks is that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has “not magically disappeared,” and needs to be addressed…During his visit to Israel, Blinken announced that the Biden administration would move forward with reopening the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that was shut down by the Trump administration. As Axios has reported, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Blinken he had reservations about this move. But Blinken told me the move was both necessary and in Israel’s interest. Blinken stressed the reopening of the consulate won’t change the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, nor mean any recognition of Jerusalem as a capital for the Palestinians, which he said was a matter for direct negotiations between the parties. “So I think there is no basis for concern. To the contrary, I think, it is beneficial to everyone. If we’re not engaged with the Palestinians that undercuts our ability to advance things that I think would be everyone’s benefit, including Israel,” Blinken said.”

“Amid the recent conflict, the USAID mission in the West Bank and Gaza is ramping back up — after being reinstated by the Biden administration — Power said, adding that the director of the mission arrived in the region last week, and humanitarian funding is moving forward after Republican senators lifted their objections. In the longer term, Power said the U.S. is looking to promote development programs, such as the Middle East Partnership for Peace — a fund that provides support for people-to-people programs and joint Israeli-Palestinian economic ventures — to change the underlying conditions surrounding the conflict.”

“Citing a “desperate” need in the wake of the recent Israel-Hamas war, Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Jewish Democrat, is spearheading a letter to a top Senate Republican asking him to stop blocking aid to the Palestinians.”

““As a person who has studied Hamas for the last 20 years, I have never seen Hamas enjoying popular support in the way they are enjoying it now,” he said. Alsoos added the US elevation of the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the fighting, including through development aid, reopening of the US consulate-general and the call for greater Palestinian rights, is an attempt to “isolate” Hamas from its political gains in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. “They want to delink Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah from Gaza,” he said. “This is the political strategy.”

“With attention focused on the most recent deadly violence that erupted between Israelis and Palestinians, there seems to be a newfound understanding of the role American foreign policy plays in either sustaining or failing to address the root causes of this continuing conflict. The Biden Administration touted their efforts in securing the resent ceasefire, but ongoing Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories and in Israel, itself, demonstrate that the status quo is untenable. It is also clear the American people are taking note of these policy failures. Join us for a discussion of a new AAI poll of American attitudes toward Israelis and Palestinians that examines issues from the recent conflict and the deepening partisan divide. The poll was conducted the day the ceasefire was announced.”

“Holcomb is the first US governor to visit Israel this year, landing in the country days after a ceasefire ended the latest major conflict between Israel and the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip.”

“This month’s bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians has prompted many, Jew and gentile alike, to reconsider the situation and give more credence to the Palestinian cause. Social media has been filled with American Jews denouncing some of the institutions that claim to represent them, often for the imbalanced Israel education they received as children. Vox spoke with Rabbi Jacobs to discuss the past and present of such education, as well as how she’d like to see it change in the future.”

“The prominent reports of antisemitic violent assaults included in the tracker, and making the rounds on social media, are certainly concerning. “To my knowledge, we haven’t seen these attacks on Jews before during moments of mass protests on the street,” said Ben Lorber, a research analyst at Political Research Associates who studies far-right antisemitism and white nationalism. But the significance of these attacks is obscured when they are lumped in with other incidents of a far less severe nature, like Facebook comments, and incidents in which the antisemitic content is arguable, like anti-Zionist protest chants. It is also suspect to base claims of an uptick on incidents that have not yet been fully investigated. Yet news outlets like MSBNC have already created maps of the antisemitic surge compiling incidents from the tracker without disambiguating their categories, and reports in outlets like NPR and NBC cite the ADL number of 193 reported incidents without specifying which kinds of incidents make up this number.  By conflating weighty incidents with trivial ones—and encouraging others to do the same—the ADL only makes it more difficult to measure antisemitism in American life.”

“Witnesses told the Walla news site that roughly 10 men wearing black shirts, some of them with yarmulkes, surrounded the victim’s vehicle, forcing him to stop at the northern city’s Heroes Junction. They then smashed his windows, pulled the driver from the car and struck him repeatedly, including with glass bottles, as he lay helpless on the street”

“The family of an Arab Israeli man killed during recent ethnic violence in Lod rallied outside a court in the central city Friday to protest the handling of the investigation into his death. Over 100 people took part in the protest over the fatal shooting of Musa Hassouna earlier this month amid clashes in Lod. Police arrested four Jewish suspects after the shooting, who argued they acted in self-defense. They have all since been released on bail. The suspects claim Hassouna was one of a gang of rioters who attacked them, while Hassouna’s relatives have said he was not involved and was standing some distance away from the unrest when he was shot.”

“In a statement, the Israeli police said more than 1,550 Palestinians have been arrested since May 9. More than 300 have been detained this week alone across towns and cities in Israel including Haifa, Yafa, Lydd, al-Jalil (the Galilee), and al-Naqab (the Negev). To date, 140 indictments have been brought against 230 people, the majority of whom are Palestinians, including minors. They have been charged with assaulting police officers, demonstrating, and throwing stones. Most of the time, when children are indicted, they are charged with throwing stones – a crime that comes with a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. In Haifa, children make up 20 percent of the arrests, according to Abdu, who has documented the detentions with other volunteer lawyers.”

• “Change camp: Cautious optimism for coalition next week” (Jerusalem Post)
• “Netanyahu to meet candidates for president” (Jerusalem Post)
• “Israel Coalition Talks: Lapid Secures Deal With Labor as Talks with Right-wing Parties Advance” (Haaretz)

“Top military officials say privately the accomplishments of the latest operation will slip away unless a more permanent arrangement with Hamas is achieved quickly”

“Barnea intends to position Mossad again as a clandestine, under-the-radar organisation, with much less of the fanfare and PR that has characterised the five and a half years of Cohen’s term. It is also clear that the agency under Barnea will be less politicised, and its new boss is certainly set to be less close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

“In the wake of the violence in Lod and other so-called “mixed” cities, Israeli media—and US publications—have framed the events as an upsurge of ancient intercommunal hatred. Yet the root causes do not lie in a bygone epoch. In Lod, as in Acre and Jaffa, Palestinian citizens of Israel were reacting to an increasingly urgent threat of displacement from neighborhoods they’ve inhabited for decades. This is, in part, why the institutions of Lod’s Torah Nucleus—the yeshiva, the pre-military academy—bore the brunt of the protesters’ rage. They embodied not simply the threat of expulsion, but also the underlying project of Judaization: an effort that, in Lod and elsewhere, is driven by right-wing groups like the Torah Nuclei, but supported financially by the Israeli government and ideologically by a broadening swath of Israeli society.”

“When Shmuel Sunray accepted the job in the fall of 2019 as chief legal counsel for NSO Group, an Israeli spyware company accused of selling malware used against journalists and dissidents, he knew it would be a challenge. Founded in 2009 by ex-military and intelligence officers, the company created a hacking tool called Pegasus that promised cops and spies access to criminals’ and terrorists’ private text messages, photos, cameras and microphones. But NSO’s customers don’t always just go after child pornographers and drug traffickers. In 2018, human rights group Amnesty International accused NSO in court of helping the Saudi government spy on a close associate of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Then Facebook sued NSO just a day after Sunray started work, alleging the company had helped hack over 1,400 of its customers.”

“The iconic Palestinian keffiyeh, a chequered black and white scarf that is usually worn around the head or neck, is the preferred headgear for terrorists, according to Google. Social media users slammed the popular search engine on Tuesday after results for ‘what types of headgear or scarves do terrorists wear’ listed the keffiyeh as the top search result.”

“As Facebook and Instagram users around the world complained that their content about Palestinians was blocked or removed, Facebook’s growth team assembled a document on May 17 to assess how the strife in Gaza affected user sentiment. Among its findings, the team concluded that Israel, which had 5.8 million Facebook users, had been the top country in the world to report content under the company’s rules for terrorism, with nearly 155,000 complaints over the preceding week. It was third in flagging content under Facebook’s policies for violence and hate violations, outstripping more populous countries like the US, India, and Brazil, with about 550,000 total user reports in that same time period.” 

“Way back at the beginning of the Arbiters of Truth podcast series on our online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic invited David Kaye to talk about international human rights law (IHRL) and content moderation. David is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and when he was first on the show, he was also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression. It’s been a year and a half since then, and in the intervening time, David’s vision of IHRL as a guiding force for content moderation has become mainstream. So Quinta and Evelyn asked him back on to discuss the increasingly important role played by IHRL in content moderation—and what it really means in practice. They also talked about the rise of digital authoritarianism around the world and what international law and leading democracies can do about it.”

“The New York Times recently came under fire when it accompanied an essay by Palestinian human-rights lawyer Diana Buttu with an illustration that showed a shrinking map of Palestine, from the borders of the British mandate for Palestine in 1947 to areas that would be under Palestinian control after adoption of a recent peace plan…We often hesitate to delve into the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, as there are two competing narratives. History can be open to interpretation and not always easily fact-checked. But, as best we can, we’ll try to summarize the two versions of whether there was a historic Palestine for readers who want to hear both sides of the story.”

“It is important to point out that although the reason for removing content in this context is to maintain the security of the state and protect its citizens, the lack of transparency or checks and balances mechanisms creates a clear and immediate danger of systematic censorship. The various social media platforms are today the main tool for both news consumption and the publication of non-institutional content. Censoring freedom of expression – especially in a democracy – should be examined under a microscope. The history of human knowledge is based on evolution and often on perceptual revolutions. Thus the statement that the world is round, which once constituted heresy and resulted in a death sentence, is today a fact. The never-ending debates about online censorship and which ideas are allowed to be expressed and which are forbidden are merely proof that the same historical mechanisms still exist today, with even a greater force.”

“In the larger context, it should be recognized that the Palestinians are attempting to create democratic institutions in the fundamentally hostile and undemocratic environment of military occupation. This raises the question: Is democracy even possible absent a sovereign state and under such conditions of dependency?  Equally important is the fact that these elections were focused on reviving democratic legitimacy for the PNA, an institution whose mandate is both provisional and bound up in the Oslo Accords, a framework that is essentially defunct. Today, there is no peace process, and the challenge facing Palestinians is not negotiating with Israel over final status issues in furtherance of establishing an independent state. Israel’s right-wing leadership jettisoned that approach long ago and is pursuing unilateral territorial expansion, which would preclude a Palestinian state from ever coming into being in any meaningful sense.  At the same time, the international community continues to fund the entire Oslo Accords framework, including the PNA, under the premise of supporting a two-state solution. Yet without a viable Palestinian state in the works, the international community is more likely funding the structures of  an apartheid state — a separate Palestinian infrastructure under Israeli sovereignty — in which the PNA is playing the role of enforcer of a permanently disenfranchised population. Policymakers around the world, including the U.S., will have to come to terms with this reality sooner or later — the nature of their relationships to Israel and the Palestinian Territories depend on it. ”

“The spate of arrests over the past two weeks in Israeli Arab communities is a far cry from the “law and order” operation the police have used to describe their actions. It is the exact opposite. Arab residents of the mixed towns and communities don’t perceive a police effort to impose law and order but to spread terror. Arab citizens feel the state is telling them that anyone who dares to raise their heads will get hurt. The police call the operation successful, describing those arrested during the protests against Israel’s operation in Gaza as “rioters” who blocked roads, destroyed pubic property and committed racially-motivated attacks on innocent passersby. The police claim some of those “rioters” keep firearms and have a criminal past. But this story is far from convincing the overwhelming majority of the Arab public.”

“President Joe Biden has shown a remarkable capacity to change with the times, but when it came to the recent armed conflict between Israeli and Hamas forces, he often seemed to be pressing “rewind” and “play” on an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. The welcome ceasefire provides an opportunity to re-examine this outdated approach.”

“The past two weeks were a wake-up call. The message is not only that conflict is unsustainable but also that the very nature of the conflict is turning into a religious one. That religious element has seeped into Israel itself and turned into violence between the Israeli citizens — Arabs and Jews — within Israeli cities. We cannot and should not cede the floor to religious extremists. The cease-fire in Gaza provides a window of time we must use to change the long-term reality. An essential decision is to return to the vision of two states for two people, to strengthen the pragmatic forces and weaken the extremists and end the terror.”

“By the standards of the peace process, if not international law, Oranit is not a terribly contentious Jewish settlement. The Palestinians previously accepted that this hilly town of low-slung homes in the occupied West Bank would remain part of Israel in a future two-state solution. In one negotiating session their disagreements amounted to an area of about 400 square metres. It has grown into a commuter town, half an hour by motorway from Tel Aviv, and rates nine out of ten on Israel’s “socioeconomic index”, a measure of education, wealth and employment.”

“But while pointing out the failings of the current approach is vital, its critics go too far. As far away as it may seem, the two-state solution is still the best possible option available for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s in large part because the alternatives are even less plausible.”

Stephen Walt writes, “The latest round of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians ended in the usual way: with a cease-fire that left Palestinians worse off and the core issues unaddressed. It also provided more evidence that the United States should no longer give Israel unconditional economic, military, and diplomatic support. The benefits of this policy are zero, and the costs are high and rising. Instead of a special relationship, the United States and Israel need a normal one.”

“But the president’s unusual capacity for empathy opens possibilities for a new course in U.S. foreign policy, based on a repudiation of not just Trumpism but also pre-Trump militarism. If President Biden is willing to act on the conviction that Israelis and Palestinians are equally deserving of respect, human rights, and human dignity, a more productive U.S. approach to Israel-Palestine is within reach.”

Mehdi Hasan writes, “Here are two statements that can be true at the same time: Most criticism of Israel isn’t antisemitic; Some criticism of Israel is extremely antisemitic. Neither one contradicts the other. But you might not know it from some of the recent coverage of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.”