Today’s Top Stories
1. A skirmish between Israeli troops and Lebanese forces on the northern border left one Lebanese Army soldier injured on Sunday. The IDF said that its troops opened fire on “suspects” attempting to cross the border from Lebanon, apparently hitting one and forcing them to retreat.
Channel 10 reports that the Israeli defense establishment is concerned over the possibility of cooperation between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah operatives. Channel 10 quoted defense sources as saying they believe that the cell involved in Sunday’s border incident intended to carry out a terror attack on Israeli territory.
2. Israeli PM Netanyahu’s U.S. media blitz continued with an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Topics that featured in subsequent coverage were Netanyahu’s reaction to recent American criticism of Israeli settlements:
In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation,’ Netanyahu said he does not accept restrictions on where Jews could live, and said that Jerusalem’s Arabs and Jews should be able to buy homes wherever they want.
He said he was ‘baffled’ by the American condemnation.
‘It’s against the American values. And it doesn’t bode well for peace,’ he said. ‘The idea that we’d have this ethnic purification as a condition for peace, I think it’s anti-peace.’
Netanyahu also spoke about ISIS, Hamas and Iran:
“ISIS has got to be defeated because it’s doing what all these militant Islamists are trying to do. They all want to first dominate their part of the Middle East, and then go on for their twisted idea of world domination,” Netanyahu said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.” The difference between ISIS and Hamas and ISIS and Iran and so on is they all agree that the world should be an Islamist hill, but … each of them wants to be the king of the hill.”
“They want to accumulate enough power to then carry out their mad ambitions,” he added.
3. According to Palestinian media reports, the Palestinian unity government is set to convene in Gaza for the first time after Israel granted permits for officials to cross through the Erez terminal.
4. Erekat’s Latest Whopper: 96% of Gaza Dead Were Civilians: The truth-challenged Palestinian leader goes for another Big Lie.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza are being allowed to cross into Israel for the Eid holiday to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque for the first time since 2007.
• The Swedish ambassador to Israel was called into Israel’s Foreign Ministry to clarify Sweden’s position on recognizing a Palestinian state.
“The situation is clear, peace talks have been suspended for a while, and I think the conflict in Gaza made it clear that the status quo needs to be changed,” Carl Magnus Nesser said. “The purpose of such a statement of this forthcoming recognition is of course to support negotiations leading to a two state solution.”
• More than 500 anthropologists — including at Harvard, Yale and Columbia universities — have joined the academic boycott of Israel.
• Israel’s Tourism Minister Uzi Landau has criticized the BDS movement in Europe, saying many of its members support extremist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram.
• Several dozen anti-Israel protesters, many of them waving Palestine flags, gathered outside Quicken Loans Arena before the Cleveland Cavaliers hosted Maccabi Tel Aviv in a basketball exhibition match.
Commentary/Analysis
• Daniel Gordis says that the Palestinians have squandered yet another opportunity:
Pandering to his street’s basest instincts, Abbas proved that he cannot lead. Whatever the opposite of leadership is, is precisely what Abbas did at the UN.
In so doing, he reminded even left-wing Israelis why the centre and the right want nothing to do with him. In so doing, he reminded Israelis who might have been willing to overlook it, that he was an avid promoter of the unity government with Hamas. In so doing, he pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suggest, in his response at the UN, that Israel would seek alliances with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In so doing, therefore, Abbas slammed the door on the possibility of any negotiated deal with Israel in the near future.
• Palestinian commentator Ali Jarbawi, however, takes the opposite approach in the New York Times, arguing that Israel forced Abbas into unilateral moves and that UN speech.
• Rabbi Abraham Cooper takes on the Russell Tribunal:
The current Russell Tribunal “jurors” include the A-Team of Israel-bashers, including the UN’s former “independent expert” on Israel, Richard Falk, John Dugard, former U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, and again Roger Waters.
Among the star “witnesses” are: anti-Israel Palestinian, Mohammed Omer; Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who said last month that Palestinian resistance (ie; Hamas) is ” fighting for us”; Irish Col. Desmond Travers whose prior “expert” testimony before the Goldstone Commission has been thoroughly discredited; Israeli soldier Eran Efrati who never served in Gaza and specializes in spinning the testimony of Israeli war veterans against the IDF ; and “genocide scholar” Paul Behrens who believes that Jews are the major perpetrators of “genocide.”
• David Schenker says that Lebanon could be the next front line in the Islamic State onslaught:
The Obama administration has responded to the beheadings of two American journalists by launching an air campaign to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS, as it is also known, is kidnapping and decapitating Lebanese citizens too, and in recent weeks two Lebanese soldiers were killed. But Beirut is in a state of paralysis, fearing that an assault on ISIS in Syria would result in the execution of about two-dozen other Lebanese troops and police currently held hostage by the group.
Lebanon already hosts nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees, has a prolonged vacancy in the president’s office, and is experiencing increasing civil strife. So the kidnapping ordeal makes a precarious situation worse as Lebanon emerges as the next front line in the Islamist militia’s offensive.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• A fire and explosion at a military explosives facility near the Iranian capital Tehran has left at least two people dead, reports say.
• The Brookings Institute responds to Lee Smith of Tablet on allegations that former U.S. Middle East peace envoy Martin Indyk got a big fat check from Qatar. Smith then responds to the rebuttal.
• Possible US policy moves to bolster anti-ISIS forces in Syria could backfire, as the NY Times reports:
The data, part of a larger sample of captured arms and cartridges in Syria and Iraq, carries an implicit warning for policy makers and advocates of intervention.
It suggests that ammunition transferred into Syria and Iraq to help stabilize governments has instead passed from the governments to the jihadists, helping to fuel the Islamic State’s rise and persistent combat power. Rifle cartridges from the United States, the sample shows, have played a significant role.
• And…airstrikes are making little impact as well.
Image: CC BY-NC-SA flickr/Frank Reyes/em>
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