Recent weeks have seen a spate of angry protests by the Bedouin minority in both Jordan and Israel. On Jan. 4-5, thousands battled security forces in the southern Jordanian city of Maan, in the third major incident of Bedouin unrest in the Hashemite kingdom as many months. Protesters torched government buildings and police vehicles after the killing of two Bedouin men. Authorities said the men died in a clash between rival clans over a water project, suggesting Muslim Brotherhood agitators exploited inter-tribal tension to fuel unrest in Maan province. They said at least 37 were arrested. (World Tribune, Jan. 6)

Israeli activist Yonatan Pollack arrived Jan. 11 at the Hermon Prison in the lower Galilee where he will serve his three-month prison sentence. Pollack was convicted of illegal gathering during a Tel Aviv protest against Operation Cast Lead two years ago, where he rode his bicycle slowly along the streets, causing traffic jams.

The Israeli military bombed three sites in Gaza Jan. 12, after five rockets were fired by militants across the border over the past three days. The air-strike came shortly after the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned that further military action in Gaza would follow continued rocket fire. Speaking to the press in Jerusalem, he said Hamas would "make a terrible mistake to test our will to defend our people; I think they will make a terrible, terrible mistake."

An Israeli court ruling last week overturned an Israeli Defense Forces decision to allow a Palestinian farmer to work a contested field near the West Bank settlement of Shiloh. The ruling also questioned the army's authority to reach a decision on other such land disputes. Jerusalem Magistrate's Court Judge Shimon Fineberg gave a major victory to settlers, rejecting the land right claims of the farmer from the Palestinian village of Krayot. Shiloh resident Moshe Moskowitz said he has been farming the land since 1980. The court ordered the IDF to allow Moskowitz to work there.

Officials from the Ensco Offshore Company appeared in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Jan. 12 in connection with a lawsuit the company filed last year against the moratorium on issuing drilling permits. The moratorium was enacted after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Ensco told the court that although the moratorium has been lifted, officials continue to unreasonably delay action on deepwater drilling permit applications. Ensco is seeking a preliminary injunction compelling the US Department of Interior to "expeditiously" process five pending permit applications the company has filed. The US Department of Justice denies there are delays and says that the additional time is due to new safety precautions to which the DoI must adhere.

Sixty years ago, on Jan. 12, 1951, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, took effect, its text for the first time defining the crime of genocide under international law, establishing punishments and the responsibility of signatory nations to act against it. The world has nonetheless witnessed several genocides since then.

Three UN peacekeepers in Ivory Coast were injured Jan. 11 when their patrol was ambushed by forces loyal to president Laurent Gbagbo in the main city of Abidjan. The West African country has been divided since the incumbent Gbagbo has refused to cede power to rival Alassane Ouattara following the contested Dec. 28 presidential election. The UN is recognizing Ouattara as the winner. Gbagbo supporters meanwhile told AlJazeera that UN troops fired on them in the violence that followed the elections—a claim the UN denies.

Mexican activists, local residents and state authorities committed themselves to working for the rights of Central American immigrants at the Jan. 8 conclusion of a caravan from Arriaga in the southwestern state of Chiapas to the nearby town of Chahuites in Oaxaca. Oaxaca governor Gabino Cué Monteagudo met with the caravan's members at the Chahuites municipal auditorium while local residents, mostly members of the Zapotec indigenous group, carried signs with slogans welcoming "brother and sister migrants" and telling them to "feel at home" in the town. "What we're clear about is that in this state's territory the human rights of Oaxacans and of other people, wherever they come from, will be maintained," the governor promised. (El Universal, Mexico, Jan. 9)