Some 2,000 Palestinian demonstrators gathered deep in a pine forest on the slopes of Mount Carmel near Haifa on Wednesday this week as most Israelis celebrated their 58th Independence Day with open-air barbecues and parties. The Palestinian refugee families were joined by 150 Israeli Jews in an annual procession to commemorate the mirror event of the establishment of the State of Israel — the Nakba (Catastrophe), when the overwhelming majority of Palestinians were driven from their homes and out of the new Jewish state under cover of war. This year the families marched to Umm al-Zinat, a Palestinian farming village whose 1,500 inhabitants were forced out by advancing Israeli soldiers on 15 May 1948, a few hours after Israel issued its Declaration of Independence. Read more about Umm al-Zinat: Commemorating the Catastrophe 

The policy of “hitnatkut”, or unilateral disengagement, developed by Ariel Sharon needed a swift facelift following the withdrawal of settlers from Gaza last year. And Israel’s prime minister-designate, Ehud Olmert, has found it in the related concept of “hitkansut”, variously translated as “convergence”, “consolidation” and “ingathering”. So convergence is usefully, and misleadingly, supplanting disengagement. Olmert’s consolidation, it is becoming clear, will embrace Palestinians too. Read more about The real meaning of deporting Hamas members of parliament 

A few weeks after Ariel Sharon broke up his Likud party to form a new “centrist” faction, Kadima, his advisers conducted a poll to find out how potential voters would respond if its list of candidates included an Arab. The results were unequivocal: Kadima would lose votes equivalent to between five and seven seats in the 120-member Knesset from Israeli Jews worried that they might be helping to elect an Arab. Kadima appears to be on a winning streak. Separation of the crudest and most ruthless kind is now, as the polls all too clearly demonstrate, precisely what the Israeli consensus demands, writes Jonathan Cook. Read more about Israeli Elections: A Vote for Separation 

To Palestinians, the British broken promise, as well as the hasty exit from Jericho and apparent collusion with Israel, all smacked a little too painfully of other episodes of British foreign policy in the Middle East. There were echoes of 1956 and London’s pact during the Suez Crisis with Israel on the invasion of Egypt. And there were echoes too of 1948, when Britain hurriedly abandoned Palestine, though not before it had effectively fulfilled the Balfour Declaration’s promise of creating a Jewish homeland by allowing hundreds of thousands of Jews to immigrate. Read more about Britain's Duplicity and the Siege of Jericho Jail 

Until recently liberal Europeans were keen to distance themselves, at least officially, from the ideological excesses of the current American administration. They argued that the neo-conservative enthusiasm for the “war on terror” — and its underpinning ideology of “a clash of civilisations” — did not fit with Europe’s painful recent experiences of world wars and the dismantling of its colonial outposts around the globe, writes EI contributor Jonathan Cook. But there is every sign that the public dissociation is coming to a very rapid end. As criticism of Israel is increasingly not tolerated, it is becoming normal to see Muslims as a civilizational threat. Read more about Sane Britain disappears as Neocons set agenda 

Thousands of Nazarenes rushed to the Basilica of the Annunciation in the early evening of Friday March 3, as rumours swept the city that their church was under attack. For several minutes the congregation huddled together in fear of their lives before a priest and several churchgoers managed to overpower a grey-bearded man in jeans, 44-year-old Haim Habibi, an Israeli Jew accompanied by his wife, Violet, and the couple’s 20-year-old daughter Odelia. Almost from the outset the Israeli media downplayed the significance of the attack, saying only “firecrackers” had been set off by Habibi, who was described - without evidence - as being mentally disturbed. As a result, most of the world’s media ignored the event entirely. Read more about Photostory: Israeli extremists' attack on Nazareth's most famous Christian church goes virtually unreported 

Acres of analysis will be dedicated over the coming days to the significance of this week’s Palestinain general election and what it heralds for the Middle East conflict. But that spectacle and Hamas’ starring role in it have overshadowed a far more important drama playing out in the wings. Barely anyone has remarked on the unfolding events at the Herzliya Conference, Israel’s most important annual policy-making jamboree. This week Israeli elites converged in Herzliya, to share their thoughts on the country’s central concern. It will matter little whether Hamas or Fatah are heading the Palestinian Authority. Israel made up its mind long ago about how best to protect its interests. Read more about Herzliya Conference reveals Israeli plans after disengagement 

Until this weekend Israel’s one million Palestinian citizens had stayed out of the debate about the country’s imminent disengagement from Gaza. “It’s not our story,” they said when pressed, “this is an entirely Jewish conversation.” Although Israeli Jews have been flying blue and orange ribbons from their cars for months - showing respectively support for and opposition to the disengagement - car aerials in Israel’s Arab towns and villages have remained resolutely bare. That is no longer the case. At the weekend the Arab drivers in the Galilee could be seen flying black ribbons to commemorate the killings of four Arab citizens by a young Jewish extremist with his Israeli army-issued rifle. Now Israel’s Palestinian citizens find themselves part of the conversation, whether they like it or not. Read more about Palestinians in Israel Find Themselves Part of The Disengagement Debate