For a third day in a row, Israeli forces appeared in large numbers around the southern West Bank town of Beit Ummar March 28, installing road gates and fence posts in a move residents fear will close them in and stifle the population center. Local activist Mohammad Ayyad Awad told Ma'an News Agency that the installation of the infrastructure is impeding freedom of movement in the town, saying residents with cars were not permitted entry and exit for most of the day. Awwad said the installations were part of Israeli military preparations to fence the town in, and prevent residents from accessing the surrounding areas.

Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes on targets in Gaza City late March 24, injuring one person, witnesses and medical personnel said. Drones fired four missiles at the Palestinian Authority intelligence headquarters and an Al-Qassam Brigades site. Warplanes carried out raids on an agricultural area east of Beit Hanoun and four artillery shells were fired around the Karni crossing. One young man was injured by shrapnel, medical sources said. He was taken to Ash-Shifa Hospital for treatment of light wounds. An Israeli military spokeswoman said the airstrikes targeted a "terror activity site" in northern Gaza. The attack came in response to the barrage of projectiles fired at Israel in the past week, she added. (Maan News Agency, March 23)

An Israeli woman critically wounded when a bomb ripped through a bus near Jerusalem's central bus station on March 23 died of her injuries after being hospitalized. The attack was the first major bombing in Jerusalem since 2004. More recent deadly attacks involved gunmen, as in the case of the Mercaz Harav attack in March 2008 that left eight yeshiva students dead, or Palestinians commandeering bulldozers or cars and using them as weapons. (Maan News Agency, JTA, March 23)

Israeli warplanes targeted sites across the Gaza Strip late March 21, injuring at least 17 people including seven children, witnesses and medics said. Ten people arrived at Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and seven others were taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north. An airstrike in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City caused considerable damage but no injuries, residents said. An Israeli military spokesman said that the attack targeted two "terror tunnels, two weapons manufacturing and storage facilities, and two additional terror activities sites." The official emphasized that the attack came in response to the barrage of projectiles fired toward Israeli territory over the past week, including 50 on March 19 for which Hamas claimed responsibility. Among the targets were a police post and a training facility of Hamas' military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, which a day earlier offered to stop cross-border fire into Israel if the Israelis halted attacks on Gaza.

Hamas' armed wing said March 21 that it would commit to a truce if Israel stops bombarding the Gaza Strip. However, the al-Qassam Brigades vowed to resist if Israel continued to attack the enclave. Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida said the group had fired mortars into the Western Negev on March 19 in response to Israeli aggression. Three days earlier, two of its members were killed in an Israeli air strike. The call for a ceasefire came as Israeli warplanes struck garages by a mosque east of Ash-Shuja'iyeh near Gaza City. No injuries were reported, but residents said Israeli fighter jets were circling above the besieged strip.

Protesters disrupted traffic in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere across Israel on March 13, in response to the attack in the West Bank settlement of Itamar two days earlier, in which a family of five, including an infant and a young child, were stabbed to death. Protesters, accusing the government of a too lenient security policy on the West Bank (!!!), began amassing immediately after thousands turned out for the funeral at Jerusalem's Givat Shaul cemetery in Jerusalem. (There were also scattered so-called "price tag" attacks on Palestinians by settlers on the West Bank, with five cars set on fire in Nablus, JP reports.) Speaking at the funeral, Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon, was clearly trying to head off protests by playing to the crowd, but that doesn't let him off the hook for his abomination of sanctimonious illogic:

The Israeli government is trying to use a "divide and conquer" strategy on the Bedouin community in the Negev Desert in order to seize its lands, Bedouin representatives charged March 10, in response to a reported initiative to settle the issue of "unrecognized" villages. A special committee is reported to have prepared a plan under which Bedouins who can prove a historical link to their land could receive financial compensation for a portion of their lots. If the Bedouins accept this offer, the extent of land that could be included in the deal would be approximately 150,000 dunums (about 40,000 acres)—less than half of the land the Bedouins lay claim to.

The sexual abuse of reporter Lara Logan in Cairo's Tahrir square was certainly worthy of all the worldwide media coverage it has received, and raises disturbing questions about misogynist and xenophobic elements in the Egyptian revolutionary movement. But the incident's propagandistic exploitation by Islamophobes to discredit the Egyptian revolution altogether has also been a lugubrious spectacle. By way of contrast, there has been no global media outcry over the killing of a young Palestinian man in Jerusalem, apparently at the hands of a Jewish mob in an anti-Arab frenzy sparked in reaction to the revolutionary rising in Egypt. Joseph Dana noted on his +972 blog Feb. 23: