Alaa Tartir, programme advisor at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, believes the latest escalation by Israel was meant to "retest" the capabilities of armed groups in Gaza, which include Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades.

Only 25 percent of US liberals view Israel as an ally, poll shows, as issue of support becomes increasingly partisan.

A new report by Human Rights Watch finds both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza guilty of making widespread use of arbitrary arrests and torture to quell criticism and political opposition.

“It’s not that the PA has turned into a monster, I think it was born a monster,” Yara Hawari, a young activist and a policy fellow at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told The Intercept this summer. “I don’t think it was ever going to be anything else just because of the way that it was set up: What it was supposed to do was maintain and manage the situation and assist it.”

“What Oslo created,” said Mr. Tartir of Al-Shabaka, “was a clear benefit for some Palestinians and the political elite. Everyone else has to live with the consequences, but doesn’t really have a say.”

“Global powers and international governance institutions must stop instrumentalising the UNRWA through its humanitarian intervention to cover up for their political failures. Humanitarianism has its inherent limits, and it risks, despite all the good intentions, sustaining the status quo of refugees,” Alaa Tartir tells The National.

The news coverage of settlement building in the Jordan Valley comes in fragments. But an eye on the bigger picture is critical, and this is more important as the ominous American-led “deal of the century” develops.

It is puzzling that the state of Israel claims its own legitimacy derives from the right of Jewish people to “return” to their biblical homeland after 2,000 years of exile — but demands that Palestinian refugees drop their claim to return after 70 years and forget their homeland.

US President Donald Trump's swingeing cuts to aid for Palestinians will advance Israel's interests but risk compromising a US-led peace push and raise tensions in the Middle East, analysts and diplomats said Saturday.