FACING AN election in which his most dangerous competition is from the far right, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adopted a familiar tactic: a flurry of announcements of new construction in Jewish settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The predictable result has been a storm of denunciations by the United States and every other member of the U.N. Security Council, along with dire predictions that the new building would “make a negotiated two-state solution . . . very difficult to achieve,” as British Foreign Secretary William Hague put it.

Human Rights Watch has acknowledged that terrorists killed civilians in Gaza during Operation Pillar of Defense when rockets being fired into Israel fell short.

“Rockets that fell short of their intended targets in Israel apparently killed at least two Palestinians in Gaza and wounded others,” Human Rights Watch said.

In a sharply worded email from Johannesburg the South African Press Ombudsman wrote, inter alia: “…On October 23 an Israeli journalist (Gideon Levy) published his perception of the findings of the poll, alleging that most Israelis supported apartheid. Later that day, he realised that he had made a mistake and promptly published a correction.

Aspects of a possible confederation between a Palestinian West Bank state and the Hashemite Kingdom – not Syria - were the subject of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent conversation with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman, debkafile’s sources reveal. Nothing was decided and the two leaders agreed to hold further discussions in the coming days.