Israel's departing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced measures Nov. 2 in response to a rise in violence by extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including a halt to all government financing of "illegal" Jewish settlement outposts. The announcement amounted to an acknowledgment that public funds are still being spent on the outposts, contrary to government policy and a longstanding pledge to the US. However, the move applies only to some 100 outposts considered illegal under Israeli law—not to the more than 120 "official" settlements.

The Palestine People's Party (PPP) denounced the latest Israeli decision to demolish five Palestinian homes in the town of Bruqin in the northern West Bank Oct. 31. Senior PPP member Isam Baker called the decision "part of the ethnic cleansing policy that is carried out by the Israeli authorities in the Palestinian territories."

The European Campaign to Break the Siege on Gaza is preparing to send a massive international parliamentarian delegation to Gaza by sea. The delegation had arranged a solidarity visit to Gaza, but was denied entry to the area by Egypt via the Rafah crossing in mid October. Lord Nadthir Ahmad, head of the planned delegation said the group "feels it is their moral duty to break the siege that is imposed over the past three years." (Ma'an News Agency, Oct. 31)

The Lebanese Industrialists Association is accusing Israel of falsely taking credit for traditional Middle Eastern cuisine. The organization's president Fadi Abboud said his group plans to sue Israel to stop it from marketing hummus and other regional dishes as Israeli. "It is not enough they are stealing our land," Abboud said. "They are also stealing our civilization and our cuisine." He said his group would also seek to claim baba ghanouj and tabbouleh as Lebanon's own. (AP, Oct. 7)

Cars and stores were damaged as Jews and Arabs clashed in the Israeli city of Acre after an Arab man was assaulted for driving during Yom Kippur Oct. 9. The violence erupted around midnight, several hours after Jews began marking the Day of Atonement, when Israel comes to a virtual standstill. A group of Jewish youths assaulted an Arab man in his car, sparking rioting that resulted in extensive damage to dozens of cars and shops.

Ancient walls of Awarta, West BankOutgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced the dream of a "Greater Israel" was over this month—a day after settlers raided the Palestinian village of Assira Qabaliya, in the northern West Bank, causing extensive damage and wounding several people, in what was a reprisal attack. Police said an investigation was launched, but no arrests made. The Knesset internal affairs committee convened an urgent meeting to discuss the raid, reportedly sparked when a Palestinian stabbed a boy and burned a house at a settlement outpost. Video footage showed settlers attacking the village with Israeli soldiers present. "If the army is here or not, the settlers will attack," a Palestinian resident told the UN news agency IRIN.

Palestinian medics in the Gaza Strip Sept. 23 recovered the bodies of four Strip residents who were killed in an explosion in a tunnel at the Egyptian border. At least one was wounded and hospitalized in Rafah. The explosion took place in a tunnel in a-Brazil area in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. According to the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Information Center, Egyptian security forces detonated the tunnel while five residents were in it. The forces likely did not know there was anyone in the tunnel, the report said. (IMEMC, Sept. 23)

From B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Sept. 10:

Access Denied: Israeli measures to deny Palestinians access to land around settlements
For years, Israeli authorities have both barred Palestinian access to rings of land surrounding settlements, and have not acted to eliminate settlers' piratical closing of lands adjacent to settlements and blocking of Palestinian access to them. Blocking access is one of the many ways used to expand settlements. In recent years, Israel has institutionalized the closing of such lands in an attempt to retroactively sanction the unauthorized placement of barriers far from the houses at the edge of the settlements.