Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has brought Yisrael Beitenu into his coalition, a party that has openly advocated the “transfer” — ethnic cleansing —of Palestinians, and has made clear that a Jewish supremacist state is more important than a democratic one. Yet spokesperson for European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana affirmed that the EU would take no action against Israel. In contrast, the EU has imposed crippling sanctions on the Palestinian Authority, starving ordinary Palestinians for having elected a government of the which the European Union disapproves. EI co-founder investigates a new low in western double standards and appeasement of Israeli extremism. Read more about World silent as fascists join Israel government 

Palestinian nationalist and Islamic leaders have strongly denounced efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and affiliated foreign aide bodies to recruit Palestinian journalists, politicians and certain political groups to work against the Islamic group Hamas. Western news agencies last Friday reported that the US was quietly starting a campaign projected to cost up to $42 million to bolster Hamas’s political opponents ahead of possible early elections. The plan includes funding the Fatah group, providing training as well as offering “strategic advice” to politicians and some liberal secular parties opposed to Hamas. Read more about Palestinians apprehensive about CIA money 

With the coming of Eid al Fiter and in spite of the depressed economy and Israel’s chokehold on Palestinian revenues and customs, traders and vendors in Ramallah are hoping to make some money. Some of them are children, since government schools have yet to open in the West Bank because of the strike by government employees. The vendors’ merchandise is all cheap, but it is colorful and maybe affordable. Popular items appear to be plastic weapons — plastic guns and swords. To Palestinian children, the scene in downtown Ramallah is as exciting as any Christmas season is in downtown New York to American children. Read more about Photostory: Ramadan in Ramallah 

The good news that Condoleezza Rice “wants the Israeli government to explain restrictions on Palestinian-Americans traveling on U.S. passports in Israel and the Palestinian territories” spread like wildfire in the occupied Palestinian territories. Rice has apparently listened to something from the Palestinian side! Maybe she saw the ads that the Palestinian grassroots Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry into the oPt had placed in all the local papers during her most recent visit - a photograph of her and Abbas with the caption “Wish we could be there to help you!”, meaning that Americans, and Palestinian-Americans especially, are being denied entry to the oPt, and so are also denied the opportunity to play a role in the peacemaking she was seeking. Read more about Denial of Entry: Rice's Probe and the Israeli Administration 

The Middle East, and possibly the world, stands on the brink of a terrible conflagration as Israel and the United States prepare to deal with Iran’s alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel, it becomes clearer by the day, wants to use its air force to deliver a knock-out blow against Tehran. It is not known whether it will use conventional weapons or a nuclear warhead in such a strike. At this potentially cataclysmic moment in global politics, it is good to see that one of the world’s leading broadcasters, the BBC, decided this week to air a documentary entitled “Will Israel bomb Iran?”. It is the question on everyone’s lips and doubtless, with the imprimatur of the BBC, the programme will sell around the world. Read more about The BBC and Israel's plan for a military strike on Iran 

There are ominous signs that the long-contemplated plan to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas-led Palestinian Authority cabinet is about to enter its most dangerous phase: a political coup, supported by local militias, with foreign and regional backing. This could ignite serious intra-Palestinian violence. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah and contributor Hasan Abu Nimah write that with Iraq providing a dreadful warning of how foreign occupation can foster civil bloodshed, everything must be done to expose and thwart this dangerous conspiracy. Read more about A re-run of the Lebanon war in Palestine? 

When it comes to imposing law and order on the Palestinians, what applies is not international humanitarian law, but the law of the jungle. And, of course, it is quite clear who the king of the jungle is. The Palestinian Israeli conflict is about survival, about the right of one strong party backed by a superpower to “exist” as a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous non-Jewish population of historic Palestine and their descendants who are not allowed to “exist” in a separate but unequal state of their own. It is about the right of the weak party to negotiate for its own autonomous survival on bits and pieces of leftover “territories”, but only if it first concedes its dispossession, if it ensures the security of the strong party and remains its “client”. Read more about The King of the Jungle