Ma‘an reports: Israeli excavators on Sunday morning began work on infrastructure for two Jewish-only settlements in the former Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev desert in southern Israel, locals said. Locals told Ma‘an that excavators and bulldozers were building a new road under heavy protection of Israeli forces.

Robert Piper, Coordinator for Humanitarian and UN Development Activities for the occupied Palestinian territory: “The strategic implications of these demolitions are clear. These demolitions are occurring in parallel with settlement expansion. ”

Haggai Matar writes in +972 mag: “Participants in the weekly protests against the separation wall in the West Bank village of Bil‘in were surprised Friday to find that the army was using a new tool to put down the demonstrations. For the first time, a small drone equipped with four propellers and a camera hovered above the protesters as they marched toward the wall and chanted slogans. I asked the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit what the purpose of the drone was; I have yet to receive a response.”

Ma’an reports: Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s Rimon and Nafha jails on Tuesday continued a campaign of disobedience that was declared on Monday. The campaign will continue until the end of August, the statement said, after which time the prisoners are expected to announce an open-ended hunger strike. “Disobedience” include a boycott of domestic work, daily roll-call, security checks and prison clinics.

Benzi Gopstein, leader of anti-Arab group Lehava, allegedly called for the burning of churches at a panel held this week for Jewish yeshiva students, using ancient Halachic, or Jewish law, to condemn what he called Christian “idol worship.”

From Middle East Monitor: The burning of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers, as happened in Duma on Friday, “is not a rare incident” says Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din. The organisation has documented 15 cases where Israeli settlers have burnt or attempted to burn Palestinian homes since 2008. Yesh Din said that the Palestinians submit complaints to the Israeli police stations, however in 10 instances the files were closed without anyone being brought to justice.

Ma‘an reports: The parents and brother of the 18-month-old Palestinian killed in an arson attack on Friday remained in critical condition on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority Minister of Health said. There has been a slight improvement in four-year-old Ahmad al-Dawabsha, but Saad al-Dawabsha suffers from third-degree burns covering 80 percent of his body, while his wife Riham suffers third-degree burns across 90 percent of her body.

Mairav Zonszein writes, “If it had been Palestinians who killed three Israelis, we would be having a very different conversation about a ‘worrying escalation’ or ‘wave of violence.’”

AFP reports: “Most Israeli Jews favour the reconstruction of a block of settlements in the Gaza Strip, a decade after Israel withdrew from the Palestinian territory, a poll published on Monday showed.”

IMEMC reports: Dozens of Israeli soldiers invaded, Sunday, the village of Susiya, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and “offered” the villagers to leave their village and lands, and to relocate to different areas allocated by the “Civil Administration Office.”