Might Palestinian Refugees Fleeing Syria Return to the West Bank?
December 20, 2012 18:10 by Pesach Benson
Everything you need to know about today’s coverage of Israel and the Mideast. Join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
Today’s Top Stories
1. I’m not sure yet what this might mean for the Palestinian “right” of return, but Mahmoud Abbas wants refugees fleeing Syria to come to the West Bank. Jerusalem Post coverage. AP adds that such a move would require Israeli consent.
However, Palestinians trickled back to the Yarmouk refugee camp after an agreement was reached among the factions.
2. US mediators produced a maritime boundary for Israel and Lebanon. Beirut has a lot of incentive to work it out, reports the Christian Science Monitor:
If the idea is accepted by both sides, it will reduce the risk of renewed conflict between the two enemy states and hasten Lebanon’s efforts to begin tapping the billions of dollars of natural gas estimated to be lying beneath the seabed . . . .
Gibran Bassil, Lebanon’s energy minister, has claimed that surveys have shown that the area off the southern Lebanon coast alone contains 12 trillion cubic feet of gas which “could be enough to cover Lebanon’s electricity production needs for the next 99 years.”
Richard Engel
3. Robert Young Pelton makes a very persuasive case against media blackouts when journalists are kidnapped. He emailed Gawker:
As publisher of Somalia Report, I tracked over 300 kidnap cases every week. As an author with two decades years of experience with groups that kidnap—and as a former hostage held by death squads in Colombia—I don’t like the idea of media self-censorship. Typically large organizations will attempt to strong-arm media outlets using the “for their security” line when an employee is kidnapped. There exists no proof that censorship helps expedite a safe release, and there is no proof that accurate information about a victim harms him. Inaccurate reporting about wealth, religion, political views and affiliations could influence a kidnap victim’s status, because they could be perceived as lying to their captors. But censorship historically has only covered up a host of corporate incompetence and handwringing.
Israel and the Palestinians
• A must-read LA Times staff-ed makes a “slightly belated but heartfelt criticism of Khaled Meshaal and Hamas’ maximalist views:
In other words, if you were hoping that Hamas might be persuaded to support a two-state solution, taking its lead from liberation movements in Africa, northern Ireland and elsewhere that have given up guns and bombs for negotiations, Meshaal’s message was: Forget it. He, at least, will apparently not be satisfied with a West Bank and Gaza state, and continues to insist that all of Israel, including cities such as Haifa and Jaffa that have large Arab populations but are not part of post-1967 occupation, belongs to the Palestinians.
That’s outrageous, irresponsible and deeply depressing, even from the leader of a well-known terrorist organization.
• Don’t let the headline scare you. Christa Case Bryant’s dispatch in the Christian Science Monitor is the only article I’ve seen mentioning that hundreds of houses in Givat HaMatos are being built for Arab residents.
Some 549 new homes in Givat HaMatos for Arab residents were also approved yesterday, but went largely unnoticed . . .
• Human Rights Watch says Israel broke the laws of war by attacking what it called “journalists” in Gaza.
“Just because Israel says a journalist was a fighter or a TV station was a command center does not make it so,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
Whitson has it backwards. Just because a terrorist marks his car as TV, does media work for a terror group, or even moonlights for Big Media doesn’t give him the kind of protection extended to other real journos.
• Jodi Rudoren (in an email to Politico) defended herself after Elliott Abrams attacked the NY Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief.
• Readers of The Scotsman will be forgiven for thinking that Israeli democracy’s under attack. Israel’s Central Elections Committee ruled that Israeli Arab MK Haneen Zoabi is ineligible to run in the next elections. While hyperventilating over the rights of Israeli Arabs, Ben Lynfield left out some key info; but as the Jerusalem Post reports, the story’s not over yet:
Zoabi’s disqualification will automatically be brought to an appeal before the High Court of Justice. If her appeal is rejected, Balad plans to boycott the upcoming election. The only individual disqualification to be upheld by the court was that of Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1988.
As my colleague, Simon Plosker, blogged this afternoon, Arab Voting Becomes a Stick to Beat Israel.
Dany
10:16 pm
Dec 20, 2012
What will happen to the UN should Israel leave this biased organization? It seems that they only preoccupied with us and not with the real problematic regions of the world!
9 resolutions in one day? All against one tiny country? All the world find wrong with the Jewish people ! All of Europe is blinded by anti Semitism ? The Islamist must be very happy, not only they are conquering European countries one by one but they are assisted by their victims to be ???
What a fucked up world!
What happened to their brains? We are about to be intifaded for a third time in less than 15 years and we are the to blame!!
With all the accusations against us we should maybe make it truthful!
1. Become an apartheid state which we are not.
2. Initiate a holocaust which we have been accused of.
3. Transfer the squatters from our land and deny them equal rights.
4. Enact a reverse boycott of all our inventions, our agricultural developments, deny them all medical and pharmaceutical innovations.
5. Refrain from sharing intelligence findings and secrets.
6. Send as a bundle all our leftist intellegrncia.
There’s more but suffice for now.
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
19 
3
emes
6:30 pm
Dec 22, 2012
There are times when Jews are their own worst enemy! – In Israel we have educated the “poor palestinians” with schooling, medicine and farming to make them self-sufficient and we have been their benefactor for whatever their needs and what has it got us? insecurity of our borders, hatred from all sides and underlining international contempt of Jews and Israel? – According to the blog on the demise of the children in the US, Jews are to blame, and not just the odd comment, no, hundreds and hundreds seem to have crawled out of the woodwork to jump on the nearest excuse that might put Jews and Israel in a bad light. – Salem had nothing on today’s international finger-pointing!
Agree or Disagree:
2 
0
Murray Rubin
11:02 pm
Dec 20, 2012
Jews as a people throughout the world are successful out of proportion to their numbers. Israel is the most successful country to join the U.N. since 1948.What is anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Plain and simple, it is jealousy
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
13 
0
The Young David
1:09 am
Dec 21, 2012
I am a Jew having grown up in Europe, and two years ago, my nose was broken and lip split and singer career ended by explicitly antisemite and pro-HITLER muslims.
i go to shabbes tomorrow to an ex-german who had to flee from germany because his kids were attacked by neonazis and authorities did nothing. !
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
8 
0
Claude Salem
2:03 am
Dec 21, 2012
Judi Rudoren’s email to Politico reveals more than she might wish:
” The essence of what our E1 story said was correct: that building there is seen by palestinians,
peace advocates and diplomats worldwide as the death knell of the two state solution, because it
prevents meaningful contiguity in the West Bank and easy access to the heart of East Jerusalem.
(The Israelis also understand this; it’s precisely why this area was chosen at this time.) ”
The “seen by palestinians” seems to have been the only perspective provided. What/to whom does the new concept “meaningful contiguity” apply ? only palestinians? Is her implication of Israeli timing& motive provable?
Agree or Disagree:
2 
1
Dany
8:26 am
Dec 21, 2012
Salem, did you visit the area called E1?
If you did then you would have noticed that it is in no way hindering access to east Jerusalem, and if you did not then your comment is wrong. The Palestinians claim is just another excuse not to continue negotiations , period.
They, Palestinians and Arabs, the world over, are on a path to conquer the world and instill shary’a law and we Israelis are the last line of defense. If the world does not wake up soon to this imminent danger, then we are all facing the greatest tragedy ever
Well-loved. Agree or Disagree:
5 
1
Claude Salem
9:34 pm
Dec 21, 2012
Dany
You misread my comment on Rirorden’s email : E1 is in no way a spatial hindrance to a ‘Palestinian’ state . As far contiguity, I question Rirorden’s use of “meaningful” as an objective concept. And since E1 was initiated under Rabin how could the Israelis be doing this just now to be spiteful to the Palestinians ? This and all the other announcements of housing construction are within the boundaries of the Jerusalem municipality.
Agree or Disagree:
2 
0