More in ‘Hamas’

• While describing the East Jerusalem construction announcement as “not helpful,” President Obama denied that U.S.-Israel relations are in crisis. [JPost]
• Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren makes a similar description and the same denial in this op-ed. But he also stands by Israeli building in East Jerusalem. [NYT]
• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas now says he won’t ...

• The Hamas-organized “Day of Rage” saw mass East Jerusalem protests, and over 100 injuries. However, Israeli police do not believe a third intifada is in the offing (though they expect more violence today). [LAT]
• In a merely rhetorical shift that still means a great deal in the region, Secretary of State Clinton forcefully reaffirmed ...

“Before today began, Hamas had called on Palestinians to make it a “day of rage” in response to the Israeli construction announcement. Many appear to have obliged. Dozens of Palestinians, and over a dozen Israeli policemen, have been injured in clashes. “Jerusalem is Islamic and, we act in accordance with that religious motivation,” said Hamas’s ...

There’s no more proof that the Mossad was indeed behind the January 19 assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. But there are nonetheless several interesting nuggets in this Los Angeles Times article about the Dubai police force’s “mixture of high-tech razzle-dazzle and old-fashioned investigative work.”
• Al-Mabhouh’s death was supposed to look like ...

• Despite everything, Israel expects the proximity talks will in fact launch, and soon. [JPost]
• The IDF indicted two soldiers in military court for allegedly getting a Palestinian boy to open a suspected booby-trapped package during last year’s Gaza conflict. [LAT]
• To head off buzzed-about rioting, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered a 48-hour full closure ...

• Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon argued that, whether or not the East Jerusalem announcement’s timing was unfortunate, Israeli development there is legitimate: “Jerusalem has always been out of the question.” Ladies and gentlemen, your second-ranking Israeli diplomat! [Haaretz]
• One day after endorsing the Goldstone Report, the E.U. parliament demanded that Hamas immediately release Gilad ...

The New York Observer may have found yet further evidence—if distantly circumstantial—of Mossad involvement in the January 19 assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. (To learn everything you need to know about the whole thing, click here.)
The interesting detail has to do with a New York City-based company called Payoneer, whose prepaid ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, prominent historian Benny Morris tries to get to the bottom of the decline and fall of the Israeli left-wing over the past two decades. Book critic Adam Kirsch reviews a biography of Moses Montefiore, discussing the Victorian Englishman’s cultivation of an international Jewish community. This week’s Emails of Zion features a ...

It’s not nearly as bad as those Hamas cartoons—one of which features an Israeli soldier strafing Palestinian children—but a children’s television show broadcast by the Palestinian Authority shows a woman telling Israeli Arab children that the “program” is for them, too, because they live in “Occupied Palestine.” There’s also a big blue guy: not sure ...

Slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to strike a deal with Yasser Arafat because, he told a top aide three days before he was assassinated, “[Arafat] and his [Palestine Liberation Organization] represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism.”
So we learn in a forthcoming book by that aide, Yehuda Avner. Rabin was extremely skeptical ...