The Independent published a memo to EU officials urging them to press Israel on its Area C policies. That area covers the main settlements and the security belt of Jerusalem. The memo states correctly that Israel is increasing the Jewish population there (though, we should say, very slowly) while preventing an increase in Palestinian residents (which is hardly true, because they continue to give birth in their villages at their usual rate).

Israel has stated repeatedly that we would hold much of Area C in any peace agreement with the Arabs.

In an unusually sane decision, the High Court rejected a claim against the citizenship law by ultra-left MK Gal-On. The citizenship law bars naturalization for the Palestinian spouses of Israeli Arabs. Such naturalization would immediately add two hundred thousand Palestinians to the Israeli population and open the door to many more of them.

The court said correctly that the right to marital life does not have to be realized within the borders of Israel, and the Palestinians can live just as happily in their own state ten miles away.

The Chief Judge was among the dissenters.

A coalition of Islamist parties in the Egyptian parliament announced that it won’t let Israeli Jews visit the tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abu-Hatzir, an object of annual pilgrimage for many Israelis. The parliamentarians threatened to kill any Jew who approaches the place.