In the wake of the Gulf crisis, Hamas leaders left Qatar and are looking for a new base for their foreign headquarters. Al-Monitor reports, Algeria is likely the group’s next move, “The Saudi-backed Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported July 17 that Hamas is searching for a foothold in Algeria to shelter its officials who left Qatar in early June. Algeria received an official request from Hamas to establish a representative office for the movement on its territories, but it has yet to respond.”

Haaretz profiles women from the former USSR who married men from Gaza and moved to the besieged Strip to raise families, Elena Hamida, from the Ukraine, tells Haaretz, “she loves Gaza. ‘I’ve gotten used to it, as far as I am concerned everything here is fine. The only thing I don’t like is that it’s impossible to leave [the Gaza Strip].” What about the electricity? “You can live without electricity. It used to be hard, now it’s alright. But I don’t want to return to Ukraine. There’s a war there, too, and I have children, I worry. There are those gangs there I am afraid that my boy would become a junkie, or start drinking. There, I simply would not be able to keep an eye on them. If it’s one child it’s possible, but not three. One of them for sure would find himself in bad company.’ And in Gaza that can’t happen? ‘Here it’s possible to keep an eye on them. There, I would not be able to do that.”

The State Department finds Israeli settlements, settler attacks, changes to the status quo at al-Aqsa mosque and a lack of progress on Palestinian statehood are the driving cause of violence.

Israel advances a law that will make secret its operations to suppress the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said the law would exempt government agencies from complying with FOIA requests that could reveal its fight against BDS, and its overseas civilian partners that seek to hide their relationship with the Israeli government.

The Times of Israel reports, “Canadian food inspectors have ordered liquor stores to stop selling wines made in the West Bank, saying their label identifying them as Israeli contravenes Ottawa’s policy on the territory … News of the order emerged with the issue of a letter Tuesday from the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to liquor vendors, detailing the ruling by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency a week earlier ‘that ‘Product of Israel’ would not be an acceptable country of origin declaration for wine products that have been made from grapes that are grown, fermented, processed, blended and finished in the West Bank occupied territory.’ The ruling extended to wines from ‘any other territory occupied by Israel in 1967’ that carried such a label, which would be ‘considered misleading,’ specifically mentioning the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Gaza, as well as the West Bank.”

For the moment, swimming in beaches in southern Israel is banned indefinitely after pollution from Gaza made it way north following an electricity crisis where the absence of power has shut down the Strip’s only sewage treatment plant. Haaretz reports, “Beaches in southern Israel were closed to swimmers on Wednesday due to pollution, after power shortages in nearby Gaza led a sewage treatment plant there to shut down. The electricity shortages in the Gaza Strip appear to have caused untreated sewage to flow just over the border into Israel’s Mediterranean waters. The Health Ministry banned swimming on the beaches at Zikim and Ashkelon National Park after sewage was detected in the water. Officials suspect that the pollution is sewage that was left untreated after the plant was shuttered due to severe electricity shortages in Gaza, and that it drifted north onto Israeli beaches. There is no forecast as to when the beaches will reopen.”

Ron Kampeas reports for the JTA: “Haim Saban, a major donor to the Democratic Party, is backing a bill that would slash funding to the Palestinian Authority unless it stops payments to Palestinians jailed for attacks on Israelis. The participation of the Israeli-American entertainment mogul in the initiative of the lobbying affiliate of the Israeli-American Council is significant because Democrats until now have been reluctant to back the bill as it stands.”

A West Bank settlement is building a $100 million medical school and doubling the size of its campus. The forthcoming project will be named after casino mogul and settlement financier, Sheldon Adelson. Haaretz reports, “Ariel University is to double in size within the next five years, according to a plan now being promoted by Education Minister Naftali Bennett. Ten or twelve new buildings are to be added for new faculties in research and teaching at the university, located in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, as well as a new medical school, to be named after U.S. billionaire businessman Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam. The subcommittee on funding of the Council for Higher Education in Israel recently approved the plan, which will also lead to a major increase in the student body from its current figure of 11,000. The funding subcommittee estimated the cost of the expansion at about 400 million shekels ($113 million). Funding is to come from the university’s state-funded budget, from its income from tuition and from donations.”

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports Israeli soldiers detained Baraa Kanan, 19, and abused him for seven hours, before dumping him on the side of the road at night to find his own way home. From Ma’an News Agency: “‘They didn’t let up. I was terrified that they were taking me to some lonely spot so that they could murder me and no one would find me.’ Kanan added that soldiers finally stopped, at which point one said to Kanan ‘You’re a big-time terrorist. I’m going to shoot you.’ Kanan said that he heard the soldier load his gun and felt the gun be placed on his head. ‘I was sure he was going to kill me,’ he said. Kanan said that the soldiers then beat him again, and ‘covered his legs with earth and then removed it.’ According to B’Tselem, he was also transferred to a tent and made to sit on the floor. The soldiers’ removed his blindfold and forced him to say ‘Muhammad is pig’ and ‘Muhammad is a dog’, and snipped off bits of his hair with scissors.”

Ynet News reports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged robust support to the settler movement at a Knesset event commemorating the 1967 war, “Speaking at a ceremony Tuesday commemorating the Six Day War and settlement in the West Bank, Netanyahu referred to the two most pressing issues for settlers—the building taking place today and the possibility that they could be evacuated from their homes as part of an agreement with the Palestinians. “No one will be uprooted from their home, I’m doing everything to protect the settlement enterprise,” said Netanyahu, adding, “We decided to build in all parts of Judea and Samaria and we are building both inside and outside the settlements.”