Today’s Top Stories
1. It’s not yet clear to Israeli police that yesterday’s mosque fire was the work of radical settlers. According to the Times of Israel, the fire doesn’t fit the pattern of a “price tag” attack for several reasons. Then there’s this:
Israeli Police were unable to entirely rule out the option that this was a nationalist attack, as Palestinian authorities refused their entry to the village and did not allow them to conduct a wide-scale investigation.
2. Arne Gericke, a member of the European parliament, frets that EU aid money will fund Hamas tunnels. Oversight and controls are “light years behind where they should be.” The Jerusalem Post adds:
Last week, the [European Court of] Auditors found that 2.6 percent of EU’s budget for “external relations, aid and enlargement” was used erroneously, meaning it could not be properly accounted for. If that percentage is applied to the €450m. pledged to Gaza, that means €11.7m. could end up in Hamas’s hands.
On a related note, Mudar Zahran tweets:
3. Israel isn’t cooperating with William Schabas and the UN Human Rights Council’s investigation of the Gaza war. Unlike the previous Goldstone inquiry, Israeli non-cooperation may already be sinking the new probe. The Jerusalem Post explains why:
According to Channel 2, the three members of the Schabas commission were refused entry into Israel from Jordan on their way to Gaza.
The three UN-appointed officials are still in Amman. With the Egyptian Rafah crossing closed, the only entry into Gaza at this point is through Israel’s Erez crossing.
4. Burning Koran: Inflammatory Photo Adds Fuel to the Flames: Was a photo of a burning Palestinian Koran deliberately staged?
5. Video Fail: Wrong Year Footage Multiplies Palestinian Casualties HonestReporting secures a correction as The Independent removes a video multiplying Palestinian casualties.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Police foil Palestinian planning to stab a bus driver.
• Israel’s police chief and deputy foreign minister briefed foreign diplomats on the Temple Mount and Jerusalem clashes. YNet was on hand.
The meeting was part of a diplomatic campaign led by the Foreign Ministry in the past few days in order to refute the allegations by the Palestinian Authority that Israel has changed the status-quo at the Temple Mount and plans to harm the al-Aqsa mosque.
• Israel to install facial-recognition surveillance cameras and metal detectors at the Temple Mount, according to Israeli media reports.
• While billboards, cartoons, and songs whip up the Palestinians to kill Jews, here’s what AFP says is fanning the flames:
Strictly speaking, we’re not talking about “new settlements” anyway, rather 200 apartments in the already existing northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot. Keeping matters in perspective, the Los Angeles Times notes:
Municipal spokeswoman Brachie Sprung said the step was an early part of the planning process, and that the homes may not be built for years.
• Lot’s of broken reeds, spilled ink, and wasted pixels on the 10th anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death. None more than The Guardian, which featured a 4,767 word-long paean to the terror chief. If you start reading now, you might just finish in time for Arafat’s 20th anniversary.
I preferred Jeremy Burton‘s 133-character response to Suha Arafat. ‘Nuff said.
Commentary/Analysis
• Must read: Mahmoud Abbas has no mandate to negotiate with Israel; unable to tell the Palestinians that painful concessions will be necessary, he instead condones the violence. Khaled Abu Toameh raises the alarm on why this matters:
The incitement campaign against Israel is reminiscent of the atmosphere that prevailed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip immediately after the botched Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. Then, Yasser Arafat also walked away from the table after realizing that Israel was not offering him all that he was asking for, namely a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.
Upon his return from Camp David, Arafat also unleashed a wave of incitement against Israel; eventually the incitement led to the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000.
Now Abbas is following in the footsteps of Arafat by stepping up his rhetorical attacks on Israel.
• Nadav Shragai fills out a lot of background on the Temple Mount’s “status quo.”
• Bibi’s spokesman, Mark Regev, discussed the latest tensions and also Israeli-US ties with CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer. And former ambassador Michael Oren talked about the possibility of a third intifada with the Wall St. Journal.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Nazir Mgally (The war of the wretched), Tariq Alhomayed (What will follow the November 24 nuclear deadline?), Iran’s diplomatic path to the bomb (Wall St. Journal via Google News), Eugene Kontorovich (What the ICC prosecutor didn’t rule on), Reuven Berko (Like Arafat, like Abbas), Jonathan Tobin (Ignore the UN’s human rights farce), and Raphael Ahren (Israel’s fate at the UN Security Council may hinge on increasingly critical Europe).
Rest O’ the Roundup
• According to CNN, the White House is looking for a new strategy to deal with ISIS and Assad. In other words, the White House now feels the way to defeat ISIS is to first get rid of Assad. Draw your own conclusions.
The review is a tacit admission that the initial strategy of trying to confront ISIS first in Iraq and then take the group’s fighters on in Syria, without also focusing on the removal of al-Assad, was a miscalculation.
• If Israeli soldiers threw rocks at stone-throwing kids, would the IDF be slammed for targeting kids, or lauded for a proportionate response? Or would the world shrug with indifference as in the case with Turkish soldiers?
• An Egyptian navy ship came under attack from unknown gunmen some 70 km off the port of Damietta. Eight sailors were declared lost at sea, four of the attackers were killed, while 32 more were arrested.
Damietta’s known for human trafficking, so it’s not yet clear if this was the work of criminals or jihadis. More on the story at the Daily Telegraph and BBC.
• Five Egyptian security personnel killed in Sinai terror attacks
• Somali pirates unsuccessfully tried to seize an Israeli cargo ship on its way to the Red Sea. More on the story at YNet and Israel HaYom.
Image: CC BY flickr/Walter Watzpatzkowski
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