The White House has criticized the Israeli government for daring to call the tombs of the patriarchs Jewish national heritage. According to our friends from Washington, the biblical patriarchs actually fall under Palestinian sovereignty.

The Palestinians supported US diplomacy by hurling stones at Israeli police in Hebron. The PA has declared that Abbas won’t conduct peace talks with Netanyahu, who steals “Palestinian sacramentals.” The Jewish patriarchs would be surprised to know that they have become holy to Palestinian Arabs. Netanyahu, nevertheless, continues to prop up the PA with IDF operations and tax transfers.

Israel’s president has embarked on a damage-control operation by meeting the UN coordinator, a lowly figure who should not be able to get near the president of any self-respecting state.

The EU High Court has ruled that goods originating from the West Bank are not eligible for duty-free treatment.

The EU’s free trade agreement with Israel covers only territory which Israel has declared its own. No problem arises with produce from the Golan Heights  because Israel has annexed that land.

High-level Israeli and American teams conducted a brainstorming session on further sanctions against Iran, even though Russia has changed its position once again, and now opposes any wide-scale sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The government has approved 60 billion shekels to be spent on railroads.

One railroad would link Carmiel in the Galilee to Tel Aviv. A few Jews might benefit from the project, but it will mainly bring hundreds of thousands of Arabs from the Galilee into Central Israel’s Jewish towns.

Another railroad would connect Haifa and Afula in the Galilee with Beit Shean in the South, again benefiting mostly Arabs in the surrounding villages.

Billions of shekels will be spent to improve roads in the Galilee, even though Arabs there don’t even pay taxes.

The only good thing about this project is that the government won’t be able to budget that much money, and looking at other infrastructure projects such as Jerusalem’s light rail, a generation of Arabs will die before the first cars will ride on the new railroads.

Dubai police now have 26 suspects in Mabhouh’s assassination, so we can safely assume the group numbered close to 50 people. By any standards, that’s a grandiose operation. Moreover, three agents reportedly fled through Iran with forged passports—an act of brazen courage, indeed.

From the publicly available information, Mabhouh appears to have been an expendable mid-level manager for Iranian arms trafficking to Gaza, not someone worthy of such a mammoth operation.

The US State Dept congratulated the 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries that met in Mexico to create an all-encompassing regional bloc which excludes the US and Canada. Obama’s hugs with Chavez did not pay.

Al Khelaiw Ali Abdullah, a retired schoolteacher, is standing trial in Indonesia for financing the July 2009 bombings of two hotels in Jakarta.

Abdullah’s defense claims he is not a terrorist. We know, he is a good Muslim.