Today’s Top Stories
1. According to Israeli media reports, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is mulling to revoke the permanent residency status of some Palestinians living in eastern Jerusalem. According to Haaretz, the idea under consideration would drop that status for Palestinians living inside Jerusalem’s municipal boundary but outside the security barrier.
It’s Jerusalem’s politically gray area where Israel doesn’t necessarily have the upper hand.
2. Israeli police blocked the Islamic Waqf from installing its own surveillance cameras on the Temple Mount. The Times of Israel reports that the Waqf insists the move is part of the agreement brokered by John Kerry, but Israel says it isn’t.
It is not clear yet if all parties will be granted equal access to live feed from the cameras.
3. The Temple Mount was never home to Jewish Temple, according to Jerusalem Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein. He told Israeli TV:
“This is the Al-Aqsa Mosque that Adam, peace be upon him, or during his time, the angels built,” the mufti said of the 8th-century structure commissioned by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
Israel and the Intifada
• Shortly before this roundup was published, a Palestinian trying to stab a Border Police officer at Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs was shot and killed. This morning, an Israeli teen was seriously wounded in a stabbing near Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. Yesterday evening, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli outside Ariel in the northern West Bank.
• Fatah’s Tanzim militia is “on the verge of eruption in eastern Jerusalem. Israel believes there are approximately 3,000 weapons just in the Shuafat refugee camp, including M-16s, Kalashnikovs, grenades, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). According to YNet, the Tanzim not only defy Israel, but Mahmoud Abbas too:
However, the ties between the heads of Tanzim and the Mukataa in Ramallah are growing weaker by the day. Abbas’ security forces can’t enter some of the refugee camps because the Tanzim militants kick them out . . .
After the second intifada, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, under the auspices of the Americans, signed a pardon agreement for wanted militants. The agreement dictated that the Fatah militants who fought as part of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the second intifada would cease their involvement in terrorism and disarm. Israel, in return, would stop pursuing them. It turns out that some of the armed Tanzim militants of today are the same wanted militants from the distant past – the same ones who committed not to carry arms. So even that agreement has fallen apart.
• The Palestinians are going to ask UN for international protection from Israel, a commission of inquiry into the latest violence, and a deadline for ending “the occupation,” Haaretz reports.
• Tweet of the day from the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby:
• Washington Post: Doctors — Israeli and Palestinian — work together to heal wounds of conflict.
• The New York Times takes a closer look at Palestinian Authority security services caught between protesters and Israel. Here’s why the PA’s not dropping security coordination:
One hazard for the Palestinians is the threat that Hamas could pose in the West Bank if security cooperation ended. An expansion of Hamas’s presence from Gaza to the West Bank would risk upturning Mr. Abbas’s government. Scaling back coordination would also antagonize international donors who help fund the Palestinian Authority and risk the collapse of the security forces themselves.
• Gilad Halpern, a Ynet editor, was fired for posting on Facebook a doctored photo of Bibi in a Nazi uniform.
Around the World
• Expert: Ayatollah Khamenei’s letter to President Hassan Rouhani voids nuclear accord.
• German intel: Migrants will bring anti-Semitism
• Detroit‘s trying to decide if a controversial billboard that says, “America first, not Israel,” is anti-Semitic.
Commentary/Analysis
• Writing in the Wall St. Journal (via Google News) Professor Jerold Auerbach describes how one boy’s discovery rebuts Temple Mount revisionism.
If it is ironic that the Muslim excavation, undertaken to build an underground mosque, ultimately confirmed Jews’ historical claims, it is no less ironic than the fact that the Waqf came to rule the site at Israel’s instigation.
• Jackson Diehl, if Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem are treated so well by Israel, why are they the ones attacking Israelis?
• Here’s what else I’m reading today . . .
– Herb Keinon: Looking to Abdullah, because Abbas won’t douse the flames
– Ron Ben-Yishai: Temple Mount agreement won’t lead to immediate calm
– Shmuel Rosner: Israel’s irresponsible Arabs
Featured image: CC BY-NC flickr/John Ragai with additions by HonestReporting); mufti CC BY Wikimedia Commons;
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