• International nuclear inspectors, just returned, will visit Iran again in three weeks. If nothing else, it’s a sign that both sides want to be seen as cooperating. [NYT]

• With the last round not yet implemented, the Senate is already working on new financial sanctions against Iran that would target individual leaders, including President Ahmadinejad. [FP The Cable]

• Eight rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel; they hurt no one. They may have been timed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s visit to the region, including Gaza. [Israel HaYom]

• At the Herzliya Conference, Israeli central banker Stanley Fischer did not go easy on Israel. Among other things, he said the Haredim, many of whom deliberately subsist on generous government subsidies, have to start working. [Haaretz]

• “In the world of mohels … Mr. Sherman has become a kind of bold-faced name.” [NYT City Room]

It seems like Meshaal is backing away from the Hamas leadership less out of exhaustion than out of ambition. Nathan Thrall, a Tablet Magazine contributing editor who is a Jerusalem-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, answered my questions by email earlier this week.

How credible are these reports?
Highly credible, as the announcements have come from Hamas itself. One doesn’t really “run” for election as politburo head; there are no campaigns. The leader of the politburo is elected by Hamas’ senior decision-making body, the Shura Council, which is itself comprised of elected Hamas leaders. Although there remains a significant possibility that he will be chosen by the Shura Council despite announcing his intention to step down, the announcement doesn’t seem to be a ploy by Meshaal to be begged to lead for another four years.

How voluntary is his retirement?
Hamas’ internal elections are quite secret, so the deeper we get into the mechanics of them the less reliable the information we’re discussing. That said, it appears that Meshaal’s decision was not entirely voluntary.

His ambitions seem larger than to be the leader of Hamas. He speaks more and more as a leader of all Palestinians. Some suspected that he was pushing much harder than his colleagues for reconciliation with Fatah because the end-game for him was Hamas joining the Palestine Liberation Organization and his eventually becoming that organization’s chairman, which is to say, leader of the Palestinian people. These suspicions caused his behavior to come under extra scrutiny, as happened when the May 2011 signing ceremony for the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement was nearly derailed by a dispute over whether Meshaal would be given a seat at the podium beside Abbas. Some in Gaza saw the highly conciliatory speech he delivered in Cairo that day as pushing the boundaries of Hamas’ internal consensus. After meetings with Abbas in Cairo in November and December 2011, Meshaal stressed that Fatah and Hamas had agreed to a joint program of popular resistance, which many—especially Fatah spokesmen and leaders—interpreted to mean that Hamas was committing to a program of nonviolence. Though Hamas leaders on the outside, including Meshaal himself, were quick to clarify that they had not abandoned their right to armed resistance, they didn’t do so as loudly, clearly, or forcefully as they could have, and some in Gaza were unhappy with the resultant misperception that Hamas had radically changed its positions.

At the end of the day, Hamas is a popular movement, based in the West Bank and Gaza, with roots in local schools, mosques, welfare organizations, charities, and, since municipal and legislative elections in 2005 and 2006, government institutions. It is the inside leadership that must be more attentive to the base of Hamas supporters. The outside leadership gets a lot of publicity, but it is the inside leadership that has borne the heaviest burdens of the movement, from arrest to torture at the hands of the Palestinian Authority to the death of family members through assassination attempts by Israel. As one member of the inside leadership told me, “Hamas is not an office in Damascus.”

In discussing Meshaal’s decision, I would caution against using the word “retirement.” He is highly respected, experienced in diplomacy, charismatic, well-connected, and powerful within the movement. It seems likely he will continue to play a prominent role, whatever his official title.

It seems Meshaal’s decision would be connected to Hamas’ abandoning of Damascus in the midst of the Syrian civil war. Is Hamas’ next leader going to be more or less committed to staying in Damascus? If they leave, do they go to Cairo? Doha? Amman?
With the exception of a small group among the outside leadership, Hamas has all but left Damascus already. If Hamas’ outside leadership had been offered an alternative home in a state bordering the West Bank or Gaza—an alternative home in which they were permitted to conduct the business of the movement unobstructed—it’s quite likely they would have relocated by now. That said, unlike Hezbollah, Hamas has managed to avoid supporting the Syrian regime while continuing to express its gratitude for the years of support Assad had offered. Having avoided the mistakes of Hezbollah and other groups, Hamas may be able to stay in Damascus should Assad be replaced.

There is talk that Hamas, much like its cousins the Muslim Brotherhood, is genuinely reforming. Do you buy it? How does the Meshaal news affect your calculation? Does this make reconciliation with Fatah more or less likely?
There’s no doubt that Hamas has undergone significant changes in the last several years. In 2006, they participated in elections for a body many of its members deemed illegitimate because it was the product of the Oslo Accords. In 2007, they agreed with Fatah to form a national unity government that would respect the past agreements signed by the PLO, which include, of course, the recognition of Israel. The platform of that unity government affirmed the PLO chairman’s right to negotiate a final agreement with Israel and to bring such an agreement back to a referendum whose outcome Hamas has said it would respect. In Gaza, Hamas is arresting and prosecuting rocket launchers, albeit less completely than Israel would like. In Cairo in May 2011, Meshaal said that Abbas could take a year to continue pursuing negotiations with Israel. Today Hamas sits in a committee affiliated with the PLO while that organization negotiates with Israel. Hamas speaks loudly, albeit not exclusively, of a state on 1967 borders, though it should be noted that the difference here is one of emphasis, as Hamas has repeated this position many times since it was first uttered in the 1990s by Sheikh Yassin. And in fall 2011, Meshaal stressed his commitment to engage with Fatah on a joint strategy of so-called popular resistance.

These developments notwithstanding, Hamas leaders also say that though they are willing to engage for a defined period in popular resistance with Fatah, and though they are willing to embrace the creation of a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, and though they were willing to form a government whose platform respected the past agreements of the PLO, including its recognition of Israel, they still retain, as members of a people under military occupation, a right to armed resistance; they still hold a long-term goal of liberating not just the territory Israel occupied in 1967 but also the remaining 78 percent of historic Palestine; and they still refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Israel. It should be noted that Fatah too insists on its right to armed resistance.

By all accounts, Hamas makes its decisions collectively, so even if Meshaal had been pushing harder for reconciliation, he cannot make decisions of enormous consequence to the movement without the consent of the Shura council. His successor will be similarly constrained. If the successor is Musa Abu Marzouk, I don’t expect to see changes with respect to reconciliation; Abu Marzouk had been the primary negotiator for Hamas for quite some time. If the successor is from the Gaza leadership, I imagine reconciliation could become more difficult.

Who is his likely successor?
The two names most frequently discussed are Ismail Haniyeh, the Gaza-based Palestinian prime minister, and Marzouk, the deputy head of the politburo, who was an early follower of Hamas’ founder, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, created the politburo, and headed it from its inception until his arrest in the United States in 1995. The former is a skilled orator and fair mediator, is popular among female voters, and would be Hamas’ most viable candidate in a presidential election. The latter hails from Rafah [in Gaza], is respected by the Gaza leadership, and has a reputation for being one of Hamas’ leading strategists.

(Interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Hamas Says That Its Political Leader Does Not Plan To Seek Re-election [NYT]
‘Mashaal Planning to Visit Gaza With Abbas’ [JPost]
Hamas Leader To Make Historic Visit to Jordan [AP/Haaretz]
Earlier: Hamas Smartly Departing From Damascus

• Iran is quietly facilitating Syria’s continued sail of oil in contravention of an embargo by importing it, selling it on the world market, and remitting the revenue back to the Assad regime. [WSJ]

• Russia’s foreign minister forcefully pledged to block any U.N. Security Council authorization for military intervention in Syria. [NYT]

• The annual Security Council report on the Gaza blockade was released yesterday. It calls the blockade “collective punishment.” [Ynet]

• Israel’s submission, Footnote, qualified for the nine-film Best Foreign Movie Oscar shortlist. The five nominees will be announced next week. [JTA]

• Anne Sinclair, Dominique-Strauss Kahn’s wife, will run the French edition of The Huffington Post. [NYT]

• The NYPD have arrested the man allegedly responsible for the recent spate of anti-Semitic vandalism in various Brooklyn neighborhoods. He’s Jewish. [NY Daily News]

• Cast Lead 2? The IDF’s southern command has been ordered to plan for a major Gaza offensive in case the rockets continue. A more important question is: Why would Israel expect more rockets? [JPost]

• Maybe for the same reason the U.S. and Israel postponed a joint military drill: Israel may be in earnest planning a strike on Iran. Or not. (More at 10.) [NYT]

• When Egypt’s parliament meets within a week, its speaker will be Muslim Brotherhood. The army okayed it. [WP]

• Syria continues its slip into civil war. [NYT]

• The Websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al were temporarily shut down by hackers yesterday, similar to the theft of thousands of Israelis’ credit card numbers a couple weeks back. [NYT]

• The Obama administration has approved a $30 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Israel tends to be leery about such things, although the two countries share an enemy in Iran. [NYT]

• “It is incredible that a Republican candidate for president in the year 2012, supported by white supremacists, Jew haters and gay bashers, is a frontrunner in the upcoming Iowa caucus.” –Hizzoner Ed Koch. [Capital]

• Egyptian security services raided the offices of several NGOs yesterday, prompting U.S. condemnation. [Yahoo! The Envoy]

• Low-level rocket-firing and retaliation between Gaza and Israel continues. One man was killed in an airstrike this morning as he prepared to launch a missile into Israel. [Haaretz]

• The imam behind the Ground Zero Islamic center has a plan for a new holy month in which hostilities are suspended and Jews, Christians, and Muslims make pilgrimages to the Holy Land. This idea will probably have as much success as the Islamic center. [Haaretz]

• The U.S. has released $40 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority—it’s economic and humanitarian assistance, not security. [AP/JTA]

• Mazel tov to the Philadelphia students who had 687 dreidels (at least!) spinning simultaneously, tentatively setting a new world record. [JTA]

Happy new year!

• It is looking more and more likely that the United States will not even need to exercise its Security Council veto to prevent full Palestinian membership in the United Nations. [NYT]

• Israeli naval ships have made contact with the two Gaza-bound flotilla-type boats and informed them the blockade will be enforced. As of early this morning, they were only about 50 miles from shore. Meanwhile, there will likely be more of these. [Haaretz]

• The United States is backing away from earlier plans, made in the wake of the uncovering of the alleged assassination plot, to impose stricter sanctions on Iran’s central bank. [LAT]

• A man (now in custody) threatened the wife and daughter of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• Gilad Shalit underwent surgery to remove shrapnel he got during his 2006 abduction. (Which means he’s needed it these past five-plus years.) [Haaretz]

• Zuccotti Park-related police barricades led to a drastic decline in business for a popular Lower Manhattan kosher eatery, which had to lay off one-third of its workforce. [Fox News]

• Turkey continues to toughen its stance against its neighbor and former ally Syria. [FT]

• After publishing an issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad, a satirical French weekly’s Paris offices were firebombed. [NYT]

• Since it’s how Rabbi David Nesenoff seems to define himself entirely, he shall heretofore be referred to as the Helenthomaser Rebbe. [Three Village Patch]

• Though officially unaffiliated, yesterday’s Occupy Wall Street-related “Statement Against Smears” was circulated by a senior J Street staffer. [Forward Thinking]

Dig this here now.

• The IDF has been given the go-ahead to continue to stop rocket attacks from Gaza, including, in theory, a ground operation. Judge Goldstone’s op-ed may have been more well-timed than he knew. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• Jason Diamond eloquently points out that the way Tim Tebow wears religion on his sleeve is the exact opposite of Koufaxing. [Jewcy]

• Brett Ratner—of Money Talks and the Rush Hour franchise—will direct an adaptation of the book Hunting Eichmann. Not sure he’s the best guy for the project, but OK. [Forward The Schmooze]

• Maybe Amar’e Stoudemire’s get-up yesterday wasn’t a costume … . [Page Six]

• A co-founder of Hamas only recently released from Israeli prison was arrested again. One of his sons was the one who became an Israeli informant. [JTA]

T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx: best friends forever? Not quite, but the anti-Semitic poet did admire the Jewish comic, with predictably hilarious results. Here is a late-period Groucho treasure.

• As expected, UNESCO voted to accept the Palestinian Authority as a full member; as expected, the United States pledged to withhold its funding (as required by law). And UNESCO’s only the start. [NYT]

• Israel is reportedly postponing a broader military operation aimed at the people launching rockets from Gaza in order to give Egypt time to mediate a truce. [AP/WP]

• Israel is not an apartheid state, says some guy named Goldstone. [NYT]

• Baruch Lebovits, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi accused of sexual abuse, is out on bail following numerous procedural irregularities in the case against him. [Forward]

• Dimi Reider argues that whistleblower prosecutions are stifling Israel’s free press. [NYT]

More worrisome is the Haaretz report (by frequent Tablet Magazine contributors Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff) that Hamas was able to secure advanced, Russian-built anti-aircraft weapons that were looted from Libya during the Qaddafi regime’s last days. Theoretically, greater ground-to-air capacity could threaten Israel’s freedom of movement over Gaza’s airspace as well as, potentially, civil aviation from the southern Israeli port city of Eilat. “The anarchy in Sinai in recent months,” Harel and Issacharoff add, “has allowed the Palestinians in Gaza to operate almost without interference, and improve their training and weaponry.”

Hamas Boosting Anti-Aircraft Arsenal With Looted Libyan Missiles [Haaretz]
IDF Responds to Rocket Fire, Targets Gaza Terror Centers [Ynet]

972+ has it. The exclusion of IHH, the Turkish charity with ties to Hamas, from the flotilla that was set to launch this past June was an early victory for Israel against a mission that ultimately never left port; IHH was instrumental in organizing last year’s flotilla, in which 9 members were killed by Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara.

Unconfirmed reports have it that Turkish navy ships would accompany the flotilla, something Prime Minister Erdogan has at times threatened. “That would be perceived as a serious provocation by Israel,” 972+ reports. Er, actually, if Turkish ships were to deliberately attempt to run an Israeli blockade, it would inarguably be a serious provocation.

Gaza-Bound Flotilla Said Planning To Depart Turkey in Coming Days [972+]

• A member of Hamas’ negotiating team claims that Israel pledged to lift the Gaza blockade as part of the deal, though he attributed this plank to talks with the German mediator—i.e., not the talks that led to Gilad Shalit’s freedom. [Haaretz]

• President Abbas—who has been marginalized by the deal, since he had nothing to do with it—celebrated the Palestinian prisoners’ release, and asked God “to forgive these martyrs.” [JPost]

• In an unusually specific charge, Iran accused the United States of trying to foment strife between it and Saudi Arabia by revealing (or allegedly fabricating) an Iranian plot against the Saudi ambassador’s life. [NYT]

• So Israeli-American Ilan Grapel is next to be freed, right? [NYT]

• The IDF is warning its soliders not to be “another Gilad Shalit,” now that one abduction has gotten results for its perpetrators. [Haaretz]

• Next, he heads for Paris. [AP/WP]

• Responding to anger from the right at the demolishment of some outposts, Prime Minister Netanyahu is seeking legal ways to legitimize the building of certain settlement buildings on Palestinian-owned land. [Haaretz]

• Sanctions are beginning to significantly slow the Syrian economy, in turn putting real pressure on the Assad regime. [NYT]

• The military budget is becoming a political football as the government seeks money to pay for the new social reforms passed in the wake of the tent protests. [JPost]

• One Palestinian was killed in an unidentified blast in northern Gaza. Was not clear whether there was an airstrike or an accidental detonation. [AP/WP]

Nobody could argue this is Israel’s ideal state of affairs. The country’s extremely respected central banker, Stanley Fischer, warned of the dire economic impact of restricted trade with Turkey, which in normal years is worth billions of dollars. And the United States, of course, is not at all pleased.

And yet analyses, like that of columnist Roger Cohen, that pin most if not all of the blame on Israel for the diplomatic fallout (“Israel Isolates Itself” is the headline) are missing that this is almost entirely a Turkey-created crisis.

Cohen summarizes the U.N. conclusion on the flotilla deaths accurately, addressing Israel: “You had the right to do it but what you did was way over the top and just plain dumb.” He doesn’t note that Israel essentially agrees with that, while Turkey vehemently disputes it. Then, he confuses a crucial, diplospeak nuance: He notes that the U.N. recommended a statement of regret and compensation in exchange for the resumption of full diplomatic relations, and concludes, “An apology is the right course and the smart course.” But an apology is actually not the same as a statement of regret; and indeed Israel has offered a statement of regret, and it is a statement of regret that the U.N. recommends. Turkey, however, insists on an apology, as well as on Israel’s lifting the blockade.

So for Israel, the decision is no longer primarily about diplomatic isolation, or the economy, or even the morality of what happened onboard the Mavi Marmara and how to atone for it. At this point, it comes down to the crucial question of whether Israel will allow Turkey to force Israel to go beyond even a U.N. report with which it cooperated—of whether Israel will give in to blackmail. It can be very tempting, I know, to chalk Israeli stubbornness up to hawkish machismo or even to a lack of regret at the deaths of the nine flotilla members. But really, Israel is following a very standard realpolitik playbook; it is Turkey—hyper-ideological and flailing at the gap between the power it thinks it deserves and the power it has—that is acting recklessly.

And the pressure is not only on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government. Germany has already called on Turkey to accept the U.N. report’s findings. And Turkey’s opposition leader, representing the secular old older that Erdogan’s Islamist AKP has supplanted, slammed Erdogan’s brinksmanship: “No good can come of it,” he said, “and there is no need for us to risk our interest with petty actions.”

Amid Tensions With Israel, Turkey Threatens Increased Naval Presence [NYT]
‘Turkey’s Erdogan to Visit Egypt, and May Cross In to Gaza’ [JPost]
Fischer: Impact of Damaged Trade Ties with Turkey Will Be Severe [Ynet]
Israel Isolates Itself [NYT]
‘Erdogan Painted Himself Into a Corner’ [Ynet]
Earlier: U.N. Flotilla Report Affirms Israeli Stance

“Ulpana High school, Where settler girls go to become ‘real men’ ”

That was the headline I read. You think of settler girls and you think “Little House on the Prairie” or the Jewish equivalent of the Girls Madrassas I’ve been to in Pakistan: Learn your religion, learn how to be a good wife, then have 10 children. But the girls in this story were getting all that and a little extra. Instead of afterschool sports they did afterschool fight-the-state. When civil administrators showed up to enforce a settlement building freeze, the girls blocked the road, whipped mud at them, sat on their jeeps. When 100 riot police showed up, the girls lay down on the wet road, climbed into garbage bins, and hurled trash. Only after a 5-hour battle were the administrators able to deliver their pieces of official paper—building-freeze orders.

The article was from 2009, but I wanted to know more. I called Rav Gadi Ben Zimra, the founder of the school, and reached him. He passed me to his wife, Nurit, the co-founder. She passed me to a neighbor involved with the school who spoke better English—and who could vet me. Her name was Mina Browdy and she told me that she was thrilled that we wanted to come do a piece on their school, meet Gadi and Nurit, hang out with the girls. And of course we could stay there. Ten days? Wonderful. I booked a ticket, as did my friend, the photographer Gillian Laub.

Then two days before the flight, Mina emailed me:

Shalom Elizabeth,

We thank you for your interest to come and write an article about Ulpanat Levona but we reconsidered the idea and decided not to go along with it.

Thank you! Our beloved teacher Rut Fogel Hy”d was murdered with her husband and three children, a three month old baby that was slaughtered cruelly by the wild animals that some of you think are able to make peace.

All the best
Mina Browdy

We decided to go anyway.

***

Tapuach, red poppies in bloom, a sharp wind. The settlement sits atop a hillside above Highway 60 on the West Bank. Established by Kahanists and Yemenites, Tapuach is now home to an assortment of new Israelis—Kazakhs, Russians, Peruvians. It was the Friday before Purim and Moriya was sitting on a blue couch in the front yard of her family’s ranch house across from the town playground, painting her fingernails purple. A few years ago, Gillian had met Moriya, who of course knew of Ma’ale Levona. Her younger sister Roni was a student there. Moriya had been too homesick to stick it out—Ma’ale Levona is a boarding school—but she considers herself almost an honorary graduate. Her Facebook friends are nearly all Ma’ale Levona girls.

Moriya, who is 19, was wearing blue balloon pants, a turquoise-and-silver nose ring, and a silver Star of David around her neck emblazoned with Meir Kahane’s famous emblem—a thumb rising out of a tight fist. Roni is 14. Her nail polish was blue, and she was wearing a Snoopy T-shirt and a wooden pendant etched with the Hebrew words: “Kahane was right.” They’re fighters, these girls, each in their different way. “We called him after Benjamin Zeev Chai,” said Moriya of her 6-year-old brother. Benjamin Kahane, the son of Meir Kahane who was killed, was her father’s best friend, she said. A lot of her father’s friends were killed, she said, as she handed Benjy a candy. One of them is still in prison for killing a Palestinian.

“I was depressed all this week. I can’t smile,” she said. It had been only seven days since the murder of the Fogel family, who lived down the road. The mother, Ruthi, was Roni’s teacher. As Tamar, the Fogels’ 12-year-old daughter, told reporters, around midnight she came home from a Bnei Akiva youth meeting to find her mother Ruthi lying in a pool of blood and her home the site of a massacre—her mother, father, two younger brothers, and 3-month-old sister all slaughtered with knives. Two of her younger brothers survived.

“This week was crazy,” Moriya told me taking me inside to the living room to see her Facebook page on the family computer. “Look my friend writes: ‘Don’t be sad. Don’t give the thugs what they want.’ ”

Then Roni said that the day after the murder, everyone in Tapuach went down to the junction and threw rocks at Arabs. “We all wanted revenge. We just won’t cry and feel sorry for ourselves. We will do something about it. You know? If someone comes to kill you, then you kill them first, says the Torah.” Tapuach was notorious for “price tag” vengeance—which is nothing new in outlying settlements where Jewish vigilantes have been known to take the law into their hands. What was new to me was the vigorous and organized participation of adolescent girls.

Roni took note of details about the murder, including the fact that her teacher Ruthi had tried to fight off the killers, while her husband appeared more gentle, and died holding the baby in his arms. The murders had hit all the girls hard. The school is a tight-knit place, the faculty and students like an extended family. “My Ulpana is special,” said Roni. Another girl at the house laughed: “Every girl thinks their Ulpana is special,” she said. “Not like Ma’ale Levona,” said Roni cheekily. Her peers at Ofra—a more sober, academically rigorous Ulpana—were “geeks, nerds,” she said, and then laughed in that way only teenage girls can laugh at the Other.

Moriya proudly pulled up a photograph of Roni and the gang at a junction holding up signs against the Israeli army for dismantling an illegal outpost. Then she noticed that one of the girls had posted the Channel 2 news segment on Tamar Fogel. “Oh my god I want to see that. Look: Tamar asks Bibi to free Jonathan Pollard.” The reporter showed a clip of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting Tamar at her grandmother’s home, and exclaiming in his most resonant voice, “We know who the enemy is.”

In the clip, Tamar is seen alternately sobbing into her grandmother’s arms and raging back at Bibi—angry not just at her loss, but at the official hypocrisies. “What will happen if you do something?” she asked the prime minister. “Your America will be angry? America will do something to you?” When the prime minister tells her, “They murder. We build,” she challenged him. Tamar Fogel knew from experience that building can be undone. She and her family were evacuated from Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005; she told the prime minister that he is making a war between brothers. “They’re Obama’s poodle,” scoffed Moriya about her government.

At the end of the clip Moriya and Roni were frozen. They were proud of Tamar. With her resolve, poise, and tragedy, Tamar would undoubtedly become a symbol of their generation’s heroism, and another chapter in the settlers’ self-made biblical narrative.

If I’d had a movie camera, I’d just have you watch and listen to these girls for hours. You’d be fascinated, stupefied, shocked, bored—but you’d keep watching. I want you to see just what I saw, not the facts we’re used to—the ones about the Jews from Queens or Brooklyn or Minneapolis who upped and flew to the calling of Zion. We’ve heard from them enough and we think we know just what they’re going to say. But when they enacted whatever romance of pioneering, frontiering, and longing for collective meaning it was that brought them here, they created facts on the ground. Not houses and trailers; they can be bulldozed. They spawned boys and girls, 10 to each family on average.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” a psychiatrist and playwright from Jerusalem asked me, of such girls. “Pure faith mixed with youth. It’s the most erotic thing.” They are a generation of girls born on the land known as the illegal settlements who did not arrive with ideology and hope like their parents. They just sprouted there.

They say it takes one generation to found a new language. These girls are a new language, believing that they belong to the land on which they were born, and sponsored by the government they despise, which pays for their roads and electricity. I wondered how this new generation will affect the narrative of struggle not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but also among Israelis themselves.

• For the first time in two years, Iran seemed to make a real proposal to the West regarding its nuclear program, offering U.N. inspectors five years’ “full supervision” in exchange for lifting sanctions. [NYT]

• As part of the remilitarization of the Sinai and storing more troops there to create security, Egypt began closing the smuggling tunnels between it and Gaza. [WP]

• The Palestinian Authority will go ahead with its U.N. plans, President Abbas confirmed. More at 10. [NYT]

• U.N. nuclear inspectors called for Mideast talks on nonproliferation, a subject sensitive both for Iran, widely believed to be pursuing weapons, and for Israel, wisely assumed to have them and at whom the talks seemed to be aimed. [Haaretz]

• Retired Secretary of Defense Robert Gates believed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government to be a particularly ungrateful ally. [Bloomberg View]

At first glance, these seem like a balanced, “on the one hand, on the other” set of conclusions. In fact, though, they are a clear—even resounding—vindication of Israel and a diplomatic defeat of Turkey. Recall that Israel itself has essentially admitted that it should have handled the flotilla differently so as not to have caused the deaths, and that it has offered to express regret and compensation, and resume full diplomatic relations. Turkey, by contrast, has insisted on an apology (as the U.N. does not), has deemed the blockade illegal (as the U.N. does not), and has called on the blockade to be lifted (as the U.N. does not).

It’s also worth noting, for those stubborn stragglers who still insist Israel murdered nine civilians in cold blood, a few other things the panel finds: that while “the majority of the flotilla participants had no violent intentions,” nonetheless “there exist serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH. The actions of the flotilla needlessly carried the potential for escalation.” And: “Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.”

It seems to me that Prime Minister Netanyahu made the right call in not apologizing. Turkey was banking on a U.N. report that forced Israel to beg for a rapprochement; when it didn’t get that, all that was left was for it to throw a fit and hope Israel fell for it, which it didn’t. Now it is threatening to sanction Israel. If (when?) Turkey follows through, the broader international community will see Turkey contradicting the U.N. report and Israel simply, compliantly toeing its line. Turkey is nothing if not the France of De Gaulle: chafing at no longer having the power it once had and alienating traditional allies in elaborate, emotional, and vain attempts to regain it. Like France, it will fail.

U.N. Report Finds Blockade by Israel Legal but Faults Raid [NYT]
Earlier: Should Israel Apologize to Turkey?

• Lebanon joined Syria in rebuking the Arab League’s call last week for the Assad regime to end violence against protesters. Probably because Lebanon is run by Hezbollah now. [DPA/Haaretz]

• A new bill in Congress would halt U.S. funding for any U.N. entity that supports Palestinian statehood. The administration opposes the bill on the grounds that it will decrease the United States’ ability to influence policy there. [Haaretz]

• The IDF is reinforcing its border defenses and forces in the south in anticipation of another terrorist attack emanating from Gaza and/or Sinai. [Haaretz]

• Rep. Michelle Bachmann kibitzed with several Orthodox rabbis in New York yesterday. [NY Post/Forward]

• Gaza residents with scholarships to study abroad are prevented—by Hamas—from leaving. [Al-Jazeera]

• In planning for protests next month, the IDF has established an inner “red line” for every West Bank settlement inside of which soldiers may shoot at protesters’ legs; in some cases, the army has armed settlers with stun grenades and tear gas. [Haaretz]

• Prominent Likud politician Danny Danon is in the nascent state of South Sudan, where the president told him the country would uphold ties with Israel and maybe even station its embassy in Jerusalem. [JPost]

• Prime Minister Erdogan announced that Turkey would return or compensate for religious properties—chiefly those of Christians and Jews—that the state had expropriated over the past several decades. [NYT]

• The Libyan civil war has meant a small boon for Gaza weapons supplies. [JPost]

• A second man claims to have aided Flagman—the guy who to much applause yanked the Israeli flag off the embassy in Cairo—but Flagman denies it. There is a grassy knoll joke to be made here somewhere. [NYT]

A more idiosyncratic example of a phantom state that they cite is, of course, “the Palestinian territories.” Byman, in particular, a professor at Georgetown and director of research at Brookings’ Saban Center for Middle East Policy and the author of the forthcoming A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism, is familiar with the specifics of that phantom state. I spoke to him yesterday—our August schedules prevented a more immediate conversation—about where the Palestinian territories fit into his and King’s rubric and what that means for their statehood drive at the United Nations.

What makes the Palestinian territories different from other phantom states?
The Palestinian Territories to me are unusual because of the incredible degree of international attention they get. No one could say this issue doesn’t get the attention it deserves. And that changes the dynamic.

One thing that is quite different is that Palestinian sovereignty is more political than military when compared to other areas.

Should Gaza and the West Bank be, in effect considered two different phantom states?
Maybe it’s happened—for five years now, they’ve been two states.

In what ways are they very much like the other phantom states?
A lot of the Hamas economy until recently, even today, comes from smuggling, and there’s an illegality to it that is accepted by Israel. So you have some of these things that do apply.

What should this phantom state currently be doing?
There’s more than one answer depending on which you’re talking about—the West Bank or Gaza. In the West Bank, what Salam Fayyad has been doing is important, because it’s institution-building. So if and when there’s statehood, they’ll be ready for it. That’s a huge thing to me. That should be applauded and encouraged. Fayyad has focused on the parts he can focus on.

But there’s a second half, which is political, and it’s an authoritarian state.

Yitzhak Rabin had a line about: Wouldn’t it be great, because they can fight terrorism without an Israeli high court and human rights organizations? It sounds good, but Israel paid the price of exactly that—they had a very bad government that had all these pathologies that really showed up in peacemaking. On the West Bank today, you need Fayyad, but you also want more political accountability.

Given that you prize internal reform over statehood—or at least until there is enough reform that statehood becomes a good idea—what do you make of the Palestinian Authority’s plans to seek some sort of upgrade at the United Nations next month?
Phantom states try to do this—grasp onto any trappings of international legitimacy. What makes the Palestinians unusual is they actually have a shot. If Abkhazia did this, they’d be laughed out of the U.N.

The question is, what happens in October? So you have September. What happens in October?

Israel might have messed this up politically, in that they made this a big deal. They could have said, ‘Oh boy, another anti-Israel resolution passes at the U.N.’ They really kind of made it into a big deal, which changed the politics of it. But in a couple months, I don’t think much will have changed.

The Phantom Menace [NYT]

• The Torah-thieving “Jewish Indiana Jones” is apprehended (because questing after the Ark of the Covenant isn’t Jewish enough?). [AP/WP]

• A rocket fired from Gaza injured a woman in … Egypt. A misfire? Or something far weirder and more interesting? [Reuters/Jewish Journal]

• Tablet Magazine contributor Benny Morris says that the 30-plus year Israeli-Egyptian peace is either already dead or getting there. [The National Interest]

• Rep. Eric Cantor hurried back from Israel after the earthquake struck his district. [Washington Jewish Week miJEWtiae]

• Meet the only Jewish student at Baltimore’s historically black Morgan State University. [New York Jewish Week]

Got one minute? You can see every outfit Cher Horowitz wears in Clueless.

• Israel launched airstrikes into Gaza and killed the Islamic Jihad member who bankrolled last week’s attacks; in response, rockets were launched from Gaza. [AP/WP]

• Israel also moved to fortify its southern defenses. [Haaretz]

• Meanwhile, Egypt is reportedly planning to destroy some of the smuggling tunnels to Gaza. [JPost]

• The Jewish Museum chose Claudia Gould, whose background is contemporary art and who grew up in an interfaith household, as its new head. [NYT]

• Omri Casspi will in fact not play for his old club, Maccabi Tel Aviv, during the NBA lockout due to the high taxes he would face as an Israeli. [Haaretz]

Israel’s cross-border killing of three Egyptian security officials led to the first (if inevitable) major rift with the post-Mubarak military government, anger in the streets, and feints toward a diplomatic breakdown. Extraordinarily (especially given that he did it on a Saturday), Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, “We regret the deaths of members of the Egyptian security forces during the terror attack on the Israeli-Egyptian border.” That got Egypt to keep its ambassador in Tel Aviv but kept it demanding an apology and a joint probe. Yesterday, Israel pledged the probe (and quietly sent a military delegation to Cairo); as of last night, Israeli officials were insisting the crisis has passed, which is likely a combination of wishful thinking and educated guesswork.

It’s been a revealing moment. From Israel’s perspective and, given to extent to which the two countries’ interests remain aligned, from Egypt’s as well, the breakdown in security near the border, perhaps best evidenced by the multiple times saboteurs have successfully damaged a crucial Sinai natural gas pipeline, remains a real problem. Yet Israel does not want a real crisis with Egypt—contrast the swiftness with which Israel expressed regret and moved toward an apology with its continued (and correct) stubbornness toward Turkey over last year’s flotilla. Meanwhile, the temporary Egyptian government, its legitimacy already questionable and needing to mollify a restive population, has no choice but to create diplomatic to-dos where, under the previous regime, none would have existed. Put it this way: the guy who removed the flag from Cairo’s Israeli embassy is now basically a national hero.

Then there is Gaza and Hamas. After the attacks, Israel customarily retaliated, killing the leaders of The Popular Resistance Committees, which claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attacks. The group responded with rocket fire; Israel responded back (whether this constitutes “Both Sides … Trad[ing] Fire,” as the Times headline has it, I’ll leave to you). But unusually, Hamas stepped in, claiming responsibility for several rockets, one of which hit a house in Ofakim and injured an infant and a child. There were at least four civilian deaths in Gaza from Israeli fire (and several more terrorist ones) and at least one in Israel from a Palestinian rocket, of which at least 50 were fired since Thursday. As of Sunday evening, there was an informal resumption of the ceasefire, which the United Nations and Egypt were working to maintain, even as there were reports of rockets continuing to emanate from Gaza.

Palestinian Authority President Abbas called on the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to “halt Israeli aggression,” while his aides accused Israel of deliberately ramping things up so as to distract from next month’s statehood push. It’s possible that Israel decided to create a distraction from the impending U.N. situation (and that Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to create a distraction from the domestic social justice protests—which indeed appears to have happened) by responding to coordinated attacks that killed eight civilians. Much, much more likely, however, is that Hamas, which is barely a larger fan of the Palestinian Authority’s Turtle Bay plans than Israel is, decided to distract from them by tacitly allowing the coordinated attacks that killed eight civilians and then breaking their own ceasefire. I would go so far as to put my money on the latter proposition.

Unsurprising, then, that some Israeli politicians are calling on Netanyahu to seize the provocation and deal Hamas a substantial blow, and even invade Gaza. Yet influential Israeli columnist Ari Shavit is persuasive in advising restraint on Netanyahu’s part (he is also correct that, if the United States might be taking a wise break from the peace process itself, it absolutely needs to throw its weight around regarding security in Sinai). “A direct attack on Hamas will be perceived as disproportionate and unjustified,” he argues. “Egypt will not be able to stand aside; this time it will surely call back its ambassador from Tel Aviv and freeze the peace. The international community will not show restraint; it will present Israel as a war-monger. And when hundreds of rockets from Gaza hit Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Be’er Sheva, Rehovot, Rishon Letzion and Tel Aviv, the Iron Dome will be deemed ineffectual. Netanyahu will face dilemmas that tore Ehud Olmert apart.” Israel should hold off from further retaliation. And we should remember that both weekend’s crises find their origins in terrorists murdering innocents.

Egypt and Israel Move to Halt Growth of Crisis [NYT]
Egypt Says Israel’s ‘Regret’ Over Killings Doesn’t Go Far Enough [WP]
Officials: Crisis With Egypt Is Over [Ynet]
Casualties on Both Sides as Israel and Gaza Trade Fire [NYT]
Efforts Seek to Restore Calm Between Israel and Hamas [NYT]
Abbas Calls on UNSC to ‘Halt Israeli Aggression’ [JPost]
New Violence Threatens to Derail Social Protest Movement Against Israel’s High Cost of Living [AP/WP]
Netanyahu Must Not Escalate the Situation in the South [Haaretz]

• In a television interview yesterday, Syrian President Bashar Assad was defiant about U.S. and European calls for him to relinquish power. [NYT]

• Rebel fighters took Tripoli, though Col. Muammar Gaddafi remains at large. [WP]

• The United Nations report on the Gaza flotilla will be delayed yet again in the absence of an Israeli-Turkish rapprochement, this time primarily at Turkey’s request. [Haaretz]

• Several Israeli politicians, including in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet, called for an escalation of the weekend’s Gaza conflict, but Israel here is hemmed in by the Egyptian regime as it was not before. [LAT]

• The two remaining American hikers (“hikers”?) in Iran were each sentenced to eight years in prison, unexpectedly harsh terms. [AP/WP]

• The weekend’s violence proved a major distraction (a welcome one, for Bibi, one imagines) from the domestic social-justice protests that have roiled Israel over the past few weeks. [AP/WP]

• Will Syria allow U.N. inspectors an unadulterated look at the shelled Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia? [LAT]

• Israel is blaming Popular Resistance Committees, a Gaza-based group with ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, for yesterday’s attacks. [The Envoy]

• In Iran, is Supreme Leader Khamanei gearing up to arrest his underling President Ahmadinejad? [Frontline]

• Despite prior statements that they would, Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Eric Cantor will not attend Glenn Beck’s rally next week in Israel. [Washington Jewish Week]

• Former Sen. Russ Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin, won’t run for president, senator, or governor. [Ben Smith]

• Bar Refaeli has shot a new bikini catalogue. Yes, Virginia, there is a photo gallery. [Page Six]

• This Ed Koch robo-call in that Queens/Brooklyn race has to be read (and ideally heard) to be believed. [PolitickerNY]

• Half-black Jewish songsters unite: Drake is featured on a new Lenny Kravitz track. [The Fader]

• A Forward editorial notes all the “Rich Jews for Tax Hikes,” and rightfully schleps naches from them. [Forward]

• The woman in That Black-and-White Photo You’ve Seen in Italian Restaurants speaks out. But the photographer was Ruth Orkin, a Jew! [MSNBC]

• Hebrew U. is 57th. [Haaretz]

• Frequent Vox Tablet contributor Jon Kalish has a podcast on contemporary musicians covering old pioneer songs. [iTunes]

Contributing editor Mark Oppenheimer gets frequently insightful, frequently infuriating critic Lee Siegel exactly right: he’s an intellectual tummler. As opposed to a tumbler, born under punches (I’m so thin).

• Israel has gotten mighty close to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which just so happens to sit on Iran’s northern border. [UPI]

• Nevin Shapiro, who is currently doing time for a billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, was as a booster behind several extremely improper, illicit, and even illegal activities at the University of Miami’s football program. [Yahoo! Sports]

• There is reason to doubt that there will be many Palestinian protests come September. [Reuters]

• Knowing it won’t secure a General Assembly majority, Israel is instead trying to put together a group of 60-70 countries, with an emphasis on European powers, to oppose non-negotiated Palestinian independence. [Ynet]

• The problem with negotiated land-swaps is they don’t necessarily account for the people on the ground. How about mutually-agreed referenda? [Boston Globe The Angle]

“Rocks Off” is not merely the best song on Exile on Main Street, it is also the best song in the Rolling Stones’ catalogue.

At noon Israeli time, gunmen did a drive-by on an Israeli bus. Soldiers who rushed to the scene were greeted by detonated explosives. A mortar and then a pair of anti-tank missiles were then fired into Israel from Sinai; the second one hit a private car and killed six. Prime Minister Netanyahu promised to respond to the three apparently coordinated attacks, which took place near the southern port of Eilat, and Defense Minister Barak claimed that they originated from Gaza while also arguing that they “demonstrate the weakening of Egypt’s control over the Sinai peninsula and the expansion of terrorist activity there.” I am no expert, but the implication would be that, in a stark reversal of what would have happened when President Mubarak was in power, the terrorists slipped out of Gaza into Israel and the Sinai in order to perpetrate the attacks. One explanation for why they might do this is that they could be more radical even than Hamas, which may have prevented them from doing this directly from Gaza, which Hamas controls. But that is just speculation. Hamas declined responsibility for the attacks … which it celebrated: “We praise them because they were against soldiers,” said an official (actually, most of them weren’t).

In an interesting twist, this Saturday’s planned #j14 social justice protests have been cancelled in light of the attacks. Perhaps, per Yoav Fromer, young Israelis are noticing the other problems their country faces?

Meanwhile, take it away, Mr. President:

The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.

Canada and the European Union followed suit (so did prominent Rep. Eric Cantor, Republican from Virginia, who is currently in Israel). The U.S. also placed further sanctions on his regime.

I certainly don’t always agree with Tablet Magazine’s Mideast columnist Lee Smith. But he, who said Obama should say what he said today in April, has certainly been vindicated by events here (as have I, except I was far later to the party). Engagement with Assad—both in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and just generally—has clearly failed. Obama went on to note, “The United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria. It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders,” as if in further confirmation that this has nothing to do with the U.S. Here are some of Lee’s Syria columns from the past, which have all argued that engagement, and the assumption—or even hope—that Assad is a “reformer” is a pipe dream.

7 Dead in Attacks on Israelis Near Egypt [NYT]
Obama Calls on Syrian President to Step Down [NYT]
Seven Killed in Series of Terrorist Attacks in Southern Israel [Haaretz]
Netanyahu Promises Israeli Response to Eilat Attacks [JPost]
Hamas Praises Deadly Attacks in Israel [DPA/Vos Is Neias?]
Israeli Social Justice Campaigners Cancel Weekend Protests After Attacks in South [Haaretz]
Obama on Syria [Politico]

The leaders of Hamas agreed, if by agreed you mean forcefully ended an anti-Assad protest that was being held in solidarity with the thousands of Latakia Palestinians. Hamas put the kibosh on the protest because organizers had not received a permit, and not at all because Hamas is headquartered in Damascus and sheltered by the regime there. Meanwhile, while the displaced Palestinians’ whereabouts are largely unknown—some hypothesize that they have in large part fled for Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city—other Sunni citizens of Latakia are being rounded up and sent to a sports stadium in town. And no soccer match has been planned.

Syrian Enclave of Palestinians Nearly Deserted After Assault [NYT]
Hamas Disperses Anti-Assad Protest in Gaza [Haaretz]
Analysis: Assad Puts Hamas in Corner Over Syrian Assault [Reuters/JPost]
Earlier: Reform Just a Watchword in This Administration

• Syrian forces’ assault on another Syrian city, the port of Latakia, included naval shelling. President Obama and other leaders told them to stop. [NYT]

• After a much smaller turnout of protesters than prior weekends, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to find economic solutions to satisfy their demands. [NYT]

• This morning, Israel approved the construction of 277 new homes in Ariel, the major West Bank settlement farthest from the Green Line that Israel would seek to keep even under a two-state deal. [Haaretz]

• For the first time ever, a Chinese military chief visited Israel. [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]

• Changes in Egypt have led to the absence of police in northern Sinai and, consequently, a smugglers’ paradise. [NYT]

It is likewise unclear whether Turkey’s Erdogan is making serious threats or merely posturing when he insists on an apology. If Erdogan holds fast to this demand, he has sticks at his disposal: He could further downgrade diplomatic ties, and he has even made noises about attempting to visit Gaza, which is not a spectacle Israel wants. On the other hand, if Erdogan refuses to play ball, he would be denying himself the carrot of a U.N. report less harsh on Turkey than the current one. The implication of Israel’s request to delay the release of a favorable report, after all, is that Israel would be willing to make that report less favorable in exchange for a deal.

Which is why I must (sigh) agree with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and others and oppose this apology. There is the principled reason: an apology undercuts the blockade and Israel’s soldiers ability to act in self-defense. And there are realpolitik reasons: an apology proves that bullying works, and that Turkey has the power and can dictate the terms of whatever new Turkish-Israeli alliance results. By contrast, the Syria situation as well as the U.N. report reveal that Turkey needs Israel as much as the other way around. “So what should Israel do?” asks Amir Mizroch, former executive editor of The Jerusalem Post. “Fuck’em. Seriously. Apologizing would be a massive, historic capitulation we’ll end up paying for on a much larger scale.” I don’t share his hyperbole, but the sentiment makes sense.

U.N. Report on Gaza Flotilla Delayed Due to Israel Request to Continue Turkish Talks [Haaretz]
Turkish PM Insists Israel Must Apologize If It Wants to Repair Ties [AP/WP]
Apologizing to Turkey Would Undermine Israel’s Interests Twice Over [Contentions]
Earlier: Israel Enjoys Victory With Gaza Flotilla Probe
‘I’m Semi-Sorry’
Have Israel and Turkey Reached Détente?

Hamas quickly accused Israel of “piracy, a war crime and a violation of the principles of human rights.” Actually, though, even many opponents of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza concede that it is arguably legal, and certainly no war crime. In a sense, everyone got what they wanted today: Those aboard the yacht—whose lack of cargo serves to prove further that their mission was purely symbolic—forced Israel to enforce its blockade, which, if you believe the blockade is unjust, means Israel just drew attention to its injustice; Israel upheld its policy; and nobody, kennahurra, was the worse for wear afterward. On all sides, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

Protest Yacht, Bound for Gaza, Is Diverted By Israeli Forces [NYT]
Hamas Accuses Israel of Piracy and War Crimes After Seizure of Gaza-Bound Ship [Haaretz]

It’s also an outcome that is clearly partly the result of positive diplomacy between Israel and Turkey, although on that front, reportedly, there has yet to be a full healing. Members from both sides are currently negotiating in New York; yesterday, Israeli President Shimon Peres urged reconciliation. Turkey is demanding an apology for the flotilla raid; Israel wants only to respect regret. The U.N. report is expected to side with Israel, not Turkey, on this question. Indeed, perhaps most telling of all is that Turkey, and not Israel, is urging the report be kept secret.

Gaza Flotilla Probe: IDF Used Excessive Force but Gaza Blockade Legal [Haaretz]
Earlier: Have Israel and Turkey Reached Détente?
Anchored

Instead, Friday, activists will allegedly try to fly into Ben Gurion International. Which, let’s face it, lacks the drama of the original.

And the drama of the original—along with the tragic nine deaths—was actually the point, and the reason why Israel went to great lengths to avoid its recurrence. (It’s also why the activists declined Greece’s offer to deliver their humanitarian cargo to Gaza—with the flotilla, the medium is the message). Ethan Bronner noted over the weekend that the case for a Gaza flotilla is objectively much weaker this year than it was last. “Last year’s flotilla made a big difference for the people of Gaza—at a terrible cost in lives—by refocusing international attention on their plight and forcing a change in Israeli policy,” he noted. “Today, twice as many goods enter from Israel as before.” Gaza may be “a deeply sad and deprived place,” but, as Bronner himself reported only a week ago, it’s not as sad and deprived. In the end, Israel’s most effectual stroke of anti-flotilla hasbara was to give in to the demands of its supporters. And Flotilla 1’s victory proved Flotilla 2’s defeat.

Pro-Palestinian Activists Plan on Gaining Access to Gaza by Flying to Israel [Haaretz]
French Boat Leaves Greek Waters, but Gaza May Prove Too Far [NYT]
With Gaza Flotilla Stalled, Both Sides Claim Victory [WP]
Greece Jails U.S. Captain in Gaza Flotilla [NYT]
Report: Group Says It’s Responsible for Flotilla Complaint [JPost]
Setting Sail on Gaza’s Sea of Spin [NYT]
Israel Acting Smarter This Time [Contentions]
Related: Building Boom in Gaza’s Ruins Belies Misery That Remains [NYT]
Israel’s Gaza Flotilla Fiasco [WSJ]
On the Disappearance of Jewish Wisdom, Far Out at Sea [Goldblog]
Earlier: Israel Bites the Bait
Have Israel and Turkey Reached Détente?

• Meanwhile, a new Amnesty International report questions whether Syria’s Assad regime is committing crimes against humanity. [Ynet]

• A small French boat from the flotilla managed to set a course for Gaza, but likely lacks the fuel to get there. [NYT]

• Israel plans to reinforce security at the airport in anticipation of Friday’s “aerial flotilla.” [AP/WP]

• Two Gaza men allegedly preparing to launch a missile were killed in an Israeli air strike. [NYT]

• There are signs that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is fracturing in advance of elections. [LAT]

All of the above? Yeah, that was January. Just January.

Since then, in the Territories, Hamas and the P.A. cracked down fiercely on popular protests in favor of unity. Then, suddenly, they agreed to unity, even though it was always doubtful it would actually work. But they stayed together long enough to mount the most threatening Nakba Day protests in years if not decades, and to threaten even worse come September—if they seek unilateral statehood.

Substantively, the most consequential thing President Obama did vis-à-vis Israel was veto a Security Council resolution condemning settlements. In a speech in May, Obama pledged similar opposition to the statehood gambit, condemned Hamas and the P.A.’s deal with it, sharply criticized Iran, and committed the U.S. to totally standing up for Israel’s security and right to exist. And he mentioned what the previous two presidents had assumed: That a two-state solution depended on land-swaps based on the ’67 borders. So, naturally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded angrily, creating a huge diplomatic mess that has yet to be fully untangled, and which could have implications on the 2012 U.S. presidential contest.

The Fogel massacre. The Hamas rocket attacks. The Jerusalem bus stop explosion. Israeli responses claimed lives, including of innocents.

On the Iranian front, first we were given ample reason to believe that its purported nuclear program was substantially delayed. But then we learned that Stuxnet, while helpful, was no panacea. And then we learned that Iran has made significant progress on weaponization technology.

Egypt continues to move tentatively toward democracy.

In Lebanon, the sealed U.N. indictment for the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister (and father of the also-former prime minister, who had to resign when Hezbollah pulled its support) was only last week partially unsealed; expect things to continue to get hotter there.

It was weird that the Syrian regime was brutally cracking down on internal dissent, and barely anyone was saying anything. And that was half-a-half-a-year ago.

Former White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel, who once harbored dreams of being the first Jewish Speaker of the House, instead decided to run for mayor of Chicago; was briefly declared ineligible, then not; then won.

We were there as Rabbi Gershom Sizoumu ran for and lost a seat in Uganda’s parliament. We observed the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Ellen Weiss, an NPR honcho and wife of the enormously influential Rabbi David Saperstein, was forced to resign. Rep. Peter King held hearings on the American Muslim community, attracting the opposition of the American Jewish community. The Reform movement picked a new head.

Jimmy Carter was sued by people who bought and hated his book. Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder sued Washington City Paper, and even got the Simon Wiesenthal Center to endorse his ludicrous accusation of anti-Semitism—maybe his buddy Tom Cruise helped? Jon Demjanjuk was convicted of helping carry out the Holocaust, and then set free.

Quote of the Half-Year (paraphrased): “Oops!” — Richard Goldstone.

Western countries invaded Libya, possibly out of Holocaust guilt. A crazy guy tried to blow up a Santa Monica Chabad house. Benjamin Netanyahu and Justin Bieber were plausibly mentioned in the same sentence. A glass ceiling was shattered when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was picked to be the first woman to run either the Democratic or Republican National Committee. The Prince of Wales had the least Jewish wedding ever. Controversy swirled about playwright Tony Kushner. Jill Abramson was named the first woman editor of the New York Times. Dolph Schayes rooted for the Dallas Mavericks to win the NBA championship, and lo, it came to pass.

Eva Braun in blackface. Eva Braun speaking to the Tenafly JCC.

On the home front, Nextbook Press author Hillel Halkin was honored, and Rush Limbaugh said we were a “radical left-wing” outfit. We rolled out a welcome mat for Goldblog. And the American Society of Magazine Editors confirmed that it enjoys The Scroll.

We said several goodbyes, most of them sad: Elizabeth Taylor; Chris Hondros (whose photograph adorns the top of this post); Juliano Mer-Khamis; and Debbie Friedman, whose death I managed to turn into a controversy, though I swear I mourn for her as well. I don’t, however, mourn for one of the most important U.S. neo-Nazis, who was killed by his own son. There were many other sad goodbyes. Meanwhile, Sen. Joseph Lieberman announced he would retire after four terms. John Galliano’s career ended, or at least lulled, on less favorable terms. So did Rep. Anthony Weiner’s. Oh, and a final goodbye: Enjoy your virgins, Osama. Hamas will enjoy them with you. (Fortunately or not, Noam Chomsky’s religion does not conceive of an afterlife.)

Where do we stand now? Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for rape, which is looking more questionable by the day; Israeli central banker Stanley Fischer was barred from replacing him as head of the International Monetary Fund. The most Jewish state got gay marriage thanks in part to a handful of Jewish Republicans. Israeli-American law student Ilan Grapel is still being detained by Egyptian authorities under dubious espionage accusations. Benjamin Netanyahu’s greatest domestic rival may well be retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan. The Gaza flotilla remains docked.

How should you deal with all this? We suggest going the f**k to shul.

As for whether the flotilla will actually successfully run the blockade, that remains quite dubious. With the prime minister’s backing, Israel’s cabinet voted to order the IDF to enforce the blockade while taking care to avoid loss of human life. Israel has even reached an agreement with Egypt’s new government, which after a brief hiatus has essentially resumed its own blockade of Gaza, to unload the flotilla’s cargo at the Egyptian port of El-Arish, check it, and then transfer it by land to Gaza. Of course, the cargo itself isn’t really the point: The Audacity of Hope, for example, claims it is carrying only letters of solidarity addressed to Gazan children; and much of the food and medicine other ships are carrying is already permitted into Gaza through the legally prescribed channels. The point is to draw attention to the blockade by attempting to run it and then being told not to.

Which is why there is some sense in Haaretz’s call, “Let the flotilla go,” the argument being that, since the whole thing is symbolic anyway, why not deny the flotilla its symbolism? To which the response would go that it could be seen to set a precedent for non-symbolic acts; and anyway, symbolism isn’t irrelevant. Whatever happens, only the fanatics have an interest in casualties.

Israel Drops Threat to Deport, Ban Foreign Journalists Aboard Gaza-Bound Flotilla [AP/WP]
Flotilla Organizers: ‘We Are Ready to Sail’ [+972]
Gaza Flotilla Losing Momentum [Ynet]
Cabinet Votes to Stop Gaza Flotilla [Ynet]
Report: Israel, Egypt Agree Gaza Flotilla Can Unload Cargo at El-Arish [Haaretz]
Let The Flotilla Go [Haaretz]
Related: Building Boom in Gaza’s Ruins Belies Misery That Remains [NYT]
Earlier: Why Alice Walker Is Sailing to Gaza

Journalist Joseph Dana, a recent Tablet Magazine contributor, reports from Athens that The Audacity of Hope will be the largest of the 10 ships (especially since the famed Mavi Marmara will not unmoor, due to the Turkish group IHH’s decision not to participate again), and that among its passengers will be novelist Alice Walker, Holocaust survivor-cum-activist Heddy Epstein, and the founder of CODEPINK; the ship’s cargo is limited to 3000 letters written by Americans to Gaza Palestinians, he says. Additionally, one of those American Jews offers an apologia (“Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report were the catalysts,” she writes).

U.S. Citizens Leave for Gaza Flotilla [JTA]
Why Am I on the Gaza Boat? Because History Commands Me [Mondoweiss]
Letter from Athens: A City in Chaos [+972]
Related: Israel Bites the Bait [Tablet Magazine]
Foundation Myths [Tablet Magazine]

• That flotilla will officially not include IHH, the Turkish group which headlined last year’s, which pulled out due to technical reasons. [JPost]

• The fullest write-up yet of the U.S.-led efforts to re-start peace talks to try to head off a U.N. statehood vote in September. [WSJ]

• The first rocket was launched from Gaza in two months. It landed in an empty field. [JPost]

• Syria is far more divided by sects than Egypt. But its protests are also lasting much longer, giving the different groups more time to overcome their differences (maybe). [NYT]

• Oh, laaaaaadies. Mel Gibson is single and back on the market again … . [Page Six]

• But a U.N. Security Council resolution against Syria is unlikely thanks to the opposition of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, all upset over what they see as abuse of the force authorization for Libya. [Turtle Bay]

• After talks in Cairo, Hamas and Fatah still do not agree on a prime minister. [WP]

• Unemployment in Gaza stood at 45.2 percent in the second half of 2010, according to a U.N. Relief and Works Agency report, despite a loosening of the blockade. [NYT]

• The Israeli-American whom Egypt alleges is a Mossad agent denies it. [Ynet]

• Yet another person blames the closing of the Yale anti-Semitism institute on politics. For a week, my educated sense has been that the closing is a red herring; here is a persuasive explanation of why. [WP]

Rare report from a refugee camp inside Syria, where journalists typically aren’t permitted.

• In a victory for the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency censured Syria and referred it to the U.N. Security Council for alleged nuclear violations. [WSJ]

• A Syrian refugee problem is starting to mount for Turkey [NYT]

• Yossi Alpher suggests more creative solutions to Gaza then simply continuing the blockade in light of Egypt’s recent opening of the Rafah crossing. [JPost]

• Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a Jewish Pennsylvanian, became the first Democrat to call for Rep. Anthony Weiner to resign (Rep. Eric Cantor did several days ago). [JTA]

• Leonard B. Stern, who wrote for funny television shows and created Mad Libs, died at 88. [NYT]

• Just how “indefensible” are the 1967 borders? (And also, does it matter, given that President Obama did not suggest a return to them?) [AP/WP]

• Hezbollah’s leader condemned Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu for their “mortal blow” to the peace process, and threatened rockets. [Haaretz]

• Jared Lee Loughner, the man who allegedly shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed several others, was judged mentally unfit to stand trial right now. [AP/The Slatest]

• Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was released from the hospital following his heart attack earlier this week. [JTA]

• Excellent profile of the French-Jewish playwright Yasmina Reza. [NYT]

We all need someone we can bleed on.

Nakba Day began inauspiciously when a truck driver from the Israeli Arab town of Kafr Qasem went on a rampage in Tel Aviv, crashing into multiple vehicles, killing one person and injuring 18. Witnesses said that when he finally drew to a halt, he began assaulting passersby, shouting, “Death to the Jews.” Israel Hayom used a witness’ description of the driver as its headline: “Im Retzah Ba’eynayim” (“With Murder in His Eyes”). Police initially refrained from confirming that the incident was a terror attack, but a police official said later in the week, “The indications are that it was carried out deliberately.” The driver says it was an accident. Wrote one blogger, “Forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical.” The incidents in Tel Aviv and the north overshadowed Nakba Day protests elsewhere. In the West Bank, thousands of Palestinians gathered in Ramallah and protesters clashed with Israeli security forces in Qalandiya; at the Gaza border, Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians attempting to reach the security fence and killed a Gaza man suspected of planting a roadside bomb in the area.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset this week that Israel was prepared to “cede parts of our homeland (moledet) for true peace” with the Palestinians, but added that he did not believe that Israel has a Palestinian peace partner. Yedioth characterized the comments as a “promo” (it even used the English word) for Netanyahu’s speech before both houses of Congress next week. “Netanyahu once again crossed the Rubicon, and once again rushed to renounce and quickly clamber back up the bank whence he came,” wrote Ben Caspit in an analysis for Maariv headlined “Tza’ad Leyamin, Tza’ad Lasmol” (“One Step to the Right, One Step to the Left”).

The state comptroller (mevaker hamedina) accused Defense Minister Ehud Barak of violating “the spirit of the rules” (ruah haklalim) meant to prevent conflicts of interest by waiting until three days before he joined former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, in 2007, before transferring the shares in his international consultancy firm to his daughters. But Haaretz’s Aluf Benn wrote (albeit in a piece that came out before the comptroller’s report was released) that Barak stands a good chance of becoming prime minister again. Responding to the headline on Benn’s story, “Ehud Barak Doesn’t Care If No One Likes Him,” one commenter wrote: “That is good, since no one likes him.”

Israel’s Sephardic and Ashkenazic chief rabbis as well as Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ruled that celebrations of the Lag Ba’Omer holiday, which begins Saturday night, should be postponed a day to keep Israelis from desecrating the Sabbath (hilul Shabbat) by starting the holiday’s traditional bonfires before Shabbat has ended. But other rabbis oppose the move, and many of the celebrants can reasonably be expected not to care. “Are all those kids—especially the ones who don’t give much of a hoot what the chief rabbis say—going to push off the burning a day?” one Jerusalemite wrote. “We’ll be away this weekend. … But I have a feeling that we’ll be smelling a few roasted marshmallows on the way home.”

• Egyptian authorities have nixed the idea of a march that would cross into Gaza as a show of solidarity, with even the Brotherhood against the idea. [AP/WP]

• If much of the Arab spring is irreversible, nor is the region on the way to an exactly bright, sunny democratic future right away. [WP]

• The two men arrested in New York City yesterday for alleged bomb plots especially wanted to kill Jews. [NYT]

• “It’s a tragedy to tell you that we”—supporters of Israel—“could do without 80 percent of the Jews,” said controversial CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld. [The Jewish Press]

• Leo and Bar: Splitsville. ☹ [Page Six]

• The musical performance conducted by Daniel Barenboim earlier this week in Gaza gets nearly 1400 words in the Times. Interesting note: Barenboim and the performers entered via the Rafah crossing, which is to say, Egypt. [NYT]

• Israeli citizens are about to get new identity cards, complete with biometric chips and creepy, gratuitous Holocaust symbolism. [972]

• The City University of New York nixed an honorary degree that John Jay College planned to grant playwright Tony Kushner, because of his alleged endorsement of the BDS movement. [NY Jewish Week]

• Mayor Bloomberg declares May “Birthright Israel Month” in New York. Funny, I’m still not on a trip. [JTA]

• There have been Internet-inaccessible smartphones for the observant before, but the first one in Yiddish just dropped. [Ynet]

From 1977, Jerry Seinfeld’s first-ever television appearance. Those collars! That accent!! Those pants!!!

What do you think spurred this deal?
A lot of the things that you’ve read. Three of the main factors are: a. Both sides are trying to appease the new government in Cairo; b. You have fear on both sides of what could happen in Gaza and the West Bank, where there have been several demonstrations calling for unity; c. You hear Hamas was urged to move forward because they see the ground crumbling underneath them in Damascus, where their politburo is based. I don’t want to say whether that last argument is accurate—it’s clearly true that they must feel uneasy, and they are in a particularly awkward position there, because the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was so oppressed by the regime. But I would caution that, even though uncertainty itself may have made unity more attractive to Hamas, it’s not at all clear that if something were to replace [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, it would be any less friendly to Hamas.

Deals of this ilk have been floated before. Do you think it will truly happen this time?
There have been many false starts before, but there has been no announcement like this in the last four years—since the Hamas takeover of Gaza. It does seem different than other times. On the other hand, all they’ve announced is that they’ve agreed to agree. The devil is in the details. Past negotiations have been held up over seemingly arcane points—like whether or not a temporary leadership committee overseeing Palestine Liberation Organization reform could be overruled by the PLO’s executive committee, and what percentage of legislative seats in the next election would be determined by party-list voting and what percentage by voting for individual candidates. And that’s not even getting into the morass of security—what the Fatah presence will be in the security forces in Gaza.

Can the Palestine Liberation Organization continue to negotiate with Israel even as Hamas pledges it will continue not to?
Maybe. On one hand, this deal says Hamas is going to be a part of the PLO. On the other, until that happens, they’re not a part of the PLO, and it is the PLO that is the official designate for negotiating with Israel. This is how you can have [Palestinian Authority President] Abbas and Hamas officials both saying—accurately—that the new unity government will not negotiate with Israel. The question is what the PLO will be permitted to do before the integration of Hamas has taken place.

What does this deal mean for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his West Bank state-building, which was the beacon of hope for many Western observers?
Fayyad is not going to be part of the unity government. The Times mentions that he’s loathed by Hamas; he’s not loved by Fatah either! He was a very easy sacrifice to make. What is true is that the Americans love Fayyad and will be worried about where their money is going when he’s gone.

What does this mean for the bid for U.N. statehood recognition in September?
You have people like Haaretz‘s Carlos Strenger writing that this greatly weakens Abbas’s chances of obtaining U.N. recognition, and I don’t understand that reasoning at all. It was always highly likely that you were going to have a U.S. veto in the Security Council. So what we’ve been talking about all along is non-binding endorsement of Palestinian statehood by the General Assembly, which seems unlikely to be thwarted whether you have Palestinian unity or not. Some would argue that the case for recognition becomes only stronger if Abbas comes to the U.N. as the representative of the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza. Others say not only that Abbas had little to lose, because the U.S. would oppose the U.N. option with or without unity, but also that the effects of U.N. recognition have been greatly exaggerated, so even if a unity government were to have some negative impact at the U.N., the stakes are considerably lower than much of the commentariat imagines.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is set to give a speech in Washington, D.C., next month. What is he going to say now?
A week ago, he was said to be planning a ‘Bar Ilan 2,’ laying out a proposal for new talks, and he’s reportedly been negotiating the contents of that speech with American and European officials. Wednesday, he said the P.A. has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas. Clearly his speech is going to have to be rewritten.

Could the deal make the freedom of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured and held by Hamas, more likely?
A Hamas official said yesterday that the reconciliation deal and Shalit have no connection to one another, but you have a lot of commentary in the Israeli press making the conjecture that this isn’t so. It does seem at least possible that you could see movement. Abbas had been opposed to a Shalit deal because it would greatly strengthen Hamas to have secured the release of 1400 Palestinian prisoners. But if that prisoner release could be conceived as a joint victory, or at least not entirely Hamas’s, then maybe.

Related: Our Man in Palestine [NYRB]
Palestinian Recognition Is a Cause for Cautious Optimism [Haaretz]
Earlier: Fatah Chooses Hamas

• An Italian activist for the (extremely) pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement was kidnapped in Gaza by an even more radical jihadist group, which is trying to ransom him off for the release of several prisoners being held by Hamas. [Ma’an News]

• Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and Israel all come under criticism in a new U.S. State Department human rights report. [Forward]

• A Jewish man who received a liver transplant 13 years ago is … yup. [Healthzone via JustASC]

• Dmitriy Salita picks up another win at his home ring in Brighton Beach. [Kaplan’s Korner]

• Novelist Abraham Rothberg died at 89. [NYT]

Pauline Kael and Woody Allen discuss cinema. Why isn’t television as it was in 1975? At least Jim Lehrer still looks exactly the same.

Bieber’s people have released several evasive accounts of just why the singer and Israel’s prime minister never met, fluctuating from a flat-out denial that a meeting was ever scheduled in the first place to a softer statement citing logistical difficulties. It seems clear that the prime minister’s invitation of children from the south threatened by Gaza missiles was not unrelated to the cancellation. But regardless of what exactly came to pass, a few things are inarguable:

• Despite his image as the polished and cunning manipulator of public opinion, Bibi is incompetent at public relations. In inviting the children, Bibi chose not to present Israel as a normal country where normal kids do normal things like listen to Justin Bieber, but rather to insist that the spotlight be turned back toward the darker side of Israeli life, to the conflict and the rockets and the grief.

• Bibi is incompetent at diplomacy. Never mind not being able to get the Palestinians to the negotiating table. Bieber? Bieber? Once upon a time, the Israeli definition of overcoming logistical difficulties meant sending a team to Argentina to capture Eichmann or to Entebbe to rescue hostages; now, it means playing phone tag with a kid who sings songs called “Baby” and “One Less Lonely Girl.”

• Bibi is incompetent at telling the truth. As recent investigative reports in the Israeli press show, the prime minister is a master at stretching, bending, tweaking, and otherwise torturing the truth. As soon as Bibi announced that the meeting had been canceled, both Bieber’s people as well as, curiously, representatives of the Israeli children stricken by terrorism, on whose inclusion in the meeting Bibi allegedly insisted, denied the prime minister’s account. Granted, this is far from a matter of national importance, but a lie, as one Israeli politician after another has learned in recent years, is a lie is a lie is a lie.

Israelis and supporters of the Jewish state should be outraged by Biebergate. I’m serious! This brief and comical affair is actually a dead-serious indication that the leadership in Jerusalem is morally corrupt, intellectually bankrupt, and just plain ineffective. Baby, it’s time for a change.

Related: Diplomatic Breakdown Amid Bieber Fever in Israel [NYT]
Bieber: Netanyahu Meeting Never Scheduled [Ynet]
Earlier: Bibi-Bieber Summit Cancled Amid Controversy

• Except for Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who opposes people not shooting at each other. [JPost]

• And who will apparently be indicted within 24 hours on charges of fraud, money laundering, and breach of trust. [Haaretz]

• The Thursday explosion at a California Chabad house, previously thought to be a pipe bomb, then a freak accident, is now confirmed as a deliberate attack. More at 10. [NYT]

• Egypt has stopped building an underground wall at the Egypt-Gaza border. [JPost]

• I’m mad as hell, because Sidney Lumet, director extraordinaire, is dead. He was 86. More on him later. [NYT]

• If it’s Friday, it means post-prayer marches in the Arab world. Anti-government forces are protesting throughout Syria. [AP/WP]

• At the United Nations, President Shimon Peres condemned attempts to achieve Palestinian statehood through the international body and bemoaned the damage already done by the Goldstone Report. [NYT]

• Speaking of which, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice told a congressional hearing, “What we want to see is for it to disappear.” [JTA]

• After a visit from Prime Minister Netanyahu, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned of the urgency of peace talks. [NYT]

• Saad Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister ousted earlier this year by Hezbollah, blamed Iran for its “flagrant intervention” in internal affairs. [AP/WP]