As we mark Nakba Day amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Nada Elia implores us to make radical demands that secure a life of dignity for all.

Pompeo’s lightning visit to Israel shows that Republicans have a lot to gain by making Israel a political football, possibly gaining Jewish votes in Florida.

Hamza Abu Al-Tarabeesh’s fear of the coronavirus is based on his late grandfather’s death during a Tuberculosis epidemic in Gaza’s refugee camps during the mid-1960s. “I have no idea what the future holds for the refugee camps in Gaza,” Abu Al-Tarabeesh writes, “but I do know when it comes to infectious diseases and viruses, the past has been alarming.”

Rashid Khalidi’s great great great uncle tried to tell Herzl not to colonize Palestine in 1899 but Herzl assured him that Zionists would bring Jewish acumen to the country and improve everyone’s lives. Yet after 100 years of settler colonialism, aided by superpowers, Palestinians remain undefeated. An interview with Khalidi about his new book.

The Netanyahu-Gantz coalition government will be sworn in this week and Netanyahu has made it clear that he intends to move forward with annexation plans this summer. Almost every Democrat opposes the move, but virtually none of them want to even suggest doing anything about it.

Ambassador David Friedman’s racist advice to Israeli — “you don’t have to live with [a] Palestinian state, you have to live with the Palestinian state when the Palestinians become Canadians,” is a perfect echo of Dov Weissglas saying Palestinians could have a state when they became Finns. And it reveals the bad faith in Trump’s deal of the century.

Daniel Pipes’s op-ed in the NYT opposing annexation of the West Bank because it would increase number of Palestinians –without any concern about how annexation will affect Palestinian human rights — confirms critique that Zionism is racist. But op-ed editor Bari Weiss will do anything to try to maintain Israel’s hold on elite opinion.

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett has approved the expansion of the Efrat settlement in the southern occupied West Bank — nearly doubling the settlement in size. The comes just one week before U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to visit Israel to discuss annexation plans.

Ramadan is underway in the tightly packed Gaza Strip. Officials have eased some restrictions on social distancing allowing Palestinians a reprieve from isolation to buy sweets and gifts to celebrate the Islamic holy month.

The Palestinian Authority is facing its most serious existential threat yet: bowing down to Kushner or insisting on returning to a dead political paradigm that was constructed, then abandoned, by Washington.