A group calling itself the "Army of Believers/Al-Qaeda in Palestine Organization" attacked the American International School in the northern Gaza Strip Jan. 13, setting ablaze five buses and a car. "Armed men entered the school in Beit Lahiya during the night and ransacked rooms as well as adminstration offices, and stole several computers," school director Rabhi Salem told AFP. Four days earlier, armed men fired anti-tank rockets at the school, causing serious damage to the building. A message left behind in the second attack read: "Polytheists and enemies of Islam are pursuing each day their work to destroy our youths, who are falling by the dozens into the swamps of vice and moral decadence. That is why we must re-establish the truth and warn everyone who might try to corrupt our youths or try to open such places of corruption."

Salvos of missiles fell on southern Israel Jan. 9 and Israeli aircraft hit a location in the north of Gaza Strip in response. Al-Quds Brigades, military wing of Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the new missile strikes, saying they were "in retaliation for US President George W. Bush's visit to the region due later today." The National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also claimed a rocket strike on an Israeli military position in the eastern Gaza Strip. Al-Nasser Salah-Eddine, military arm of the Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine, said in a statement one of its fighters was killed in an Israeli air strike that targeted a group of its militants near Beit Lahia in the northern Strip. The Israeli Army announced it was blocking all checkpoints around the strip and the West Bank as a security precaution ahead of Bush's visit. In a statement, Hamas said Bush's visit it "would be part of international schemes against the Palestinian cause." (KUNA, Jan. 8)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he agreed with the idea of an international force for the Occupied Territories, proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Paris donors' conference Dec. 18. The an-Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, vocally rejected the idea, spokesman Abu Abeer saying: "We will not receive any international forces with flowers; instead we will be ready to blow [up] our bodies in these forces as we will consider them a new occupation which we must get rid of by any means." Later, the an-Nasser Brigades called on Abbas to resume dialogue with Hamas "before it is too late." (Ma'an News Agency, Dec. 18)

Another development in the ongoing church-vs.-state conflict over the Orthodox patriarchate in the Holy Land, with (as ever) the struggle over West Bank lands and the future of Jerusalem in the background. From the Jerusalem Post, Dec. 19, emphasis and interjections added:

Israeli forces carried out a series of raids in the West Bank the night of Dec. 5. Soliders invaded the village of Beit Sira, near the Green Line west of Ramallah, conducting house-to-house raids and seizing more than 20 Palestinians. (Ma'an News Agency, Dec. 5) Israeli forces also invaded Jenin refugee camp, firing bullets and sound grenades, breaking into several houses, and seizing four Palestinians. (Ma'an, Dec. 5) That same night, Fatah-allied Palestinian security forces detained eighteen Hamas supporters in in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Salfit, Ramallah, and Hebron. (Ma'an, Dec. 5)

A nuclear war between Israel and Iran would be mutually devastating, but Israel might survive as a state, according to a new study by Anthony Cordesman of the DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. According to "Iran, Israel and Nuclear War," the superiority of Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal would offset the disadvantages of the country's tiny territory. Iran's nuclear strikes would likely target the Tel Aviv area and Haifa, killing 200,000 to 800,000 outright—but recovery would be "theoretically possible in population and economic terms." By contrast, Israeli nuclear attacks on Iran would kill between 16 million and 28 million, making recovery "not possible in the normal sense of the term." (Washington Jewish Week, Nov. 29)

With all eyes on the Israeli-Palestinian "breakthrough" at the Annapolis talks, the West Bank is under siege—this time by Palestinian security forces. Hisham Baradi, 36, an anti-Annapolis protester with the Hizb al-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), was killed when Palestinian Authority police opened fire on marchers in Hebron Nov. 27. At least 60 were injured in street clashes. The protests were jointly organized by Hizb al-Tahrir and Hamas. Earlier that day, Palestinian police barred the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) from marching against the Annapolis summit in Ramallah. (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 28; YNet, Nov. 27) On the Israeli side, right-wing protesters packed Jerusalem's Paris Square Nov. 26, shouting "no" to a divided Jerusalem and "yes" to more West Bank settlements. The rally followed a larger protest at the Western Wall, where some 15,000 prayed for the Annapolis talks to fail. (Washington Jewish Week, Nov. 29)

The New York Times reports Nov. 5 on an initiative to win justice for Jews who fled Arab countries after 1948, and their descendants. But the first paragraph makes nearly explicitly clear that they are being exploited as bargaining chips against the claims of Palestinian refugees: