(January 6th)
Tensions on the oil shipping lanes in the Gulf have escalated with the announcement of new naval exercises by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and news that Israel and the US are planning to carry out extensive joint manoeuvres in the region.

The naval commander for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, said the drill in February would be “different compared to previous exercises held by the IRGC”. The Iranian navy finished 10 days of exercises in the Gulf on Monday, during which it tested a range of new missiles. It warned that Iran could close the strait of Hormuz, the narrowest point in the Gulf, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes.

On the same day, the Israeli military said it was preparing for joint exercises with the US to rehearse missile defence and co-operation between the forces. (Read more)

Wow!

In Western Europe, the Icelandic parliament recently passed a measure without objections to recognise the state of Palestine. The vote passed with 38 votes in favour and 13 abstaining.

The chairman of the opposition says Icelanders do not have sufficient knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to get involved. The opposition also maintains that the dispute should be resolved through bilateral negotiations. (Read more)

To fight stigma that settlers are ‘violent vandals,’ students from Ma’ale Adumim clean up hate slogans daubed on mosque walls in ‘price tag’ operation.

A Jerusalem mosque that was torched last week in a “price tag” operation turned into a platform for religious and secular teens who wished to demonstrate their aversion to the recent wave of attacks on Muslim holy sites. Fifteen students from the Eitan pre-military school in Ma’ale Adumim arrived at desecrated mosque Monday on a mission to clean up the hate graffiti that remained on its walls. (Read more)

Israel’s military establishment has approved the establishment of a new, permanent neighborhood and a farm near the West Bank settlement of Efrat. The projects will go beyond the community’s current built-up area, constituting an effective expansion of the Etzion Bloc of settlements toward the north and north-east. After they are completed, Jewish settlement in northern Gush Etzion will reach the edges of Bethlehem’s southernmost suburbs.

The plan for the neighborhood was approved by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. It calls for building 40 single-family homes on Givat Hadagan, replacing the trailer park on this site at the northern edge of Efrat. The Israel Lands Administration this week published a tender for the homes, a move that requires the defense minister’s approval. (Read more)

I hate my tax dollars subsidize these maniacs.

Officials in Burka, east of Ramallah, said that carpets and chairs were burnt in the local mosque and Hebrew graffiti saying “war” was scrawled on the wall.

On Tuesday, a fire was started in a 12th Century mosque in Jerusalem.

The incidents are being blamed on Jewish settlers angry at what they see as Israeli government attempts to restrict settlement building.

“This is a cowardly, despicable act by settlers,” the head of Burka council, Abdelqadr Sumrean, told the BBC. “They want us to leave our land but we will never do that.”

No-one saw the perpetrators of the attack in Burqa, which took place in the middle of the night. However, it is located within a kilometre of Migron, a settlement outpost which is due to be demolished early next year under an order from Israel’s Supreme Court.
‘Price tag’

The village has previously seen so-called “price tag” violence. This is a policy of attacks on Palestinians or their property carried out by Jewish extremists in repose to any action taken by the Israeli government or security forces against settlement expansion.

There has been a rise in such attacks across the West Bank and in Israel in recent weeks.

The words “price tag” were sprayed on the walls of the disused, Nebi Akasha, mosque in central Jerusalem after attempts were made to set it alight early on Tuesday. (Read more)

But time has proved him right, Netanyahu said. His forecast that the Arab Spring would turn into an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave” turned out to be true, he said.

Netanyahu also slammed Western leaders, and especially U.S. President Barak Obama, who had pushed Mubarak to resign from power. At the time this was happening Netanyahu said in closed talks that the American administration and many European leaders don’t understand reality. On Wednesday, he called them “naive.”

“I ask today, who here didn’t understand reality? Who here didn’t understand history?” he called from the Knesset podium. “Israel is facing a period of instability and uncertainty in the region. This is certainly not the time to listen to those who say follow your heart.”
Netanyahu used the upheaval in the Arab world to justify his government’s inaction vis-a-vis the peace process with the Palestinians. (Read more)

Translation here.

Kangaroo Court.

Virtually all – 99.74 percent, to be exact – of cases heard by the military courts in the territories end in a conviction, according to data in the military courts’ annual report, which has been obtained by Haaretz.

The report also shows that the military appeals courts decidedly favor the prosecution, with appeals court judges accepting 67 percent of appeals filed by the prosecution, as opposed to only 33 percent of appeals filed by the defense. (Read more)

Last Friday, a group of Jewish public figures and intellectuals paid a visit to the leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem with one simple goal in mind, asking for forgiveness. The group took the step following a report in Haaretz about two weeks ago describing the practice of some ultra-Orthodox Jewish young people of spitting when passing church clergy on the street. (Read more)

Meir Ettinger, 19, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar and grandson of late Rabbi Kahane, says goal of Hebrew Labor project is ‘to warn the public’ against buying from businesses that employ Arabs.

About 10 days ago, a fish merchant in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda outdoor market noticed a young man with sidelocks and a skullcap trying to determine which of the stalls employ Arabs. The merchant, Saleh, called the police, who detained the man for questioning on suspicion that he was planning a terror attack.

But the interrogation revealed that Meir Ettinger, 19, had a completely different goal in mind. Ettinger, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar and a grandson of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, said he was investigating on behalf of a project called Hebrew Labor, whose goal is “to warn the public” against buying from businesses that employ Arabs. (Read more)

The Israeli cabinet decided on Monday to continue withholding $100 million in tax revenues owed to the Palestinian Authority, which it was to have received two weeks ago. An official said, despite warnings from Israel’s Defense Ministry that the measure could threaten the stability of the Palestinian government in the West Bank.

Israel stopped transfer of tax funds as punishment for the Palestinian’s successful bid for admission to the United Nations’ cultural agency UNESCO, which was part of a larger effort to gain admission as a state in the world body. (Read more)

Israel carried out a de facto annexation of Palestinian land northeast of the Jordan Valley and given it to Kibbutz Merav. Merav, part of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, is about seven kilometers northwest of the parcel.

The route of the separation barrier in the area was changed so that the plot in question, about 1,500 dunams (375 acres), would be on the Israeli side. (Read more)

Israel last night announced that it would accelerate settlement construction and withhold tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority to punish it for joining the UN’s cultural arm.

enjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, convened his inner cabinet yesterday to study proposals to sanction the Palestinian leadership after it won overwhelming international support on Monday for its bid to join UNESCO.

While some kind of punitive action was expected, the severity of Israel’s response suggested that Mr Netanyahu had bowed to pressure from right-wing ministers intent on exacting the heaviest penalty possible for what they saw as an act of Palestinian effrontery.

An Israeli government official defended the measures, saying that Mr Netanyahu had been left with no choice but to respond robustly to Palestinian “unilateralism” in its pursuit of UN membership and by what he claimed was the growing radicalism of Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. (Read more)