RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- The Palestinian president says his people should guard a Jerusalem holy site revered by both Jews and Muslims against visiting Jews, who he referred to as a "herd of cattle."

Mahmoud Abbas' fiery rhetoric Saturday follows comments he made the previous day that Jews should be banned from visiting the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

Palestinian demonstrators have recently clashed with Israeli forces over what Palestinians see as Jewish encroachment on the site. The site is the holiest in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam.

Israel maintains that it allows free prayer to all but Palestinians claim Israel is unilaterally widening access to accommodate larger numbers of Jewish worshippers.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-18-15-11-20

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett responded to Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman's criticism of his remarks in which he chastised US Secretary of State John Kerry for appearing to create a linkage between the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the emergence of Islamic State.

"The US is indeed our great friend, and we are bolstering this friendship even more," Bennett said in a statement released by his office. "Nonetheless, the minister stands by his remarks. After it was explicitly said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fuels and strengthens IS, there was an obligation to react quickly in order to make sure that this comparison is never repeated."

"Terrorism is not something that needs to be understood or supported," the statement read. "It needs to be fought."

http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Bennett-responds-to-Liberman-criticism-Terror-must-be-fought-not-understood-379134

As the Gaza Strip’s authorized fishing zone grows, so shall the danger posed to Israeli gas processing platforms off the coast of Ashkelon as well as merchant ships docking in Ashdod, an Israeli Naval official tasked with safeguarding Israel’s maritime boundary with Gaza told Israel Radio on Saturday.

The expansion of the Gaza fishing zone from its current six-mile limit was one of Hamas’s key demands during the recent Gaza conflict. Israel said it would consider such a move as part of the ceasefire agreement with the terror group, though no actual change has been made so far.

While the officer, identified only as Lt. Col. ‘L,’ noted that most Gaza fishermen were not involved in terrorist activity, he stressed that terror operatives were continually using those fishermen’s freedoms to smuggle weapons and plan attacks.

‘L’ went so far as to call Gaza’s shore “one big tunnel,” in reference to Hamas’s numerous smuggling and attack tunnels dug under the Egyptian and Israeli borders. Dozens of such tunnels were destroyed by Israel during Operation Protective Edge during the summer. The officer said that after the Egyptians destroyed many of the smuggling tunnels dug between Sinai and Gaza in 2013-2014, attempts had intensified to smuggle weaponry via the sea.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/navy-official-gaza-shore-one-big-smuggling-tunnel/

In a spectacular display of ignorance, moral illiteracy and malice, the Swedish parliament voted in favor of unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state in early October. Then, on October 13th, a group of backbench British MPs succeeded in obtaining a symbolic, non-binding vote in the British House of Commons to the effect “that the Government should recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution towards supporting a negotiated two-state solution”. Similar parliamentary votes on Palestinian statehood are expected shortly in Ireland, Spain, Denmark, France and Finland.

These votes disregard the realities of the conflict. If the Palestinians would:

By Uri Avnery

If the British parliament had adopted a resolution in favour of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the reaction of our media would have been like this:

“In an atmosphere of great enthusiasm, the British parliament adopted with a huge majority (274 for, a mere 12 against) a pro-Israeli motion… Over half the seats were occupied, more than usual… the opponents of Israel were in hiding and did not dare to vote against…”

Unfortunately, the British parliament voted this week on a pro-Palestinian resolution, and our media reacted almost unanimously like this:

“The hall was half empty… there was no enthusiasm… a meaningless exercise… Only 274 members voted for the resolution, which is not binding… Many members stayed away altogether…”

http://www.redressonline.com/2014/10/israel-ignoring-tectonic-change-in-public-opinion/

The Gaza tunnels have been a threat to Israel for at least a decade. Gilad Shalit was kidnapped through one in the summer of 2006, and since then, there has been an abundance of intelligence information concerning Hamas’ motivation to dig tunnels for operational purposes.

Along with this intelligence came findings on the ground: The discovery of shafts of long and winding tunnels stretching from Gaza to beyond the border of Israel. By the summer of 2014, the Shin Bet security service and the Israel Defense Forces had found 32 tunnels; their width and the equipment found inside them attested to operational goals more ambitious than moving an abducted soldier.

Against the backdrop of these findings, an investigative report in Haaretz by Amos Harel and Gili Cohen shows the extent to which the army and the government neglected to deal with the tunnel threat. Despite a special report on the subject prepared by Military Intelligence for the prime minister in 2013, despite the exposure of the tunnels in the media, among others by GOC Southern Command, despite warnings from various quarters, including the geologist and intelligence officer Yossi Langotsky – Israel took no real action to protect itself from the threat of the tunnels and to destroy them.

The incident in which 13 terrorists came through a tunnel near Kibbutz Sufa on the morning of July 17, the ninth day of Operation Protective Edge, caught Israel by surprise in terms of the extent of the threat.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.621432

Less than two months after Israel's summer offensive in the Gaza Strip ended, Hamas militants in the coastal enclave are
rebuilding their attack tunnels.

A journalist from Hamas affiliated news outlet Al-Resalah visited one of the rebuilding sites recently, according to to a report on Sunday on its website. The journalist spoke to a number of militants who she said were burrowing beneath the earth 24/7.

"Working here is very hard, but we are waiting for tribute from God," one of the diggers said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the middle of August that the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) neutralized the attack tunnels but he reiterated that there was no guarantee of 100 percent success.

http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Hamas-claims-it-is-rebuilding-infiltration-tunnels-into-Israel-379206

Not sure what the sum total of these articles adds up to, but it does seem odd that Jewish people praying at a site that is holy to Judaism is considered "desecration" my Muslims who also find the site to be holy.

This does seem to suggest that religion is perhaps more central to this conflict than some folks wish to acknowledge.

blood last time, it seems.

Or trying to top it maybe.

Liberman, Naftali Bennett and Bibi are in a three way race for next PM ...each trying to outdo the other with the politics of fear .

None of the three of them will be involved in any kind of race to be the next PM.

I forgot .....next PM will be Finance Minister Lapid......

http://knessetjeremy.com/2014/10/05/channel-2-poll-23-netanyahu-15-bennett-10-herzog-9-liberman-8-livni-7-kachlon-4-lapid/

Please see post #14 for my own interpretation, which is not really inconsistent with yours.

Likud, going offf the deep end to accuse Abbas of inciting jihad..which would give
Israel another pretext for violence.

I guess for elections they'll throw any red meat to satisfy.

And unfortunately, he has only a limited number of catchy, current pejoratives to use.

But it is soooooooo "they are all alike", isn't it? "Abbas is like ISIS"? Abu Mazen, Bibi's loyal stooge, is the same as al Baghdadi. And they want to know why we think they are full of shit.

In an indication of the degree to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants Iran atop the world's agenda, he used the dedication of a new road into Jerusalem on Sunday to warn of the danger of the Islamic Republic becoming a nuclear threshold state.

“We are standing before the danger of an agreement [between the world powers and Iran] that will leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, with thousands of centrifuges through which Iran can manufacture the material for a nuclear bomb within a short period of time,” he said at the dedication of the road named after former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir.

“This is a threat to the entire world, first and foremost to Israel, and it is much worse than the threat of Islamic State,” he said.

Regarding the up-tick in violence in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that the violence is taking place almost exclusively in the eastern part of the the city. “But that is part of the city, and it is our city,” he said.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Netanyahu-warns-world-powers-A-nuclear-threshold-Iran-is-a-bigger-threat-than-ISIS-379211

gets thrown off, for some reason or other.

On point, nice reference with the Dylan song, ha ha.

Yes, one would think it would be obvious to not give such emphasis to ISIS
and it especially ticks me off every time Bibi feels he needs to bring up the
negotiations with Iran. He and his ilk have done all they can to undermine
that process, thus my sense that Obama would like to tell Netanyahu to
go........