Today’s Top Stories
*** Breaking News *** After this roundup was published, clashes broke out between Palestinians and Israeli police ahead of a a traditional Jerusalem Day march. One police officer was reported injured near the Old City’s Damascus Gate. More at the Jerusalem Post, YNet, and Times of Israel.
Jerusalem Day marks the anniversary of the city’s re-unification during the Six-Day War.
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1. Mahmoud Abbas laid out his latest pre-conditions for renewing peace talks:
According to Israel Radio on Friday, Abbas called for the halt of all settlement construction in the West Bank and for the immediate release of Palestinians that were imprisoned before the Oslo Accords who were supposed to be released in 2014.
The Palestinian leader demanded that the talks be held for a minimum of a year, during which the two sides will agree on a specific timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank that is to be completed by 2017.
2. An Egyptian court sentenced ex-president Mohammed Morsi to death for his involvement in a mass prison breakout. File this under Calvinball in Cairo.
3. More than 60 people were injured, including many women and children, by a blast in a Hamas training camp. The Jerusalem Post writes:
The reason for the blast is unknown, as well as to why so many children were inside a military-style base.
Hamas has been openly recruiting children for months.
4. Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities: In honor of Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), revisit our video showing the reality of Israel’s capital today and how the history of Jerusalem did not start in 1967.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Who’s who in the new Israeli government. And YNet introduces us to Israel’s top diplomat, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely.
Hotovely’s appointment and the lack of a minister to lead the Foreign Ministry indicates most of all that the prime minister believes this term will not include negotiations with the Palestinians, but rather more confrontations on the international stage.
This is why he wanted Hotovely, the religious-Zionist sector’s princess, who is known for her sharp tongue, her belief in the right-wing’s way, and her eloquent English. Netanyahu thought that at this time, it would be better to appoint to the Foreign Ministry a religious Zionist woman who believes in the historical bond connecting the people of Israel with the land of Israel, and opposes the concession of lands.
• Worth reading: Matti Friedman‘s look at Jerusalem. He lays out quite a few of the city’s day-to-day nuances and contradictions that usually escape the attention of the foreign press corps.
• Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of The Economist for this two-bit commentary inserted into your news. Hamas overthrew the PA in Gaza in 2007. The last time the Palestinians had national elections (January, 2006 for the Palestinian parliament), “Grillz” was at the top of the music charts, Justin Verlander and Hanley Ramirez were about to start spring training for their rookie-of-the-year seasons, and Prince William was in officers’ school at the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy.
The legitimately elected men of Hamas are hardly Jeffersonian democrats, but they have long clashed with local Salafists, ultra-radical Muslims who believe Hamas is both too liberal and too soft on Israel.
• FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Palestinian efforts to kick Israel out of the international soccer organization are the biggest challenge he faces, as Israel has not violated any rules.
Blatter said that if the Palestine proposal was approved, other nations could use football to air political grievances.
“This could open the doors, where would we go? We want to be in sport and not in politics, we could set a very dangerous precedent,” he told reporters at FIFA headquarters.
See The Media Line for more on the larger diplomatic storm which Israel is at the center of.
• EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to visit Israel and PA on Wednesday.
• Covering death of settler leader Rabbi Moshe Levinger, AFP doesn’t acknowledge Jewish communities in Hebron and other West Bank towns. At least Associated Press noted the background:
A year after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war, Levinger led the first settlers to Hebron, where Jews had lived for centuries until Arab riots drove most of them out in 1929.
• Jerusalem plans to brand itself separately from rest of Israel to boost tourism
• The silly accusation of Israeli pinkwashing (what’s pinkwashing?) is raising a ruckus at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival. The controversy all began when a local gay Jewish group placed an ad in the festival’s guidebook last year featuring an Israeli flag and a rainbow flag with a Jewish star.
The JTA and Canadian Jewish News report that film festival organizers have now opted to ban “overt expressions of nationalism” for its upcoming festival in August.
Lerner also said that under the revised policies, Israeli films could only be included in the festival if they sought to create “critical dialogues about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli occupation,” the Shalom Life news website reported.
Mideast Matters
• The Wall St. Journal (via Google News) updates the latest on President Obama’s efforts to sell his nuclear diplomacy to skeptical Arab leaders.
• The US was informed months ago that chemical weapons monitors found traces of sarin and VX nerve agents in Syria. According to Josh Rogin and Eli Lake of Bloomberg News:
The discovery set off a months-long debate inside the administration about how to respond. President Obama is said to have not yet decided. Meanwhile, a coalition of rebel groups on the ground has been attacking the area around the facility, raising the danger that the chemical weapons could fall into the hands of the rebels, many of whom are linked to Islamic extremists.
• Has the US lost its Mideast allies over Iran?
• Breitbart picked up on a Brazilian report detailing Hezbollah’s lucrative income from drugs and weapons trafficking, and money laundering in Latin America. The dirty deeds generate $60-100 million a year for Hezbollah, with help from Iranian cultural centers and sympathetic governments in Cuba and Venezuela.
• Hezbollah arranged a press tour so reporters could see areas of the Qalamoun range in western Syria captured from rebels. The New York Times was in on the junket.
Around the World
• In Kevala, Greece, authorities sought removal of Star of David from Holocaust monument unveiling
• Khalif Mitchell, the Montreal Alouettes’ defensive tackle, issued a joint statement with Bnai Brith Canada and the Canadian Football League Players Association after the athlete was fined for posting Holocaust-denying videos on Twitters.
Mitchell’s agent told the Montreal Gazette his client was “this close” to getting kicked off the team, and explained how Mitchell’s formulating a plan to be involved in anti-racism initiatives in the Montreal community.
• JTA: Anti-Semitic vandalism struck a number of European Jewish sites in the last few days, including Vienna’s Sigmund Freud Museum, the offices of a Polish anti-Semitism watchdog, and a Jewish cemetery in the northern French town of Lille.
Commentary/Analysis
• Noah Klieger on Pope Francis calling Mahmoud Abbas an “angel of peace.”
If Francis really understood some of what is happening in our region, he could have, for example, asked the “angel of peace” from Ramallah why is it that over the years almost all the Christians have escaped-emigrated from the territories controlled by the Palestinians, while in Israel hundreds of thousands of Christians live peacefully and enjoy full freedom of religion.
• My classmate was run over by a terrorist in Israel.
• Memo to the Palestinian ambassador to Ireland: If you can get “statehood” through world-wide recognition, what’s left to negotiate with Israel?
• I’m also reading:
– Prof. Abraham Miller: Vatican will not protect Christians by recognizing Palestine
– Dror Eydar: An open letter to the Pope
– New York Times(staff-ed): The Vatican and the Palestinians
– David Goldman: How could the world have gotten Israel so wrong?
– William Jacobson: Israel preps media battlefield for next Hezbollah war
– Rolene Marks: Something’s rotten in the state of South Africa
– Michael Totten: The Mideast nuclear arms race is on
– Francine Prose: Writing from a war zone doesn’t make you Anne Frank
Featured image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Stefan Georgi with additions by HonestReporting
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