Israelis talk often and loudly about their desires for peace. But its never been clear precisely what peace concept it is they desire. In particular, Israeli notions of peace have never gone so far as to grant the Palestinians the same national rights that Israelis claim for themselves. Well, according to a new poll by Israeli National News (disclaimer: its a right-wing rag, sample size “more than 6,400″), a majority of Israelis are clear about what kind of “peace” they desire. 53.2% of surveyed Israelis say the “solution” to the conflict was the ethnic cleansing (”transfer”) of Palestinians out of occupied Palestine and into other neighboring Arab countries. This was the most popular option among all alternatives, including the two state solution, Jordanian citizenship in the West Bank, status quo, etc. For comparative purposes, only 30.8% of Israelis support the “two-states for two peoples” framework for peace.

On Saturday 7 November the residents of Iraq Burin, a small village outside Nablus, once again had their weekend disrupted by settlers and the Israeli army. During the day settlers from the nearby illegal settlement came down close to the village in a provocative act. The scenario that followed was the same as the previous two Saturdays – settler attack followed by an army invasion. During the invasion that lasted about one hour, the army shot teargas and live ammunition inside the village.

Mahmoud Abbas is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in the Palestinian Authority. I understand him. He feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama.

The Palestinians have been under a racist settler form of colonialism for over sixty years; and they are targeted with a campaign of ethnic cleansing launched by armed gangs of settlers supported by Israel’s police and army. This is unparalleled in the 21st century in terms of the crimes which include siege, murder, food poisoning, starvation, assassination, demolishing houses, scorching crops, destroying farms, raping prisoners, trafficking in the organs of captives and preventing Palestinians from moving between their villages, farms and schools.

Jon Stewart's comedy news show The Daily Show is reportedly under fire from pro-Israeli groups for giving airtime to two pro-Palestinian figures on Wednesday night. Stewart hosted Palestinian democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti and human rights activist Anna Baltzer, author of A Witness in Palestine, who explained the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of the Palestinian side. According to a letter reportedly written by Baltzer and circulated by blogger Eric Johnson, the show "was overwhelmed with angry emails and phone calls prior to the appearance, and up until the last minute it seemed like they might cancel." "During the taping the show had its only heckler in 11 years," Baltzer wrote. "The entire staff were very nervous and may come to regret the monumental decision (and not make it again) as they will surely be inundated now that the show has aired."

The double standard under which the Israeli government operates is too much for everyone except the brainwashed Americans. Even the very Israeli Jerusalem Post can see the double standard displayed by “all of Israel now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report”: “This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We’re entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Palestinians because, by definition, whatever we do to them is self-defense. They, however, are not entitled to lift a finger against us because, by definition, whatever they do to us is terrorism. “That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it was in Operation Cast Lead. “And there are no limits on our right to self-defense. There is no such thing as ‘disproportionate.’ “We can deliberately destroy thousands of Gazan homes, the Gazan parliament, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Interior, courthouses, the only Gazan flour plant, the main poultry farm, a sewage treatment plant, water wells and God knows what else. “Deliberately...

Israel is threatening to withhold permission for a second Palestinian cellular phone network if the Palestinian Authority (PA) does not withdraw its call for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to look into allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, a leading Israeli newspaper said on Sunday. Tel Aviv-based Haaretz quoted Israeli security sources saying that the PA’s appeal to the ICC in The Hague has incensed military leaders. Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi is reportedly withholding his approval for mobile provider Wataniya because of the legal petition.

In a move sure to antagonize the Onion for not having come up with it first, former U.S. presidential candidate Mike Huckabee endorsed Israeli control over the occupied West Bank and rejected the "two-state solution." Instead, the Southern Baptist preacher suggested that Palestinians should "have a place of their own" some place else.And since the United States has played such a prominent role historically in helping Israel keep the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, perhaps the United States can offer up one of the states to the Palestinians. Perhaps that was what Governor Huckabee was getting at.

A new report by Human Rights Watch charged Thursday that Israeli soldiers killed eleven unarmed Palestinian civilians who were carrying white flags in shooting incidents during Israel's offensive in Gaza earlier this year. The report says the civilians included five women and four children. The group urged Israel to conduct investigations into the deaths, which it said occurred when the civilians were "in plain view and posed no apparent security threat." The group says at least three witnesses confirmed the details in each of the seven separate shootings.

The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, housing about 500 Palestinians in East Jerusalem is under siege. Armed forces have been stationed here since early Sunday morning when the Hannoun and Gawi families were forcibly evicted from their homes by as many as 500 police officers. Now it’s a waiting game. The families are sleeping on the sidewalk in front of their homes until they’re taken away by force. This isn’t the first time they’ve been made to leave their homes. They are Haifa refugees from the 1948 Nakba, what Israel calls the War of Independence. The UNRWA made an agreement with the Jordanian government (who controlled East Jerusalem at the time) to provide them with houses in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in 1956, where the families have been living ever since.

The problem was never a lack of US engagement, but what kind. Indeed, the Bush administration took engagement to unprecedented lengths. It pushed for Palestinian elections, and then when Hamas defeated the US-backed Fatah faction, attempted to overturn the result. The Bush administration helped arm and train Palestinian militias opposed to Hamas and vetoed a Palestinian “national unity government”. It supported the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and politicised financial aid to bolster Palestinian leaders whose legitimacy, as they have effectively become Israeli quislings, has all but vanished. At the same time, the US imposed lopsided preconditions for dialogue that it well knew Hamas could not accept. Absolutely none of this has changed under Obama.

At around 5:30 in the morning, Israeli police arrived at the Hannoun family home and broke into the house through the windows. They forcefully removed Maher Hanoun, his wife Nadia and their 3 children. The police violently separated the family from the international and Israeli solidarity activists that were staying in the home. Police then arrested the international and Israeli solidarity activists that were staying with the family. Similarly, Israeli police came into the al-Ghawe family home at 5:30am and removed the family and internationals staying in the home.

How ironic, a dilapidated hotel, owned by an American, in East Jerusalem is symbolic of the deteriorating relationship between the administrations of Us President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over overtly racist, Zionist fundamentalist settlements popping up in Palestinian neighborhoods. At the center is the rundown but historic Shepard Hotel, built in the 1930s as the official residence of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem then later as Israeli border police headquarters. The current owner is American-born businessman Irving Moskowitz, 81 of Miami Beach, FL, who wants to tear down the hotel to build luxury apartments for ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers in majority Arab East Jerusalem.

Citing both mental and physical health, it is notable that an increase in policies contravening international standards continues to be carried out. Within the past few months the intensity of mistreatment is up, says the prisoners’ ministry, because of a decision made by the Special Committee created by the Israeli government. The director of the information department of the Palestinian prison ministry said today that the occupying administration “has spared no effort to undermine the achievements of the prisoners and their rights, while interfering in both large and small details of the lives of prisoners.” The Ministry of Detainees added that this is done “in order to ensure that their lives are narrow and disrupted, with the prisoners constantly employed in how to cope with a new situation after withdrawing from the last.” The report includes severe deprivations of food and medical attention, along with an additional policy to revoke achievements such as no orange uniforms, news watching and visits held away from the confines of closed plastic.

The United States plans to transfer $200 million to the struggling Palestinian Authority to help cover its budget shortfall, an Obama administration official said on Friday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to announce the transfer of funds on Friday as part of U.S. efforts to improve conditions on the ground that will bolster attempts to revive stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The money is not new assistance, but part of $900 million in U.S. funds that Clinton pledged at a donors conference in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in March, the official told Reuters.

Last year, Israel's overall population grew by 1.8 per cent - 1.6 per cent among Israeli Jews. Yet in the same year, the settlement population grew by 5.6 per cent, and 40 per cent of new residents were Jewish immigrants. Since Israel accepted the then US president George Bush's 2003 "road map", which mandated a freeze on all settlement activity, the settler population in the West Bank has swollen from 211,400 to 289,600 - an increase of 37 per cent in six years, far outstripping any natural population growth. At the same time, Israeli planning law discriminates against Palestinians who want to expand their own towns and villages in the West Bank, on land that is supposed to be part of their future homeland.

Recently, I spoke with some friends in Gaza and the conversations were profoundly disturbing. My friends spoke of the deeply felt absence of any source of protection—personal, communal or institutional. There is little in society that possesses legitimacy and there is a fading consensus on rules and an eroding understanding of what they are for. Trauma and grief overwhelm the landscape despite expressions of resilience. The feeling of abandonment among people appears complete, understood perhaps in their growing inability to identify with any sense of possibility. The most striking was this comment: “It is no longer the occupation or even the war that consumes us but the realization of our own irrelevance.” What possible benefit can be derived from an increasingly impoverished, unhealthy, densely crowded, and furious Gaza alongside Israel? Gaza’s terrible injustice not only threatens Israeli and regional security, but it undermines America’s credibility, alienating our claim to democratic practice and the rule of law.

The entire speech was addressed to one single person: Barack Obama. It was not designed to appeal to the Palestinians. It was quite clear that the Palestinians are only the passive object of a discussion between the President of the USA and the Prime Minister of Israel. Except in some tired old clichés, Netanyahu spoke about them, not to them. He is ready, so he says, to conduct negotiations with the “Palestinian community”, and that, of course, “without preconditions”. Meaning: without Palestinian preconditions. On Netanyahu’s part, there are plenty of preconditions, every one of which is designed to make certain that no Palestinian, no Arab and indeed no Muslim will agree to enter negotiations.

More of Rosahills reports on the situation in Gaza. "The first morning in Gaza, we returned from Gaza City to Rafah to spend time at the Lifemakers Center – the children’s center Fida Qishta and her sister Faten founded. Our drivers took the coastal road – a real treat. Absolutely no traffic, beautiful seascapes most of the way. Even here, however, there was plenty of evidence of destruction… the occasional large home destroyed, factories, workshops, and farm buildings flattened. Also, near Deir Balah, you cross a bridge over Gaza’s open sewer (the parts for the sewage treatment plant have been held at the border forever). Raw sewage must be pumped untreated into the sea, polluting all the coastal waters. The sea was completely void of fishing boats, and we could see why. On the far horizon, the roostertail of a patrolling Israeli navy boat. The fishermen have been saying that the shooting is worse now than it was during the Israeli invasion in January. Rafah is crowded and poor, without the newer apartment construction that Gaza City saw post 2000 in preparation for self-rule."

Rosahill reports on her second trip to Gaza to witness what is happening there. More to come. "Our entire group is now in Cairo and will be leaving tomorrow afternoon for Al Arish. But first, to satisfy Egyptian (and Israeli -- what do they have to do with it?) rules, we must line up at the American Embassy, pay them $30 and sign away our rights to consular services in Gaza. Thank you America for being there for us when we really need you! The Canadian delegation that arrived in Al Arish two days ago still has not crossed the border to Gaza. Phone calls and papers are flying, but the key to all of this is publicity. Who is keeping smiles from the faces of children in Gaza?After spending the morning acknowledging the State Department’s travel warnings about Gaza and waiving our consular rights, we left Cairo. The five hour bus ride was quite relaxing for us. In fact, the entire day was more like a tourist trip than a mission to Gaza. Not quite so relaxing for our driver. He was in fear that he would be stopped for driving us – so afraid, it seemed, that it was very, very hard to persuade him to make a rest and lunch stop. The Canadians, who have been waiting three days at the border to cross, need shelter from the sun. It was terrific to see our friends."