Everything you need to know about today’s coverage of Israel and the Mideast. Join the Israel Daily News Stream on Facebook.
Today’s Top Stories
1. Without any new acts of self-immolation, Palestinians across the West Bank protested the rising cost of living. More at Maan News and YNet.
2. Israel’s security cabinet held a 10-hour meeting on Iran. A follow-up meeting was adjourned after info about the first meeting was leaked to Yedioth Aharonot.
3.The Times of Israel picked up on a Ben Gurion U. study which found a surprising divide between Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.
While ’67 Arabs accuse their ’48 counterparts — who remained in their homes despite the war — of acquiescing to Israeli rule, ’48 Arabs retort that they have clung to their land, choosing not capitulate and flee . . .
An astounding 60 percent of Israeli Arabs said they would not allow their daughter marry a man from the West Bank. 41 percent of West Bank Palestinians claimed the reverse.
Sagy noted that the status of ’48 Arabs as a “small minority, at times threatened, both within Israeli society and the Arab world” resulted in a stronger group identity and an impetus to protect their unique collective narrative.
Life within a larger Jewish society has softened the attitude of ’48 Arabs towards Israel, the survey found. Israeli Arabs tend to blame Israel less for the displacement of Palestinians than their counterparts in the West Bank.
Israel and the Palestinians
• Worth reading: Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, takes to the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page to ask, Where’s the Flotilla for Syria?
The flotilla crowd has different priorities. They prefer to work around the clock to protest Israel’s legitimate defense against the terrorists who target its citizens and fire thousands of rockets into its cities. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: It’s much easier to face news cameras in Tel Aviv than bullets in Damascus.
• French judges investigating Yasser Arafat’s death want to visit Ramallah and exhume his body. BBC updates the inquiry.
• Hamas arrested 20 members of a radical Islamic group. AP says it’s part of an effort to curb rocket fire.
•Daniel Mandel (Jerusalem Post) tees off on Hanan Ashrawi’s denial of Jewish refugees:
So why has Ashrawi chosen to risk looking petulant, dishonest and stone-hearted in refusing to speak the truth about the Jewish refugees? Because the paramount object of Palestinian politics remains the nullification of Jewish statehood. Since World War II, the plight of refugees the world over has been alleviated by resettlement rather than repatriation.
But compensation has often been a feature of such resettlement. As a result, resettlement of Palestinian refugees not only lacks enticement but the compensation of Jewish refugees this would encompass heralds danger.
Till now, Arab countries have combined risibly low levels of material support with high levels of vocal support for Palestinian refugees and their millions of warehoused descendants. But if Arab states are called upon to pick up the tab for their depredations against their historic Jewish communities as part of a peace settlement, this could abruptly change and the regional pressure on Israel to concede to implacable Palestinian demands like the legally baseless “right of return” might abruptly end.
