“A Border Police tent was set on fire outside the settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank, and cars were vandalized in the nearby Palestinian village of Yatma on Thursday night. Israeli security forces are treating the two incidents as related, and suspect radical settlers to have carried them out. “

“Indeed, the story of Walaja, where this absurdity took place, contains everything – except humor: the flight from and evacuation of the village in 1948; refugee-hood and the establishment of a new village adjacent to the original one; the bisection of the village between annexed Jerusalem and the occupied territories in 1967; the authorities’ refusal to issue blue Israeli IDs to residents, even though their homes are in Jerusalem; the demolition of many structures built without a permit in a locale that has no master construction plan; the appropriation of much of its land to build the Gilo neighborhood and the Har Gilo settlement; the construction of the separation barrier that turned the village into an enclave enclosed on all sides; the decision to turn villagers’ remaining lands into a national park for the benefit of Gilo’s residents and others in the area; and all the way to the ridiculous fine issued by Inspector Somekh.”

“Over the past four years, he has experienced interrogations and court hearings and according to the Palestinian Authority’s agency for detainees, has been subjected to the ‘longest trial in the history’ of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons. On Wednesday, his long-running case resumed again but ended quickly, Halabi’s family told Middle East Eye. ‘Today’s hearing was cancelled shortly after it started because the witnesses were not present,’ his brother, Hamed, said. ‘The prosecution then threatened that any witnesses who come from Gaza to give their testimony will be detained’.”

“The attackers hit me on my back and shin with crowbars, and threw a stone at my head that split open the skin, causing a wound that required four stitches. Even as we yelled that we were leaving and pleaded with them not to harm us, they continued to attack. Then they set fire to the olive grove. I always wondered what the reaction of my own community would be if something like this happened to me. As an American Jew who is critical of Israeli government policies, I have experienced verbal attacks. In high school, because I supported J Street, some of my fellow Jews accosted me and spat out verbal epithets; they called me a kapo or a self-hating Jew, comparing me to Hitler or Mussolini. But I never imagined my fellow Jews attacking me physically — let alone during the holy days of Sukkot.”

“In an interview with Kan News, Mizrahi explained the political background to the failed systemic treatment of the violence of extremist right-wing elements. ‘Why play innocent?’ he asked. ‘There was a very right-wing government here, with part of its base situated there. It didn’t want to adopt extreme measures. As soon as you don’t deal with Yitzhar right at the beginning, since you realize you have no support for doing so, this is what grows’.”

“We believe that compromise should entail full citizenship for Palestinians in Israel including civil and national rights and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem…We know that Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are ideologically not in harmony with each other, but we believe this compromise is something that can work for both sides. We know there is no absolute justice, but we believe the solution should be as close as we both can get to that.”

The statement came after Gantz held talks with only three of the four parties – without approaching the chairman of one of its components, Balad. The chairman of the Joint List, Ayman Odeh, who represents the Hadash party within the slate, told Haaretz that the Joint List would not conduct itself according to the wishes of Kahol Lavan. ‘If Gantz wants to talk to the Joint List, he can talk to me,’ Odeh said, ‘but the moment he decides to talk to the heads of the [other] parties, he can’t ignore one party or another’.”

Mitchell Plitnick writes, “I applaud the activists in IfNotNow who try to get Democratic presidential candidates to say they will use military aid to Israel to leverage a change in policy. But if all that’s accomplished is a call for a freeze on settlement expansion, it’s self-defeating. The conditions for a two-state vision, such as the one Bill Clinton envisioned in his late and unlamented Parameters, are now two decades in the past. We must start basing our goals on current conditions. The supporters of Israeli policies have been doing that for years while we live in the past. And that’s why they’ve been winning.”

Peter Beinart writes, “For the AJC, these numbers are a problem. They’re a problem because, on a fair reading, they would require the organization to devote most of its resources to battling the anti-Semitism of the right. But the AJC wants to be bipartisan. More importantly, part of its mission is to defend the Israeli government against harsh criticism and external pressure. Since that criticism comes mostly from the left, defining it as anti-Semitism allows the AJC to pretend that its work against bigotry and its work on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu are one and the same.”

S. 2680: Introduced 10/23 by Rubio (R-FL) and Blumenthal (D-CT), “A bill to impose sanctions with respect to foreign support for Palestinian terrorism, and for other purposes.” Referred to the Foreign Relations Committee. This is the Senate version of HR 1850, introduced 3/21 in the House by Mast (R-FL), Gottheimer (D-NJ), Engel (D-NY) McCaul (R-TX) — introduced around the AIPAC Policy Conference but not listed at the time as an AIPAC lobbying item. The House passed HR 1850 by Voice Vote on 7/23 (see the 7/26/19 edition of the Round-Up for details) and sent it to the Senate (it’s not clear why Rubio decided to intro his own version of the bill rather than adopt the House-passed one). Rubio press release is here.