From the massacre at Deir Yassin through the ‘de-development’ of Gaza to the trial of strength – security v. religious freedom – at the Al Aqsa mosque.

Israel’s Security Cabinet met on Thursday to decide whether or not to remove the metal detectors from the entrance to the holy compound. Shin Bet advised they should be removed. But Bibi was more worried about what his hard-right rivals would say than by what Palestinians would do.

Sarah Helm talks to Palestinians in Gaza city where levels of mental and physical disability are unbearably high especially as scant medical and social services shrink even more. They feel helpless and hopeless, controlled by three rigid forces, Hamas, the PA and the IDF.

Three comments on the violence outside Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. A despairing Chemi Shalev says ‘You know the tragedy can be avoided, but no one seems to care’; Al Jazeera – of course the security clamp-down is increasing resistance; Hamas leader Haniyeh calls on “all Palestinians, all Muslims and Arabs to assemble for Al-Aqsa and mass demonstrations following tomorrow’s [Friday] prayers.”

This is the UN’s recent report on Gaza. It is thorough. It is mostly neutral politically. It is dire. This narrow strip of two million – and rising – people has no political voice. The technological means for changing their situation are denied them. A report to keep and use.

These are three articles from Nir Hasson, Haaretz’s man on the spot. He sees that the nonviolent protest by Jerusalem Palestinians has held the Israeli state at bay not least because the decision, by police and government, to use violence to control protests at Israeli state interference in Palestinian worship at the Al Aqsa mosque seems likely to engender nothing but more violence.

It is highly probable that most Palestinians-Muslim, Christian, unbeliever-were shocked and angry at the abuse of the Noble Sanctuary by 3 Arab-Israeli gunmen as a place from which to kill two police officers. The Security Cabinet decided they are complicit in the murder and so had to be punished by denying them access to the mosque and installing metal detector checkpoints. This has been met with communal defiance throughout the oPt. To punish all Palestinians for the sins of 3 is to defy common sense and the biblical law of retaliation – an eye for an eye…

Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has to choose between bringing corruption charges against the Israeli PM or dismissing the issue and jeopardising the honour of his office. By all accounts, writes Akiva Eldar, Netanyahu understands what’s at stake but is incapable of action.

Israel’s ministry of strategic affairs regards BDS as a form of terrorism. Thus they must fight a war against it. The unit in charge is called Hama’aracha (the battle) and has been allotted a large budget for the purpose. The fully-staffed unit will use every weapon available. Ynet magazine.

The small but wealthy state of Qatar was long a major benefactor to the Palestinians of the Gaza strip. For the moment that largesse has ended with the Saudi-led Gulf states claiming the Qatar’s money actually went to the Hamas military. Al-Shabaka Policy Analysts Haidar Eid and Ayah Abubasheer, both based in Gaza, assess what’s next for Gaza.

The pitch of the Israeli PM to the Visegrad 4, whose practices on human rights and respect for the law is not something the EU will want to emulate, is that Israel is essentially a European country though its attitude to human rights is more like that of the V4. In Netanyahu’s mind the EU should put aside its ‘crazy’ concern for human rights and treat Israel as one of its own. Good long quote from Tony Judt included

The decision by Israel’s security cabinet to close the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount complex as a reprisal for the shooting dead of two Israeli officers by three Palestinians seems short-sighted. The offence caused to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by this and by the installation of metal detectors at their holy sites seems an inflammatory collective punishment.

The three Palestinians who gunned down two police officers outside the Al Aqsa mosque came from the powerful Jabarin clan centred in Umm Al-Fahm. This is also the home territory of Sheikh Raed Al Salah who preaches against the Jewish Israeli desecration of the mosque area. Shlomo Eldar writes, hopelessly it seems, of the squeeze on the border town [see map] by a revengeful IDF and a totalitarian northern Islamic government.

Occupying Palestinian villages by military force was policy in the new Israeli state. After Deir Yassin, site of the first civilian massacre in 1948, it wasn’t too difficult – remaining Palestinians joined the refugees in terrified flight. Estimates of those killed ran from 107 through117 to 245. 150 corpses were found in just one of the cisterns. A film with new archive material adds to work done by Zochrot to keep in the public mind how Israeli military groups forced Palestinians out. Documentary maker Shoshani thinks the Deir Yassin mass killing was not planned – it happened because the villagers resisted and it became a killing spree.

From Gaza through Scotland to the New World Order

This telephone interview with Yiftah Ron Tal, chief of Israel’s Electric Corporation, would be comical if it weren’t so serious. Nir Gontarz tries to extract a humanitarian response from a man who is sheltered from humanitarianism by business rules and his bureaucratic office.

Two pieces from The National: wealthier people in Gaza are buying solar panels for home use. They are not an option for the poor or for public buildings. Mothers and sisters take turns in fanning children who are ill. Many blame Hamas. The hospital director for Gaza children’s hospital says he has tried plan B – a big generator -and plan C – a smaller generator. That’s it.

In these two pieces from Haaretz Gideon Levy says there has been a taboo against noting that the killers of two Israeli police officers were Druze and Amos Harel notes that the taboo against violence in the holy compound has been broken.

Media in Palestine and Israel treated the gun attack by three Palestinians killing two Israeli policemen at the Al Aqsa compound as being different from the usual routine of attack and retaliation. It breached the sanctity accorded to the compound by Jews and Muslims. The thousands who usually attend Friday prayers there were angry that they were being punished for no fault of theirs and that police arrested the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, breaching his authority.

Writing in MEMO, historian Lorenzo Kamel says the signs in the Mid-East point to a Western-led agenda which will hasten the Balkanisation of the region, preserve local tyrannies and make Saudi – Israeli relations the framework for a regional anti-Iran policy