Palestinian security forces shut down a demonstration Jan. 30 in front of the Egyptian embassy in Ramallah, after calling in one of the organizers for questioning a day earlier, organizers of the rally said. A police commander said the demonstrators were in a "security area" and would have to disperse. Some 20 armed officers cleared the area, ordered journalists to turn off their cameras and microphones, and dragged one protester away when he shouted, "Long live Egypt!"

Ameer Makhoul—director of the Haifa-based Ittijah: the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations—was sentenced by an Israeli court to nine years in prison, and given an additional one-year suspended sentence on Jan. 30. The prosecution claimed that a Jordanian civil society activist who Makhoul was in contact with was a Hezbollah agent, and that he gave the contact information on the locations of a military base and General Security Services (Shabak, or Shin Bet) offices. Makhoul's "confession" was admitted as evidence, despite allegations that his statement was made under duress and that he was tortured during interrogation following his arrest in a pre-dawn raid on his home last May.

Israeli forces injured one Palestinian at the weekly anti-wall rally Friday Jan. 28 in the West Bank village of Bil'in, near Ramallah. Soldiers fired tear gas to disperse dozens of locals and international demonstrators protesting Israel's separation wall, which confiscates large swathes of village land. The Israeli military said troops responded to protesters throwing rocks.

The Irish ambassador to Israel, Breifne O’Reilly, was summoned to the foreign ministry in Jerusalem Jan. 25 to be dressed down by Israeli officials over Dublin's move to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation to Ireland to a mission. Israel's ambassador in Dublin, Boaz Modai, also said he will visit the Department of Foreign Affairs to protest the diplomatic upgrade announced the previous day as harmful to peace efforts. (Irish Times, Jan. 26)

President Mahmoud Abbas pledged Jan. 25 that he will personally face the Qatar-based satellite network AlJazeera to address its release of secret documents from a decade of Israel-Palestinian negotiations. Speaking a crowd of hundreds gathered at his headquarters in Ramallah, Abbas said, "I am ready personally to go on their own channel and face them." He dismissed the leaked papers as forgeries—less than a day after Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha'ath told AlJazeera that the leaked documents matched those in his possession.

On Jan. 14 Guyana's Foreign Ministry announced that the country was recognizing Palestine as an independent nation in the hope that "that the increasing recognition of the state of Palestine will contribute to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the creation of lasting peace and stability in the region." Guyana is the sixth South American country to recognize Palestine in a little more than a month. (Haaretz, Israel, Jan. 14)

On the morning of Jan. 12, a convoy of military vehicles and bulldozers arrived at the Palestinian village of Dkaika in the Jordan Valley, demolishing 16 homes, an animal pen, a store and one of the village school's classrooms. The demolition orders were issued because the structures were built without official permission—which is almost impossible for Palestinians to get. Dkaika—a community of around 300 people, without electricity or running water—is in Area C, under full Israeli military and civil control, which accounts for 60% of the West Bank. Residents said they believed the demolition orders were on hold while a plan to regularize the village was under consideration by the Israeli authorities.

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)