Today’s Top Stories
1. AP, AFP, and UPI all picked up on a UN report claiming that Gaza could be “uninhabitable” in five years if current economic trends persist.
2. I don’t know what to make of headlines talking about Mahmoud Abbas stepping down either, but here are a few tea leaves you can sort through:
– Only 16 % of Palestinians support Abbas.
– Ramallah doesn’t know what to make of all the speculation.
– Israeli reaction: Big yawn.
– Resignation’s largely symbolic.
– It’s too soon to say if Abbas is for real, or bluffing.
3. A Norwegian bank apologized for issuing one sick credit card. This is what happens when you allow people to personalize the look of their cards. More at YNet and the Jerusalem Post.
Israel and the Palestinians
• The problem: You’re a Gaza home-owner waiting to rebuild. You need A) a permit to purchase cement and other materials, and B) money to pay for it. After all kinds of bureaucratic hassle, you managed to obtain the permit verifying that you’re not a terrorist.
But because international donors aren’t following through on aid pledges, you don’t have the necessary cash. The Global Post‘s Laura Dean explains how Hamas is taking advantage of this problem. When Dean writes government, she’s referring to Hamas.
In desperation, some have started re-selling a portion of their materials to pay for the rest.
“The government says you have 20 kilos, so if you have no money you sell half to pay the cement seller. If you don’t take your cement now you can’t get it again,” explains Hosni Salman al-Mughani, 73, a local leader in Shejaiya, one of the neighborhoods hit hardest by the war.
Gazans who lost everything when their houses were shelled have competing cash needs. So they might also sell off building materials to be able to buy clothes, or beds, or a computer for their children.
The decision to sell those supplies for other necessities has lasting consequences. If those families subsequently get funding to rebuild, they have nothing to spend the money on: Having sold off their allotted materials, there’s no way to get orders assigned to them.
Once you sell a portion of your cement, there’s no paper trail, and Hamas has its ways of obtaining it. The Global Post also took a worth-reading in-depth look at why international donors haven’t delivered on pledges.
• Among the findings of the latest poll by the Ramallah-based Jerusalem Media and Communications Center: There’s a decline in Palestinian support for campaigns to boycott Israeli products.
• Julian Bahloul of i24 News responds to charges of Israeli “pinkwashing” in Le Monde, France’s largest newspaper.
We’re talking about a dodgy headline, over the top exclamations of Israeli homophobia, and a twisted take on the fatal Jerusalem gay pride stabbing, which occurred before Bahloul’s own eyes:
The pictures of the injured and the blood on the ground, according to some, shattered the image of an Israel tolerant of the LGBT community. An image that, as claimed by Le Monde, was actually designed for marketing purposes to avoid talking about the plight of the Palestinians.
Let us assume that this is, in fact, official Israeli strategy: “pink washing” – focusing on gays so as to avoid discussion of Palestinians. If this is the case, then all of Israel’s communications experts had better change careers because just type the word “Israel” in any search engine and you will realize that what dominates media coverage is, of course, the armed conflict with the Palestinians.
• YNet: Vandals smashed and defaced a number of Jewish tombstones and set fires in the Mount of Olives cemetery.
Around the World
• The US is using drones to actively hunt down and kill Islamic State leaders in Syria. The Washington Post got the scoop on the secret missions being run jointly by the CIA and other special operations forces. Uncle Sam’s not the only power active in Syria. The Daily Beast reports Russia put boots on the ground.
• After going through the Hillary Clinton emails, here’s one takeaway:
How top Clinton confidants talk about Israel when no one’s listening
• Several Western countries, including the US, secretly took in around 200 African asylum-seekers from Israel. According to Haaretz, many had “severe medical problems that were not addressed in Israel due to the migrants’ lack of legal status.”
• Reuters: Kurwait charged 26 suspected Hezbollah operatives over an arms cache apparently smuggled in from Iran.
Commentary/Analysis
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian refugee camps turned into weapons warehouses
– Jeffrey Goldberg: 10 responses to Iran deal skeptics
– Michael Eisenstadt: Iran deal could complicate efforts to stop nuclear breakout
– Nicholas Burns: What should Obama do next on Iran?
– Clifford May: The problem with appeasement
– Yaron Friedman: Beirut’s garbage crisis stinks all the way to Tehran
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/Ville Miettinen with additions by HonestReporting; cemetery CC BY-NC-ND flickr/Benjamin
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