The former US president Jimmy Carter set off a firestorm in 2006 when he said that Israel would have to choose between maintaining an apartheid occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians. That Mr Carter brokered Israel’s most important peace treaty with an Arab country was immaterial; he was branded an enemy of Israel, an anti-Semite and even a Holocaust-denier.

It’s outrageous that in all probability Israel will once again be allowed to get away with committing murder on foreign soil while the world remains silent.

Jerusalem’s mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil.

His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan, a deprived and overcrowded Palestinian community lying just outside the Old City walls, in the shadow of the silver-topped al Aqsa mosque.

Beit Yehonatan, or Jonathan’s House, is distinctive not only for its height – at seven storeys, it is at least three floors taller than its neighbours – but also for the Israeli flag draped from the roof to the street.

To give the green light for a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requires evidence of a clear and present danger; the assurance of the Israel Defense Forces that it can do the job; domestic support; and also the consent of President Obama, who learned from his predecessors in the Bush family that you should only go to war in the Persian Gulf three years into your presidential term, after congressional elections. Tehran is in the crosshairs, but not before 2011.

He is the first Israeli official to visit Britain since a British judge issued an edict declaring that Israeli officials would be subject to 'universal jurisdiction' laws requiring their arrests and trial for war crimes. The ruling included an arrest warrant for Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni.

The Saudi government on Monday urged the international community "for taking a firm stance on the issue of Israeli threats against Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians."

Dubai will issue an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if Israel is found to be implicated in the murder of a top militant Palestinian in the emirate, The National newspaper reported on Friday.

Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan has said that Israel's spy agency Mossad could have been behind the January 20 killing of Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of the military wing of the Palestinian movement Hamas, in a luxury hotel room.

Netanyahu "will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill al-Mabhuh in Dubai," The National quoted Khalfan as saying.

How did a young Nigerian Muslim without a passport “slip through” security at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport? Not only did his itinerary feature an illogical travel route, he paid cash for a high-priced last-min

ICTS International, the security screening company at Schiphol, was founded by former members of Shin Bet, Israel’s civil security agency, and Israeli executives in charge of El Al security. ICTS had already proven its expertise in mounting this type of operation.

Jerusalem’s mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil.His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan, a deprived and overcrowded Palestinian community lying just outside the Old City walls, in the shadow of the silver-topped al Aqsa mosque.

Israeli forces have raided a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, arresting at least 40 people.

The arrests on Monday at the Shuafat camp in annexed east Jerusalem were part of an operation that Israeli police said was aimed at “putting order” in the area.

Al Jazeera’s Elias Karram, reporting from the camp, said: “The raid was divided into two parts: the first of which ended on Monday when Israeli army and intelligence forces invaded the came and detained around 40 poeple based on their political affliation – either to Hamas or Fatah.

As part of this build up the US Military has more than doubled its stockpile of weapons in Israel which it states "Israel can use." One would assume that just like the preparation in the build up to the Lebanon Crisis in 2006 and pre Cast Lead in 2008 that this is a very clear indication that both the US and Israel are preparing for a strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran. The US Navy already has a significant naval force in the Gulf and we are now seeing the slow deployment of Israeli Naval Vessels into the region. In order for the Israeli Navy to position to such a location it requires the permission of the Gulf States to enter their waters.

Ever since the ill-fated Rogers Plan, proposed and named after former US secretary of state William Rogers in 1969, every American administration made ostensibly exhaustive efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, all these efforts failed miserably, apparently due to Israel’s adamant refusal to give up the spoils of the 1967 War.

Another key reason behind the failure of the US peace diplomacy in the Middle East is the US reluctance and consistent refusal to exert meaningful pressure on Israel to abide by international law, which further emboldened Israel and made the Jewish state bask undisturbed in its rejectionism and arrogance of power.

Late last night Occupation forces raided the Stop the Wall offices in Ramallah. Some 10 military jeeps, hummers and an armoured bus surrounded the building as soldiers searched rooms, turning the office upside down and confiscating computer hard disks, laptops, and video cameras along with paper documents, CDs, and video cassettes.

Though both parties were cited in the report by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, Israel faces far more serious charges. It is accused of deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure in a conflict that saw over 1,400 Palestinians killed—compared with 13 Israelis killed—and the full or partial destruction of more than 21,000 buildings and apartments, including more than 200 major factories.

*Israel is preparing to invade Lebanon with massive ground troops.

Israel will not spare any kind of weaponry, including phosphorous and cluster bombs.

Israel is secretly evacuating its northern region residents.

Israel intends to create a new security zone inside Lebanon, south of the Litani to enhance her long term occupation.

While the war of words is escalating around the clock between Israel on the one side and Hezbollah and Syria on the other, analysts in the Middle East and Europe strongly believe that war is inevitable and will break out within a few months.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Moscow to persuade the Kremlin into backing tougher sanctions against Iran, days after media reports revealed that Tel Aviv has dispatched two warships to the Persian Gulf.

The three-day trip, planned weeks ago, will see Netanyahu making every effort in convincing Russian government officials to join the Western-led campaign for additional sanctions against Iran's enrichment activities.

The IDF acknowledged Sunday that there are problems with some of the fences surrounding minefields on the Golan Heights, and in some of the areas the fences are not visible.

As the descent into the slippery slope of racism continues nabated in this land of apartheid, the angle and degree of the slide seem to surprise many. The Israeli parliament (Knesset) has a “Constitution, Law and Justice Committee” terms that only sound similar to what exists in a Western democracy. But the “Jewish state” is “special” where a committee with this name drafts laws to discourage inter-religious marriages, to deny Jerusalemites residency rights, to declare it legal to take land for Jewish
development from those natives who happen to be non-Jews, and to flaunt many other basic rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

THERE IS a danger that all these struggles will become something like “cities of refuge” for young idealists, who desire to devote themselves to a noble cause, but have no desire to take part in the main struggle.

Not everyone was happy that it passed by voice vote. It's an election year and senators want some Iran-bashing credit with their donors.

Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who ran with Sen. John McCain against the Obama-Biden ticket, said on Sunday that U.S. President Barack Obama can win again if he starts backing Israel and decides to attack Iran.

The Jerusalem Post has canceled Naomi Chazan’s biweekly column, after she and the New Israel Fund of which she is president threatened legal action against the paper over a recent advertisement.

Oy, gevalt! There are nongovernmental organizations that want Israel to be a better, more just state, and that the New Israel Fund dares to underwrite. Cities were plastered with posters featuring a caricature of NIF president Naomi Chazan wearing a horn – that’s the level that the “movement” behind the campaign sinks to – and with the last name of that reviled figure, Goldstone, added to hers.

Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, top Civil War generals William T. Sherman and Benjamin Butler, John Quincy Adams, General George S. Patton, Pat Buchanon, (former presidential candidate) Robert Dole, Richard Nixon (and his vice-president Spiro Agnew), Thomas Paine (revolutionary war hero of "Common Sense" fame),

William Shakespeare, Chaucer, Christopher Marlowe, Charles Dickens, Byron Scott, William Blake,

The United Nations is likely to refer the findings of the Goldstone report to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, diplomatic sources in New York said on Saturday.

Members of a hit squad that assassinated a top Hamas military commander used Irish passports to enter and leave Dubai, it's been claimed.

“I’ve seen everything,” she said in a phone interview this week of the posters released by the movement depicting her with a horn emerging from her forehead and labeling her Naomi Goldstone Chazan. “I don’t know why they chose me – I can think of plenty of human rights supporters they could pick on. But I’m ever so proud to be a symbol of Israeli democracy. No doubt about it.”

However, as the portion of the wall already built will be removed, farmers will expect significant damage to their olive groves located in the area.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's death in Dubai had all the hallmarks of a hit by the Jewish state's spy agency, writes Jason Koutsoukis in Jerusalem.

On Tuesday this week the Government of Israel destroyed crops in the Bedouin village of Al-Mazraa. “Crops” hardly defines the one inch high wheat that the community has managed to grow in the desert land. The Bedouin farmers do not have water allocations like their Jewish counterparts, and are dependent on rain. The annual average is 2 inches of rain.. This year was a better year, but even on a good year the wheat does not grow tall enough to be harvested and is used as grazing for the sheep of the residents of this village – one of the poorest communities in Israel. But the government officials were not pleased that this year was blessed with rain – and re-plowed the land to make sure the meager crop will be destroyed.

Republican Rep. Mark Kirk enters the Illinois Senate race as the member of the House who has consistently reaped the biggest contribution totals from pro-Israel PACs, making a name for himself through five terms in Congress as a hardline leader on legislation relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In 2008, for example, Kirk got $414,000 from pro-Israel PACs, more than double the haul of the next biggest recipient in the House, and behind only Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton overall, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon raised on Wednesday the possibility of using force to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, something Tehran vehemently denies it is seeking.

Citing “security reasons” – the ubiquitous and unanswerable catch-all phrase against which it is almost impossible to mount any defense — Israel’s Ministry of the Interior has just issued a six-month travel ban on Palestinian map expert Khalik Toufakji.

When, for the umpteenth time, the inspectors arrive at the settlers’ building they find it shuttered. They are unable to gain access. It is not clear whether anybody is at home. Shrugging their shoulders the inspectors move on to deliver demolition orders on more accessible targets – Palestinian families.

Anyway, they know that there are powerful forces determined to ensure that this display of equal application of the law to Jews and Arabs remains precisely that – a demonstration.

For some Upper West Side residents, their usual stroll down Broadway this evening had a surprise: a group of 20 New York Jews denouncing Israel’s occupation of Palestine were standing with thought-provoking signs while a few passed out flyers.

Monday started with the news that the Israeli military has decided to reoccupy part of Ush Al-Ghrab in Beit Sahour after having left it in 2006 and Tuesday saw the army begin clearing land of Ush Ghrab. Ush Ghrab is part public (Palestinian) land but a major part of it is private lands that was put off limit to their owners for nearly four decades and used as a center for the occupation forces in Bethlehem district. From this military camp, nearly 300 Palestinian homes were partially or completely destroyed in 2002 and 2003.

The United States seems to live on illusions…… illusions of hope, change and more that have no connection to the reality of life. Whitewashing the war crimes that were carried out in Gaza last year is a part of those illusions. Perhaps the logic is that if Israel is not quite guilty as charged, then those that aided Israel in those crimes might not be charged later on.

Israel wants to start talks that would culminate with a permanent peace agreement with Syria, a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said On Thursday, adding, however, that Jerusalem would continue to react against any threats to its safety.

A parliamentary investigation could lead to the dismantling of some rights groups accused of undermining the legitimacy of Israel's government by documenting alleged misconduct by Israeli forces during last year's Gaza war.

"All the facts point that Israel is driving the region toward war, not peace," the official Syrian news agency quoted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as saying during a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.

"Israel is not serious about wanting peace," he added.

An American-Israeli action group has strongly criticized a group of 54 U.S. Congress members for accusing Israel of inflicting “collective punishment” on the residents of Gaza.

A PRCS report said that the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) fired 15 times at its ambulance vehicles in the West Bank and Gaza Strip killing one of the volunteers in Gaza and wounding ten others in addition to damaging 22 ambulance vehicles.

It added that the IOF troops obstructed its teams on 440 occasions while carrying casualties and patients to hospitals and clinics.

The right is terrified of peace. And, in the end, the right’s fear of peace will be the death of Israel.

They are afraid of peace, in part, because it threatens the core of what has come to replace other values as the goal of Judaism: permanent settlement of the West Bank. But that is only a part of it.

Testimonies given to B'Tselem indicated that during the protest, young people and children from the village clashed with Israeli soldiers and border police officers, when one of them approached the child and fired the rubber bullet at him.

A record number of Israeli demonstrators in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on Friday challenged the trend of continued arrests and threats to protesters, reviving hope in an Israeli left.

50 Israeli and international supporters gathered today in Sheikh Jarrah to help Palestinian residents rebuild the Gawi family tent after it was demolished by police earlier in the day. The event, called by neighborhood residents and ISM activists, created a sense of support, solidarity and community in the face of high tension and repression by authorities.

A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.

Snow is predicted in Jerusalem on Thursday…. Evicted families in Sheikh Jarrah who were living in tents outside of THEIR homes are now living on the street. Hopefully the situation will change later today…..

Israel has delivered a report to the UN defending its actions in last year’s Gaza war and insisting its troops did not violate international law, but has not agreed to hold an independent investigation as demanded.

“When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we’ll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget.”

But Levy, like many other conscientious observers, know this won’t help the Israeli goal of making the world forget the Palestinians, or more specifically what Israel has done and is doing to them.

The UN mine action team, which handles ordnance disposal in Gaza, has told the Guardian that the remains of a 500-pound Mk82 aircraft-dropped bomb were found in the ruins of the mill last January. Photographs of the front half of the bomb have been obtained by the Guardian.

This evidence directly contradicts the finding of the Israeli report, which challenged allegations that the building was deliberately targeted and specifically stated there was no evidence of an air strike. Goldstone, however, used the account of the air strike as a sign that Israel's attack on the mill was not mere collateral damage, but precisely targeted and a possible war crime.

It is well-known that Israeli agents via groups like Camera seek to doctor and tailor the content of sites like Wikipedia. Not content with banning Israeli Arabs from commemorating the Nakba, Zionism seeks to control all debate in which it has a stake.

US intelligence finds 5,000 Hizballah training to seize Galilee towns