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.

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.

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."

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.

Jonathan Cook writes:

If the confrontation with the activists on the flotilla has proved to Israelis that the unarmed passengers were really terrorists, the world's refusal to stay quiet has confirmed what Israelis already knew: that, deep down, non-Jews are all really anti-Semites.

Meanwhile, the lesson the rest of us need to draw from the deadly commando raid is that the world can no longer afford to indulge these delusions.

Laura Rozen on Politico quoting Reuters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled a planned trip to Washington Tuesday and will return home to Israel from Canada today to deal with the diplomatic crisis in the aftermath of Israeli commandos killing ten people on ships bringing aid to Gaza.

Al Jazeera report.

At least 19 people were killed and dozens injured when troops intercepted the convoy of ships dubbed the Freedom Flotilla early on Monday, Israeli radio reported.

The flotilla was attacked in international waters, 65km off the Gaza coast.

BBC report.

More than 10 people have been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says.

[...]

It happened about 40 miles (64 km) out to sea, in international waters.

Gary Younge in the Guardian.

That Israel would try to do so on the backs of black South Africans is a laughable indication of its desperation. For if Goldstone was complicit in apartheid's crimes, then Israel was far more so. Israel was South Africa's principle and most dependable arms dealer. As we learn elsewhere in the Guardian today, it even offered to sell the South African regime nuclear weapons.

IMEMC report.

The United States Senate approved the American President's plan to grant Israel more than $200 Million meant for the development of Israel's Iron Dome that intercepts short-range missiles.

AlertNet story.

Beset by questions about the future of Jerusalem in talks with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin reached for the Bible on Wednesday to stake out the Jewish state's disputed claim on the city.

Netanyahu told a parliamentary session commemorating Israel's capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war that "Jerusalem" and its alternative Hebrew name "Zion" appear 850 times in the Old Testament, Judaism's core canon.

Guardian report.

The US has given private assurances to encourage the Palestinians to join indirect Middle East peace talks, including an offer to consider allowing UN security council condemnation of any significant new Israeli settlement activity, the Guardian has learned.

Press Association report.

The US government has warned Iran and Syria that America's commitment to Israel's security was unshakeable and they should understand the consequences of threats to the Jewish state. In a speech, secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Syrian transfers of increasingly sophisticated weaponry, including rockets, to militants in southern Lebanon and Gaza could spark new conflict in the Middle East.

Reuters report.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has refused to confirm or deny Israeli allegations his group has obtained long-range Scud missiles from Syria.

BBC report.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has again rejected US calls to halt construction in occupied East Jerusalem.

He spoke as US Middle East envoy George Mitchell arrived in the region for separate talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Laura Rozen on Politico.

Amid recent reports that Syria intended to transfer Scud missiles to the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah, U.S. officials to date have been careful to say they do not know for a fact that the missiles were actually transferred to Lebanon, while Israeli officials have said they believe that they were.

[...]

But today, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, says she thinks there is a "high likelihood" the missiles were sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon.