The Israeli government immediately said it would move ahead with "sensitive housing projects" as a rebuttal to UNESCO's Oct. 31 decision to grant Palestine full-member status. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a forum of eight senior ministers formally decided the next day to initiate a new wave of settlement construction on the West Bank. The Prime Minister's Office said the construction of 2,000 housing units planned in East Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim should be expedited. "All of the mentioned areas are ones that would remain in Israeli control under any future peace agreement," the PMO said in a statement. The "forum of eight" also resolved to suspend the transfer to the Palestinian Authority of tax remittances collected by Israel in October. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman additionally announced that Israel will "review its relations" with the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (Haaretz, Nov. 2; YNet, Oct. 31)

The UN Security Council's Standing Committee on Admission of New Members is currently considering Palestine's application for full United Nations membership. Eight of the Security Council's 15 members have already declared their support for the Palestinian application: China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Lebanon, Niger and Gabon. But the Palestinians' bid faces a practically inevitable veto by the United States, one of the five permanent Security Council members—which, unlike the 10 rotating members, wield veto power within the Council. (KashmirWatch, Oct. 1)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sept. 28 rejected Western and Arab complaints that the newly announced construction of 1,100 Jewish homes in Gilo on annexed land close to East Jerusalem would hurt efforts to revive the peace process. "Gilo is not a settlement nor an outpost," Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev said. "It is a neighborhood in the very heart of Jerusalem about five minutes from the center of town." He asserted that in every peace plan on the table over the past 18 years Gilo "stays part of Jerusalem and therefore this planning decision in no way contradicts" the Israeli government's stated desire for peace based on a two-state solution.

The right-wing blogosphere is having a field day with this one. The Daily Call started it all with a Sept. 13 piece on comments offered by the Palestinian Authority's ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat at a breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. The Call entitled its write-up "Palestinian ambassador reiterates call for a Jew-free Palestinian state." Here's the offending quote:

Returning to a prospect first raised after last year's flotilla affair, Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has broached supporting recognition by the US Senate of the Armenian genocide as part of a diplomatic offensive against Turkey, the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sept. 9. The report came ahead of a meeting of a meeting of Foreign Ministry officials to discuss Israel’s response to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to downgrade Ankara’s diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Amazingly, the report also claimed Lieberman had suggested that Israel back the PKK Kurdish guerillas (which will doubtless fuel the endless conspiracy theories in Turkish nationalist circles that the Kurds are the pawns of a Zionist conspiracy against the Muslim world). (AFP, Sept. 10; YNet, Sept. 9)

Egyptian authorities declared a state of emergency early Sept. 10 after a group of some 30 protesters broke into the Israeli embassy in Cairo overnight and dumped hundreds of documents out of the windows. The storming of the embassy came after a day of demonstrations outside, where crowds swinging sledgehammers and using their bare hands tore down the building's security wall. For hours, security forces made no attempt to intervene. The embassy's Israeli flag was torn down, and Tweeters on the scene indicate that a giant Palestinian flag was draped from the building's upper stories. The Israeli ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, together with his family and other embassy staff, have reportedly left Egypt. The protest began after a Friday rally at Tahrir Square, which brought out thousands for what was billed as a "Correcting the Path" demonstration (an apparent reference to recent usurpation of the Egyptian movement by Islamists). (The Guardian, RT, Sept. 10; JP, Inagist, Sept. 9)

The UN on Sept. 2 issued its its report on the deadly May 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, criticizing Israel for using "excessive and unreasonable" force but finding that the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip itself is lawful. Prepared by a panel headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer for the office of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the report found:

The Palestinian team responsible for preparing the initiative for United Nations recognition in September has been given an independent legal opinion that warns of risks to Palestinian rights in the proposal. The initiative to transfer the Palestinians' representation from the PLO to a state would terminate the legal status held by the PLO in the UN since 1975 as sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the document states—meaning there would no longer be an institution that can represent the rights of the Palestinian people in the UN and related international institutions. The seven-page opinion, obtained by Ma'an News Agency, was submitted to the Palestinian team by Guy Goodwin-Gill, a professor of public international law at Oxford University and a member of the team that won the 2004 non-binding judgement by the International Court of Justice that the route of Israel's wall was illegal.