Israel

Israeli settlers have been forced to flee as wildfires have started to spread through areas near to settlements in the occupied West Bank. According to a police spokeswoman on Saturday nearly 1,000 settlers were forced to leave the Halamish settlement near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah as 45 settler units were either damaged or destroyed by the fires. The blazes, fueled by drought and high winds, were raging in many locations throughout the Israeli-occupied territories on Friday . The fire in Israels third largest city Haifa has forced some 80,000 people to flee.

Around fifty thousand people are being evacuated as wildfires rage through parts of Israel’s third largest city, Haifa. The fires had been burning in several locations for the past three days but intensified on Thursday, fueled by unseasonably dry weather and strong winds. The wildfires tore across central and northern Israel on Thursday, with Israeli leaders blaming arsonists for some of the blazes and branding them terrorists. The BBC reports: Wildfires are also threatening homes near Jerusalem and in the West Bank.

The Israeli parliament has approved a draft bill that would legalize settler homes built on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, a measure that has drawn condemnation by left-wing MPs and Israel’s close ally, the United States. Pro-settlement nationalists that dominate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government voted to move the bill through the Knesset on Wednesday. Palestinians have condemned the bill and also the international community’s inaction.

Susan Rice, the U.S.

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

This is a guest post, sent to me this week, by reader Craig Cantoni, a former military officer whose father is in a veteran’s cemetery.

Cantoni presents a historical picture on many levels as to what has happened and is still going on in the Middle East.

How Americans Came to Die in the Middle East by Craig Cantoni