Palestinian officials are doubling down on their plans to boycott a US-led conference in Bahrain next month aimed at garnering regional support for President Donald Trump’s peace plan. However, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two major regional players, announced Tuesday evening that they would be sending delegations to participate. The Saudis and the Emiratis, who in recent years have significantly warmed relations with Israel, are the first two Arab powers to announce participation in the event.

The Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan drew criticism at the United Nations Wednesday, with European and UN officials saying Palestinians should not be coerced into selling off rights to run their own country.

Two Israelis and one Palestinian are on trial for counts of trespassing and assault for disrupting an event with Knesset member Aliza Lavie who spoke at Humboldt University in Berlin in June 2017.

More than 2 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan are served by UNRWA and Alice Rothchild visits the Nuzha camp in Amman where refugees get vital services from family planning to mental health counseling. The school is tidy and sparkling with an atmosphere of infectious enthusiasm. One girl asks: “Is America beautiful?”

Joel Doerfler says several years ago a student in his Israel-Palestine course approached him after class with a question.  Why, he wanted to know, did he care so much about this subject? Doerfler says he never got back to him with a clear answer, but never stopped thinking about his question. Here is his answer.

Bruce Robbins reviews Amy Kaplan’s book Our American Israel: “Kaplan argues that Israel made it possible for Americans to believe things they wanted to believe about themselves but were afraid they couldn’t, like the righteousness of their own use of military violence.”

Somehow the New York Times could find no Palestinians to quote on an article about the economic largesse to Palestine the Trump administration intends to unveil in Bahrain as part of its peace plan. The article includes quotes from five strong supporters of Israel: Aaron David Miller, Jared Kushner, Robert Satloff, Treasury’s Steve Mnuchin, and Brookings pundit Tamara Cofman Wittes. That’s racism in journalism, before your eyes.

Madonna tried to offset criticism of her participation in the Eurovision song contest by incorporating a Palestinian flag into her final performance. “The most meaningful expression of solidarity is to cancel performances in apartheid Israel,” the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel responded in a statement.

A Palestinian family has denounced a plea deal to clear an Israeli settler from murder charges in a 2015 arson attack in which a Palestinian baby and his parents were burned alive in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.

80 percent of Jewish college students think Netanyahu is a ‘terrible human being,’ says Andrew Getraer, Hillel director at Rutgers. While Leonard Saxe of Brandeis says that Peter Beinart and Dov Waxman are critical of Israel because they come from South African families and see Israel thru an “apartheid” filter.