Violence erupted on Israel's borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on May 15, leaving at least 12 dead and scores wounded, as Palestinians commemorated the Nakba ("catastrophe") of the Jewish state's founding in 1948. Israeli troops also opened fire as dozens of Palestinian refugees tore through a border fence and crossed into the Israel-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, leaving at least four dead. Four were killed as Palestinian refugees attempted to cross into Israel from Lebanon. Some 60 were injured as troops fired on Palestinians approaching the Gaza Strip border fence.

Ethnic cleansing by degrees. From Ha'aretz, May 11:

Justice Ministry admits it covertly canceled residency status of 140,000 Palestinians
Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, the Justice Ministry admits in a new document obtained by Haaretz. The document was written by the ministry's Judea and Samaria office after the Center for the Defense of the Individual filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law.

From Amnesty International, May 10:

Israeli authorities should release or charge a Palestinian writer and academic held for almost three weeks in the occupied West Bank, Amnesty International said today. The Israel Security Agency (ISA) say they want to keep Ahmad Qatamesh in detention in connection with allegations of involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which he denies.

Israeli tank fire wounded several people near the central Gaza Strip's al-Bureij refugee camp April 28. "Israeli tanks fired shells at terrorists and hit them as they were about to place explosive devices near the security barrier" between the Strip and Israeli territory, an Israeli military spokesman said. (Middle East Online, April 29) The violence comes as Hamas chief Khaled Masha'al prepares to meet Palestinian president and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo next week to sign a unity deal. It will be the first time the two men have met since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, ousting Fatah from the coastal territory after a week of street battles. (Maan News Agency, April 29)

Israeli army and Border Guard forces detained some 40 settlers from the extremist "Hilltop Youth" and "Hebrew Cities" movements who entered the Balata refugee camp in Nablus late April 27, in an apparent effort to make an unauthorized visit to Joseph's Tomb. The infiltrators, who clashed with the Israeli security forces, were accompanied by right-wing activist Baruch Marzel and MK Michael Ben-Ari. The situation has been escalating since April 24, when an Israeli settler was apparently shot dead and four others were injured by Palestinian police after a group of Jewish worshipers entered Nablus to visit Joseph's Tomb without coordinating with either Palestinian or Israeli security. Nablus and Joseph's Tomb are officially under full Palestinian control. The man killed in the incident is identified as Breslov Hasidic worshiper Ben-Yosef Livnat, 24. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the shooting as a "terrorist attack" and called on the Palestinian Authority "to take harsh steps against the perpetrators who committed this heinous act against Jewish worshipers who were on their way to prayer." (YNet, Maan News Agency, JTA, April 28; YNet, April 24)

From the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), April 14:

Today, our friend and colleague, Vittorio Arrigoni, a journalist and human rights defender working in the Gaza Strip, was kidnapped by Salafists, members of a very small extremist group in Gaza.

Israeli actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, who ran a theater project in the West Bank's Jenin refugee camp, was shot dead by unknown masked men on April 4 outside the theater he founded there. Khamis, 52, had received threats for his work in Jenin, but continued to divide his time between the camp and his home in Haifa. Khamis appeared in a number of Israeli films after his first film role in the 1984 production of the John Le Carre novel The Little Drummer Girl, about Mossad's hunt for a PLO bomber. Born to a Jewish mother and an Arab Christian father, he established the Freedom Theater group in Jenin during the first Intifada to promote co-existence.

Israeli air-strikes and artillery fire struck Gaza nine times April 8, killing eight, and bringing the total number of dead over the past 24 hours to thirteen, some half of them civilians. A mother and daughter, and elderly man were killed in two separate strikes near Khan Younis, a fourth—identified as an al-Qassam Brigades fighter—was killed near Gaza City, and two unidentified men was killed when a shell hit his home east of Gaza City. A statement from the Israeli Defense Forces acknowledged civilian casualties, saying that the military "regrets that the Hamas terrorist organization chooses to operate from within its civilian population, using it as a 'human shield'."