“Three were injured in the incident, including Mayor Nasser al-Hawari of Hawara, a nearby village, and his deputy, Kamal Awdah, according to Ghassan Daghlas, a PA official responsible for monitoring settlements in the northern West Bank. An 19-year-old Israeli was also lightly injured from a rock that hit him in the head, requiring stitches, said a Samaria Regional Council spokeswoman.”

“An Israeli soldier who shot and killed a plainly unarmed Palestinian boy during mass protests along the Gaza border fence last year has been sentenced to a month in military prison and demoted. It was the first conviction of a soldier to result from a handful of criminal investigations that were opened after hundreds of Palestinians were killed during the protests, which began in March 2018 and continue, albeit in reduced form.”

“Palestinians and Israelis wonder whether this calm is due to Hamas fearing a great Israeli reaction that could lead to a full-scale, costly war, or if there is a Palestinian-Israeli desire to wait for the Iranian-Saudi tensions, the Turkish military operation against the Kurds and the popular protests in Lebanon and Iraq, and take it from there. Meanwhile, Hamas is looking forward to knowing the new political action in Israel due to the post-election crisis. In addition, Israel made promises to Hamas through Egypt to accelerate the implementation of humanitarian understandings between the two sides in October 2018. Khalil Shaheen, director of research at the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies – Masarat, told Al-Monitor, ‘The calm in Gaza is deceiving. There are more reasons for the situation to implode than there are calm factors, which mainly revolve around Hamas’ desire to implement understandings with Israel by distributing Qatari funds to the poor, establishing a field hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, introducing Egyptian goods into Gaza and reducing participation in the marches of return, despite attempts by small armed groups in Gaza to break the calm by firing rockets into Israel’.”

“Hiba al-Labadi, a 24-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian national, was detained by Israeli forces on August 20th at the Allenby Bridge border crossing while traveling from Jordan with her mother to a wedding in the West Bank city of Jenin. Her arrest was reportedly related to meetings she allegedly had with Hezbollah affiliates during a previous visit to Beirut, where she was visiting her sister. Al-Labadi has been on hunger strike for 35 days.”

“In an Oct. 21 letter to Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) welcomed the ban, saying brokerage “promotes modern forms of slavery.” The ITUC, which says it represents 207 million workers in 63 countries, called the ban a good first step and urged the government to take additional measures to protect workers. The number of permits issued for free for Palestinians is estimated at 100,000 per year. Israel sets conditions for acquiring the permits, including that the recipient must be over 22 years old, married and have no security records. Israel also does a background check to make sure workers haven’t been involved in any hostile act against Israel.”

“A Palestinian woman was shot and critically wounded by a Border Police force near the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Wednesday after she had attempted to stab one of the soldiers. On Monday, a 16-year-old a Palestinian tried to stab border police officers in Jerusalem’s Old City. The teen was shot by police and moderately wounded.”

“US presidential adviser Jared Kushner urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz in separate meetings to work together to form a unity government in order to seize the ‘tremendous opportunities’ in the region, he said in an interview that aired Tuesday. Speaking to Channel 13, Kushner said he thought both Netanyahu and Gantz want to ‘move forward’ and put an end to the political deadlock plaguing the country after the inconclusive September elections, the second national vote in a year.”

“The Citizen Lab’s investigation into the identities of the victims is ongoing. So far, the university laboratory said that the attacks targeted at least a hundred members of civil society in at least twenty countries. The list of targets includes prominent religious leaders of multiple faiths, well-known journalists and television personalities, and human-rights activists and human-rights lawyers. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, said, ‘It is the largest attack on civil society that we know of using this kind of vulnerability.’ He added that the Citizen Lab is not releasing the names of the victims at this time, because of confidentiality restrictions.In addition to targeting civil-society members, the malware was used against diplomats and foreign government officials, presumably by NSO Group’s customers, which include law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

“The board of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—J Street’s chief rival on the congressional Israel-policy front and a bastion of support for the government and policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—was treated to off-record remarks by David Schenker, the assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs. Neither the State Department nor AIPAC released a readout of the meeting…We may never know what Schenker, a former fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), said to the members of AIPAC’s board on Monday, but it’s no surprise he addressed them, particularly since WINEP is the progeny of the Israel-lobbying powerhouse AIPAC.”

“Jordan on Tuesday announced it was recalling its ambassador to Israel for consultations to protest Israel’s detention of a pair of Jordanians who have been held without charges for the past two months. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi wrote on Twitter Tuesday that Jordan was taking the step because of Israel’s refusal ‘to heed our legitimate demands’ to release the pair. ‘We hold Israeli government responsible for the lives of our citizens whose health conditions have severely deteriorated in illegal arbitrary detention,’ he said. ‘We will take all necessary legal & diplomatic measures to ensure their safe return home’.”

“Gantz is now the most powerful brand in the Blue and White party. Neither Ashkenazi nor Lapid can challenge that position. Nor can anyone else in the party. His character, restrained style and the experience that he is starting to accumulate in the political arena have all turned him into a powerful player. Right now, he holds the mandate to form a government. He is the one who attends negotiations with Netanyahu — just him, one on one, without his No. 2, Yair Lapid, and without Ashkenazi’s “hand on the steering wheel.” In this sense, he is very different from Labor-Gesher party Chairman Amir Peretz, for example. Peretz shows up to negotiations with Gantz with his No. 2, Orly Levy-Abekasis, right beside him.”