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:

Setting a new standard for accuracy in the blogosphere, the New York Times editorial board makes a major error in their Oct. 31 blog post, "A Visit From: Eli Khoury, Lebanese Activist." On "The Board," the editorial staff of the newspaper of record declares: "Israel, which is pounded daily by Hezbollah rockets coming across its northern border with Lebanon..."

The northern Israeli village of Pekiin turned into a battleground Oct. 30 as clashes between police and Druze protesters left some 16 police officers and a similar number of medics and residents injured. One resident was in serious condition after being shot in the stomach, and a police officer was reportedly hospitalized with serious head wounds. The clashes broke out after a force of more than 100 police entered the village before dawn to arrest five men suspected of having vandalized a cellphone antenna installed in the neighboring community of New Pekiin. When the force tried to carry out the arrests, they were attacked with rocks and metal bars by masked Druze youth, and police responded by opening fire. The villagers believe that radiation from the antenna causes cancer. (NYT, Oct. 31)

Amos Schocken, the publisher of Israel's liberal daily Ha'aretz newspaper, has defended his paper's applying the word "apartheid" to the Israeli- occupied West Bank, as well as the phrase "Jews-only roads." According to journalist and blogger Phillip Weiss, who attended an Oct. 23 conference called "Israel and its Jewish Defamers," by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Schocken's statements came in a result to inquiries from CAMERA, which is led by Andrea Levin: