Like so many other diplomatic and political initiatives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the recent announcement of a new prisoner release is based on the same solution that has been proposed dozens of times before - only to collapse because the time, and often Israeli political will, wasn't right.
In this case, the separate announcements made by Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, asserted that Hamas would release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas in 2006, while Israel would release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have been in jail for decades.
The politics behind the Shalit prisoner swap
UN rights chief urges Israel to 'protect Palestinian civilians' from settler attacks
The United Nations human rights office urged Israel on Tuesday to stop Israeli extremists from attacking Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.
Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva that Israel has a legal obligation "to protect Palestinian civilians and property in the occupied Palestinian territory."
First person arrested under new Alabama law was in US legally
A man from Yemen was the first person arrested for being an undocumented immigrant in Alabama. The police raided a house and encountered the man, Mohamed Ali Muflahi, According to the police, he identified himself as being in the country illegally.
Immediately, the authors of Alabama’s anti-immigrant law issued a press statement hailing the arrest and implying that Muflahi was an illegal alien somehow connected with terrorism. Except that it turns out he was not in the country illegally.
HRW: Canada likely knew of Libyan torture

Krer told the rights group that Canadian interrogators had visited him at the Abu Salim prison near Tripoli. He claims to have been beaten with sticks and cables by Libyan authorities and confined to a "steel box" for up to five days at a time.
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Israeli journalist visiting Vancouver has tough words for home country
“You have a policy of ethnic cleansing in vast areas of the West Bank....It’s very open,” she said.
Hass is a reporter and columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. She says she is the only Israeli Jewish journalist living and working in the Palestinian territories. Now based in the city of Ramallah, she has lived in the West Bank since 1997 and in Gaza for four years before that. She is giving a lecture on Israel-Palestine relations at the University of B.C. Wednesday.
Even Those Cleared of Crimes Can Stay on F.B.I.’s Watch List
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.
The files, released by the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, disclose how the police are instructed to react if they encounter a person on the list. They lay out, for the first time in public view, the legal standard that national security officials must meet in order to add a name to the list. And they shed new light on how names are vetted for possible removal from the list.
Occupy Wall Street Tweets Crackdown (Day 8)
In Occupy Wall Street's eighth day, protesters claim on their Twitter account today that they have been targeted by tear gas, and at least 50 people have been arrested during their march through the city this afternoon headed toward the United Nations building.
Member of Occupy Wall Street's Public Relations Working Group Patrick Bruner said that he heard accounts of the tear gas from people who were monitoring the protest's livestream and from another person who was in contact with someone "on the ground."
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