From the Sabbah Report.

Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people -- Palestinians in Gaza -- who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.

The female soldiers, located far away in an operations room, are responsible for aiming and firing remote-controlled machine-guns mounted on watch-towers every few hundred metres along an electronic fence that surrounds Gaza.

[...]

The Israeli army, which plans to introduce the technology along Israel's other confrontation lines, refuses to say how many Palestinians have been killed by the remotely controlled machine-guns in Gaza. According to the Israeli media, however, it is believed to be several dozen.

Robert Fisk in the Independent.

For that was the collective sin of Misses Nasr and Guy. What they said might have made Israel's supporters angry. And that will never do. The reality is that CNN should have told Israel's lobbyists to get lost, and the Foreign Office -- which was indeed upbraided by the Israeli foreign ministry -- should have asked the Israeli government when it is going to stop thieving Arab land. But as my old mate Rami Khoury put it in the Jordanian press this week, "We in the Middle East are used to this sort of racist intellectual terrorism. American and British citizens who occasionally dare to speak accurately about the Middle East and its people are still learning about the full price of the truth when Israeli interests are in the room."

Which brings us, of course, to the Grovel of the Week, the unctuous, weak-willed, cringing figure of Barack "Change" Obama as he strode the White House lawn with Netanyahu himself. For here was the champion of the underdog, the "understanding" president who could fix the Middle East -- finding it "harder that he thought", according to his spokesman -- proving that mid-term elections are more important than all the injustice in the Middle East. It is more than a year now since Netanyahu responded in cabinet to Obama's first criticisms with the remark: "This guy doesn't get it, does he?" (The quote comes from an excellent Israeli source of mine.) Ever since, Netanyahu has been McChrystalling Obama on a near-weekly basis, and Obama has been alternatively hissing and purring, banning Netanyahu from photo calls, but then -- as those elections draw nearer -- rolling over and talking about how the brave Netanyahu, whose government has just destroyed some more Arab homes in East Jerusalem, is taking "risks for peace".

Oxford Research Group report.

This report concludes that military action against Iran should be ruled out as a means of responding to its possible nuclear weapons ambitions. The consequences of such an attack would lead to a sustained conflict and regional instability that would be unlikely to prevent the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran and might even encourage it.

Transcript of Mearsheimer's speech on antiwar.com.

[...] there's no accountability for Israel on any issue. You don't need opacity. If I went to the Middle East, and visited Israel, and I was killed, somebody shot me, do you think there would be any accountability? Seriously. If any of you went to the Middle East and were killed, do you think there would be accountability? There wouldn't be. This is how outrageous this situation is. Just think about the [USS] Liberty, think about Rachel Corrie, think about this Turkish-American who was just killed on the flotilla.

There's no accountability.

BBC report.

Frances Guy wrote on her personal blog that Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was a "decent man" who rated among the people she most admired.

An Israeli spokesman said Ayatollah Fadlallah was "unworthy of praise".

The UK foreign office says it has taken down the blog after "mature consideration".

Independent report.

Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.

Juan Cole comments.

[...] But, from the point of view of the Likud Party and Yisrael Beitenu, being Israeli means never having to say you are sorry.

[...]

Netanyahu will likely offer Obama more of these essentially phony peace moves in Washington. The tensions between Israel and Turkey will therefore boil along. But likely everyone will graciously let Davutoglu forget he spoke so categorically or issued an ultimatum. Rocky relations, yes. No relations? Unlikely in the medium term.

BBC report.

Turkey has warned that all diplomatic ties with Israel will be cut unless it apologises for a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May.

The Turkish foreign minister said such a break could only be averted if Israel accepted an international inquiry into the incident.

Andrew Sullivan on his Atlantic blog.

Nick Kristof observes ethnic cleansing and collective punishment first-hand:

On one side of a barbed-wire fence here in the southern Hebron hills is the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, where Palestinians live in ramshackle tents and huts. They aren't allowed to connect to the electrical grid, and Israel won't permit them to build homes, barns for their animals or even toilets. When the villagers build permanent structures, the Israeli authorities come and demolish them, according to villagers and Israeli human rights organizations.

On the other side of the barbed wire is the Jewish settlement of Karmel, a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes. It also has a gleaming, electrified poultry barn that it runs as a business. Elad Orian, an Israeli human rights activist, nodded toward the poultry barn and noted: "Those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians around here."

Reuters report.

Iran's Red Crescent Society has cancelled a plan to send a shipload of aid to the Gaza Strip, saying it was denied access to pass through the Suez Canal, a claim rejected by an Egyptian official.

A ship had been due to set off from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas over the last few days as part of Iran's support to efforts to break Israel's blockade of the strip.

BBC report.

Turkey has barred an Israeli military flight from Turkish airspace, in apparent retaliation for Israel's raid on an aid convoy bound for Gaza.

Turkey's prime minister confirmed that a "ban" had been implemented following the 31 May raid, in which nine Turkish citizens on the flotilla were killed.

IMEMC report.

The Al Mustqbal Lebanese paper stated that France has information from different sources, mainly from Washington, revealing that Israel intends to wage a war against Lebanon in order to strike the Hezbollah party.

[...]

The experts told their American counterparts that preparations are nearly complete, and that the decision to go to war has already been approved, but will not be implemented at the current stage due to the congressional elections in the United States on November 2nd 2010.

Craig Murray writes.

There is a peculiar symmetry about the Bloody Sunday inquiry into the killing by soldiers of unarmed demonstrators concluding just as the Israeli inquiry into the shooting of unarmed peace activists is set up. But there is another fascinating common factor - David Trimble.

[...]

It is therefore no surprise at all that it was that indefatigable - and extremely well remunerated - Friend of Israel, Tony Blair, who gave Netanyahu Trimble's name as a safe pair of hands for the cover-up.

David Samel comments on Mondoweiss. See also this.

While the Times article offers a plethora of valuable information, its unbiased reporter, Isabel Kershner, fails to mention the best part. One of the international observers is none other than Lord David Trimble -- who won the Nobel Peace Prize bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Some may fear that a Northern Irish peacemaker like Lord Trimble, despite his impeccable integrity, is too unfamiliar with the Middle East to bring any expertise to his observer position. Not so!

Just last month, Trimble and a group of his international colleagues launched the "Friends of Israel Initiative," self-described as a new project in defense of Israel's right to exist. Trimble and his fellow sponsors, including former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, an icon of rationality in the field of international relations, acted out of outrage and concern about the "unprecedented delegitimation campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities."

Times report, possibly to be treated with some caution.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran. To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom's air defences will return to full alert.

Ilan Pappé in the Independent.

The forced peace is not negotiable as far as the Israeli political elite is concerned, and it offers the Palestinians a limited control and sovereignty in the Gaza Strip and in parts of the West Bank. The Palestinians are asked to give up their struggle for self-determination and liberation in return for the establishment of three small Bantustans under tight Israeli control and supervision.

[...]

The international response is based on the assumption that more forthcoming Palestinian concessions and a continued dialogue with the Israeli political elite will produce a new reality on the ground. The official discourse in the West is that a very reasonable and attainable solution is just around the corner if all sides would make one final effort: the two-state solution.

Nothing is further from the truth than this optimistic scenario. The only version of this solution that is acceptable to Israel is the one that both the tamed Palestine Authority in Ramallah and the more assertive Hamas in Gaza could never ever accept. It is an offer to imprison the Palestinians in stateless enclaves in return for ending their struggle.