Kenneth Marcus, the Trump administration’s nominee for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, says schools that allow BDS protests should lose federal funding.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Muslim leaders on Wednesday that a U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was a crime which showed that Washington should no longer play a role in Middle East peace talks.

The leaders of 57 Muslim nations have called on the world to recognise “the State of Palestine and East Jerusalem as its occupied capital”.

Palestinians have the right to East Jerusalem as their capital, Saudi King Salman said Wednesday, echoing calls at an Islamic summit in Istanbul from which he had stayed away.

Millions have turned to social media and digital platforms to express their support and position on Jerusalem. Hashtags such as #jerusalemcapitalofpalestine in English and Arabic have been trending for days.

Israel struck a Hamas military compound in the southern Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning. The Israeli army was responding to a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip toward southern Israel on Tuesday after tensions along Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip flared up.

Israeli troops, in raids across the West Bank overnight Tuesday, arrested 32 Palestinians for suspected involvement in terror activities and violent rioting, as well as a senior Hamas figure, security forces said.

“Even if the Regularization Law [which retroactively legalizes settlement construction on private Palestinian land] does not survive judicial review, it has already put pressure on the Israeli legal establishment to come up with other, less heavy-handed (but equally controversial) ways to preserve illegal construction in settlements,” writes Elena Chachko.

“By claiming that its control over Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is temporary, despite lasting longer than South African Apartheid by any measure, Israel is able to justify a regime that denies one group political and civil rights while privileging another,” writes Fadi Khoury.

The Joint List plans to skip US Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to the Knesset on Monday.

“Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has renewed his struggle against religious coercion and Israeli Arabs as part of a campaign to regain relevancy and strengthen his political standing,” writes Mazal Mualem.