Maybe there's some peace and goodwill to be found here - on the other hand, it might be "leftie lies".
Jim Carroll

IRISH TIMES Dec 14th
JEWISH SETTLERS ATTACK ISRAELI BASE
Clashes take place as rights groups warn on settlements
MARK WEISS in Jerusalem and MICHAEL JANSEN

AS JEWISH, settlers and right-wing activists broke into an Israeli army base in the West Bank, inter¬national human rights groups were warning that Israel had stepped up unlawful home demolitions and settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
There were calls within Israel yesterday for militant settler groups to be classified as terrorist organisations after co-ordinated incidents against soldiers and army bases on Monday night.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the events intol¬erable and held emergency consul¬tations with defence officials.
"We must deal with these rioters with a firm hand. We will not tolerate a situation in which Israel Defence Forces officers and soldiers are attacked and dis¬tracted from protecting Israeli citizens," he said.
After rumours spread that the army was about to dismantle a number of illegal settler outposts, about 50 militant youths entered
the regional Israel Defence Forces base near the West Bank town of Qalqilya, pushing aside the two sol¬diers on guard duty. Inside the base the settlers ran amok, slashing army vehicle tires, lighting fires and damaging prop¬erty.
Elsewhere, some 300 settlers hurled stones at Palestinian vehi¬cles before targeting the jeep of a senior West Bank officer. The officer was called a Nazi and lightly wounded after being hit by a rock.
In a third incident, settlers entered a closed military zone close to the border with Jordan and took over an abandoned struc¬ture next to a Christian baptism site. This group said they were pro¬testing Jordanian efforts to pre¬vent the construction of a perma¬nent bridge for Jews and tourists to the Temple Mount holy site in Jerusalem's old city.
Meanwhile, 20 international human rights and aid agen¬cies warned the Middle East Quartet - comprising the US, UN, EU and Russia - that during the past year the Israeli government had stepped up unlawful home demolitions and settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, "pushing Palestinians to the brink" and "destroying prospects for a just and durable peace".
Trocaire, Amnesty International, Oxfam International, Human Rights Watch and Medico International said: "Since the beginning of the year more than
500 Palestinian homes. wells, rainwater harvesting cisterns other essential structures have been   destroyed ... displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians."
They said this was more than double the number of people dis¬placed over the same period in 2010 and the highest figure since 2005. "More than half of those displaced have been children for whom the loss of their home is par¬ticularly devastating," they added. In a statement issued ahead of a Jerusalem meeting of the quartet, the agencies said "plans for 4,000 new settler housing units have been approved for East Jerusalem over the past 12 months - the highest number since . . . 2006", while in November Israel declared it would "speed up construction of 2,000" additional units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Expansion has been accompanied by a rise in violent attacks by settlers on Palestinians of more than "50 per cent compared to 2010 and by over 160 per cent com¬pared to 2009", said the agencies, quoting UN figures. This means settler violence has risen to the level of the peak year of 2005.