The old Palestinian village of Susiya in the occupied South Hebron hills has been beleagured since a settlement was established near by. Last year, the residents completed a small school they had built themselves with the help of NGOs It is now threatened with demolition by the ‘Civil Administration’ on the ground of poor amenities. The school’s principal and the Villages Group are asking for help to keep it open.

Widely admired for his calm marshalling of the facts, Norman Finkelstein has stirred controversy as he has ventured into questions of political strategy, notably a 2-state solution, Palestinian right of return and BDS as the dominant movement. While many Palestinians and supporters of their rights work harmoniously together, there are always questions about how this relationship can and should work.

Ben White’s latest book, on Palestinians in Israel, earned him, and Knesset member Hanin Zoabi the bogeyman epithet of antisemitism. Ramzy Baroud tries to disentangle what values lie behind this, followed by Ludwig Watzal’s review of the book.

In contrast to the loud and belligerent words from Netanhyahu about Iran, the actions of Iran’s ally, the Syrian government, have been met with silence from Israel. Roxanne Horesh reports on what the generals ane security experts are saying at this year’s annual Herzliyah conference.

What has happene to free speech in Canada when thoughtful and responsible journalist Michael Harris can be fired from a radio station because he has criticised his government’s policy towards Israel? JfJfP supports the campaign of Independent Jewish Voices, Canada for his reinstatement

Prof. Raquel Rolnik, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, has just completted a two week tour of housing provision in Israel and the occcupied territories She finds a land in which Palestinians have effectively no housing rights and a discriminatory legal and planning system which makes Palestinian housing subject to demolition and virtually impossible to build but favours building by Jewish settlers.

Jadaliyya is an unusual ezine. Product of the Arab Studies Institute, Washington DC and Beirut, it promotes intellectually serious articles. This month, Stuart Sherwin connects last summer’s social protest in Israel with the early socialist Zionist ideals – and the exclusion of Palestinians from their socialist vision. The legacy of that exclusion was evident in last summer’s protest, for all its ideals of social justice

This is the main part of a complex post by Ali Abuminah as he tries to track efforts to create pressure to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount and replace if with a third temple. The main agitator is Moshe Feiglin who created Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) in 1996 then took it into Likud in 2000 as a faction. Israeli media have been cautious about covering his deliberately inflammatory moves.

A psychological approach to the Palestine/Israel conflict can hardly add more mutual distrust than exists already and may bring insights that create movement. Dr. Alon Ben Meir has long experience of the conflict, both formally and informally. His journalism is published in Al Quds and Al Ahram and this article is the first of a series.

Tha latest report from OCHA on the Jordan valley puts facts and figures to the grim process of making a large pary of the West Bank uninhabitable for its native population. Checkpoints that confine their movement, homes demolished, a water supply system which provides them with 20 litres a day(l/c/d) and settlers with 300 l/c/d. It’s a familiar story – but no less intolerable for that.

We include this story only for its last line. Here Joy Wolfe, ‘media response activist’ and chairman of Israel advocates StandWith Us, claims that ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians were on hand to gloat’ at the acquittal of a student of the charge of biting a pro-Israeli campaigner.Vivien Lichtenstein wrote to the Jewish Chronicle to point out that JfJfP had no presence at the court hearing. We hope that Ms Wolfe, who spots antisemites all over the place, is spared any more horrible hallucinations of JfJfP popping up in strange places and gloating at her.

This posting on violation of press freedom In Israel and the occupied territories is an adjunct to the posting below on freedom of speech in Turkey and Israel. It includes a link to the 2011-12 Press Freedom Index and some interesting/disturbing comments on th effects of popular uprisings.

The refusal by American author Paul Auster to visit Turkey because it lacked free speech, in contrast to Israel, has created a bloggers’ flurry. At heart is how one regards the occupation: an aberration which could be put right by serious negotiations, something that begun in 1967 since when it has been damaging Palestinians and Israeli politics or that ‘the Occupation IS Israel’ and has been since its foundation.

In the first part of her account of a journey to visit her father’s Palestinian homeland, American-born Sarah Ziyad is shocked by the discrimination she experiences because of her name. How can the Palestinians she waits with be so cheerfully generous?

Iranians, Israelis and their various agents and allies are using the high tension between the two states to gamble on what threats will gain most popular acclaim and diplomatic leverage. While no-one gains from nuclear war, will Obama dare to call Netanyahu’s hand if he threatens an attack on Iran before the US election? Yousef Munayyer looks at the cards.

Farmers in Tubas in the Jordan valley had made it the most productive part of the West Bank, its output of wheat and barley feeding local Palestinian families with enough left over for wider sale. Now their work is seriously impeded by land-mines, checkpoints, the diversion of their water to settlements, the trespasses of armed settlers and escalating demolition of their homes and amenities. An ISM delegation reports.

Since he retired as Mossad chief, Meir Dagan has often argued against a military attack on Iran, denied that Israel was under threat and said that Israel’s coalition rule – with the magnified voice of small (far-right) groups – leads to bad government. This week he launched his new movement Yesh Sicui. Will he be treated as a loose cannon or a leader for the high discontent with the government that Netanyahu heads?

‘If you think resistance in Palestine is dead, you have not been keeping up whatsoever’ says Nour Joudah. While the Arab uprisings and Palestinian resistance have fed each other, the very duration of the latter means there has not been the rupture which prompted the Arab uprisings.

MEMO (Middle East Monitor) has published the full text of the Doha Declaration. For stories on the making of the agreement and reactions to it, see postings below,

Responses that the Fatah-Hamas deal, agreed in Doha, for a unity government of technocrats are unusually high in Arab and international establishment circles. Many Gazans wait to see if this is a deal that will produce results, including the rebuilding of Gaza. Some in Hamas, and Likud as a whole, are hostile Four items on the reactions to the Doha declaration.