The Palestine Condition

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The blog, "The Corner Report", has noted that Israel's military forces prevented Eastern calendar Christians from celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany on the west bank of the Jordan River. The Feast of the Ephiphany commemorates the baptism of Jesus.

Thousands of Christians came from Europe, Russia, and Ethiopia to join Palestinian Christians despite pouring rain and swelling river banks.
Hundreds of Christians from Jordan also joined in from the east bank of the Jordan River, shouting greetings to friends and loved ones on the Palestinian side.
Pilgrims noted a heavy Israeli military presence, and were prohibited from performing the traditional baptism in the Jordan River.
Read the full post.

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Israeli security forces have arrested a group of militant Jewish settlers for alleged vandalism, including a high-stakes attack on a Muslim holy place.

About 100 Israeli police and intelligence officers raided the radical Jewish settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank. Police say nine settlers were arrested for attacks on Palestinian property, including five linked to the torching of a mosque last month. The vandals burned prayer carpets and Muslim holy books at the mosque, located in a Palestinian village near the settlement.
Hebrew graffiti at the site said "Price Tag" - a slogan referring to the price of the Israeli government's partial freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank. The settlers accuse the right-wing government of caving in to pressure from the United States, which sees the settlements as an obstacle to peace.
During the arrest raid, settlers accused police of using excessive and brutal force, including beatings, confiscation of cameras and damaging property. Michael Ben-Ari is a parliamentarian in the pro-settler National Union Party.
Ben-Ari told Israel Radio that "even if there are people who broke the law, there is a proper way to enforce the law." He said the actions of the police are reminiscent of the world's "darkest" regimes.
The mosque attack was broadly condemned by Israeli officials. Cabinet Minister Uzi Landau says the perpetrators should spend time in jail.
"Just to make it clear: In our society, they are moral and social lepers," said Uzi Landau.
Palestinians accuse Israeli authorities of turning a blind eye to settler violence, but it appears the mosque attack crossed a red line. Israeli officials say after synagogues were torched during the Holocaust, attacks on houses of worship will not be tolerated by the Jewish state.

Editorial: The Electronic Intifada

by Ali Abunimah
"Increasingly, we see that Israel's hasbara (propaganda) efforts have no positive message, offer no plausible case for maintaining a status quo of unspeakable repression and violence, and rely instead on racist demonization and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims to justify Israel's actions and even its very existence.
Faced with growing global recognition and support for the courageous nonviolent struggle against continued land theft in the West Bank, Israel is escalating its violence and kidnapping of leaders of the movement in Bilin and other villages (Mohammad Othman, Jamal Juma' and Abdallah Abu Rahmeh are among the leaders of this movement recently arrested).
In acting this way, Israel increasingly resembles a bankrupt failed state, not a regime confident about its legitimacy and longevity.
And despite the failed peace process industry's efforts to ridicule, suppress and marginalize it, there is a growing debate among Palestinians and even among Israelis about a shared future in Palestine/Israel based on equality and decolonization, rather than ethno-national segregation and forced repartition.
Last, but certainly not least, in the shadow of the Goldstone report, Israeli leaders travel around the world fearing arrest for their crimes. For now, they can rely on the impunity that high-level international complicity and their inertial power and influence still afford them.
But the question for the real international community -- made up of people and movements -- is whether we want to continue to see the still very incomplete system of international law and justice painstakingly built since the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi holocaust dismantled and corrupted all for the sake of one rogue state."

Read the full Editorial
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Dozens of jeeps carrying masked Israeli commandos rolled into Nablus before dawn, surrounded homes of three Palestinians. 

Six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the deadliest violence in months.

Dozens of jeeps carrying masked Israeli commandos rolled into the West Bank town of Nablus before dawn and surrounded the homes of three Palestinian gunmen. After a standoff, troops stormed inside and killed the wanted men.
The army said they were known militants who carried out a roadside ambush that killed a Jewish settler on Thursday. Palestinian officials said they were members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Fatah movement headed by western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Al-Aqsa Brigades carried out many deadly attacks on Israelis during the second Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000. But the group has been largely inactive since 2005, when Mr. Abbas was elected on a platform of reaching a negotiated peace with Israel.
Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeineh condemned the Israeli raid.
"The policy of assassination, the policy of escalation from the Israeli side is ruining every chance of peace," he said.
Thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral of the gunmen in Nablus.
The Al-Aqsa Brigade threatened revenge, raising the specter of an escalation of violence.
In the Gaza Strip, three Palestinians who approached the border fence were killed in an Israeli air strike. The military said they were in an unauthorized area and suspected of trying to infiltrate Israel. Palestinian officials said they were unarmed civilians who were searching for scrap metal.
The upsurge in violence came a day before the first anniversary of the Gaza War, in which more than 1,100 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.