Q. The Quartet met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders last week and announced that within three months the two sides would submit their views on final status issues involving territory and security. Does this represent any sort of real progress?

Note to readers: With the end of the High Holidays (and the wonderful 3-day weeks that go with them), the Round-Up is now back to its regular Friday publication schedule. Thanks for your patience.

1. Bills, Resolutions and Letters
2. More on Palestinians at the UN (UNESCO, etc)
3. FY12 ForOps Update
4. Ramping Up Congressional Pressure on Iran
5. Odds and Ends

Note to readers: Due to the High Holidays, there was no Round-Up last Friday, and there will be no Round-Up this coming Friday. This Monday edition covers the period since the last Round-Up (published October 4). The Round-Up will resume regular publication next Friday.

1. Bills, Resolutions and Letters
2. U.S. Law, the PLO at the UN, and UNESCO
3. Members on the issues of the day
4. Odds and Ends

Q. Israel and Hamas have agreed to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit? Why now, after more than five years of negotiating?

A. The primary reasons for the timing appear to have less to do with negotiating concessions--though both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Hamas appear to have made last-minute concessions--and more to do with the regional strategic issues that set the scene for the deal-clinching concessions. Both Netanyahu and Hamas are interested in lowering the prestige of Fateh and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, following the seeming success of Abbas' recent initiative at the United Nations, which both oppose. The prisoner exchange does precisely that, particularly in light of the Israel-Hamas agreement not to release Fateh leader Marwan Barghouti. 

News Summary:
The big news Sunday morning in Israel was the latest ‘price-tag’ attack on Israeli-Arabs. This time ‘Death to Arabs’ sprayed on Jaffa graves. The other big story was that the Trajtenberg recommendations for socio-economic change are back on the Cabinet’s table for a vote and it’s unclear if the prime minister will succeed in getting the report approved. Haaretz revealed that the IDF is keeping mum on its upcoming plans to dismantle settlement outposts, Ynet reports that the settlers vow to resist, and a Canadian-Israeli judge claimed the head of Israel’s high court is “persecuting” settlers. Finally, an odd story about the legality of putting the Turkish Prime Minister in your shop window.
 
*Just before Yom Kippur began, two Arab cemeteries were vandalized. “Price-tag” and “Death to Arabs” and other hate graffiti were sprayed on some gravestones, while others were shattered, at least 26 graves in all. It’s the second attack in a week on holy Arab sites within Israel. Israeli President Shimon Peres called it a “criminal act” and about 150-200 Arab and Jewish Jaffa residents rallied Saturday night. Interestingly when a Molotov cocktail was thrown on the roof of an empty synagogue Saturday night, all the Israeli (Jewish) papers called it “a response” whereas normally the papers will not relate Arab violence to Israeli Jewish violence. Even Maariv’s very right-wing commentator Ben-Dror Yemini called the vandalism Jewish Jihad. “If we thought that the Jewish terror was something in far off areas, where you don’t find the average Israeli, it seems we were mistaken. They are here. Inside the Green Line." Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai wrote in Maariv he was "ashamed." There have been calls in Israel's Arab community for immediate international intervention to protect Muslim and Christian holy sites within Israel have been growing over the past week, in the wake of the two incidents. Hundreds of Jaffa residents who arrived at the site expressed their anger over the police’s helplessness.

More trouble looms. Almost 100 permanent housing units in the settlement outposts of Migron, Givat Assaf and Beit-El's Ulpana neighborhood are slated to be demolished, evicting close to 1,000 people in the process. The settlers vow they will resist. The Yesha (settler) Council chairman Danny Dayan even admitted that the government helped create what is termed as 'illegal outposts.'  “This is absurd," he said. "The young couples living in these outposts were given government grants to settle there… and now the government wants to destroy their homes and their lives." But the IDF wants to avoid a fight with the settlers while the army demolishes so it isn’t telling the soldiers when they will take place so that the word does not get out to the settlers. Evacuations are to carried out by troops brought in from outside; only the commander will be informed of operation in advance.
That however won’t stop the ‘price-tag’ attacks on Palestinians that expected to come afterwards…
 
Yedioth reported that a judge made an unprecedented criticism of President of High Court Judge Dorit Beinisch and Deputy Attorney General Shai Nitsan, saying they were “persecuting” settlers. Magistrates Court Judge Dov Pollock (originally Canadian) was asked to disqualify himself as judge in a case where a settler woman from Hebron is accused of insulting a public servant. Besides being filmed cursing her Palestinian neighbor she insulted Arab Israeli policemen. Pollock said that the Deputy Attorney General Shai Nitsan, who approved the submission of the indictment, “was either moved by political interests or he had no judgment” saying that in other countries the woman would never have been indicted. He also said Nitsan is Judge Dorit Beinisch’s “baby.” He refused to disqualify himself.

An odd piece was in Friday's Yedioth Jerusalem supplement. Following an earlier report that photos of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan are in E. Jerusalem supermarket display windows, the newspaper ran a half-page article titled 'Want to hang a picture of Ahmedinejad or Nasrallah in your window? No problem.' The paper 'checked' whether it's legal to hang photos of Erdogan and of 'enemies of the state' and 'discovered that even if the action is infuriating, it's completely legal.' Yedioth expressed its surprise and the person in charge of municipal supervision also expressed his frustration, and said all he can do is "make sure they pay the fees required from everyone shop owner for hanging posters."

The High Holidays are here. It is a season in which many turn toward the hope that God will bless us with health, prosperity and peace. Peace, however, is not simply a gift; we are instructed to do our part and proactively pursue it.

"Now the Torah did not insist that we actually go in pursuit of [most other] commandments, but said: if a bird's nest happens to be before you...when you gather the grapes of your vineyard....In all these cases, if they come your way you are commanded to perform the duties connected with them, but you need not go in pursuit of them. In the case of peace, however, seek peace wherever you happen to be, and pursue it if it is elsewhere." Bamidbar Rabbah 19-27 (emphasis added).