Here is today’s DeepDive.
Will the Coronavirus End Israel’s Political Paralysis? (New York Times)
A useful explainer of the seemingly never-ending parliamentary deadlock an Israel: “Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gantz differ in their approaches to President Trump’s proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Netanyahu has pledged to swiftly and unilaterally annex large swaths of the occupied West Bank, while Mr. Gantz’s Blue and White party has said it is opposed to unilateral annexation in the absence of broad international consensus.
The two sides have reportedly come to an agreement on this issue. More problematic was what critics describe as Mr. Netanyahu’s singular goal of ensuring he can remain in office despite his legal troubles.”
Isolation and patience on a quiet Gaza farm (Associated Press)
“Virus Diary,” an occasional feature, will showcase the coronavirus saga through the eyes of Associated Press journalists around the world. Fares Akram is the AP correspondent in Gaza.
“I haven’t spent more than a single night at my family’s farm on the northern edge of Gaza since an Israeli airstrike killed my father there more than a decade ago. But the arrival of the coronavirus has upended our notions of danger and refuge.”
Radical settlers suspected of attacking Palestinians, cars near quarantine site (The Times of Israel)
Officers were dispatched to a crime scene in the southern West Bank overnight Monday after receiving a report that a group of masked Israeli settlers pepper-sprayed and hurled stones at three Palestinians and firebombed their two vehicles before fleeing the scene, police said in a statement.
The incident took place near Metzoke Dragot, where a group of 20 far-right extremists are being housed in an outpost established for them by the IDF in order to self-quarantine, after they came in contact with a COVID-19 carrier.
From ancient Palestine to Syria: A treasure trove of incredible Middle Eastern maps is now available online (The National)
American academic Zachary Foster really likes maps. But not just any maps, particularly maps of the Middle East. He has collected them all his life. Now, he has thousands of them.
Foster, who now lives in San Francisco, has just launched a website to share all of these maps – from ancient geographic charts of Syria to a city plan of Beirut in 1909 – with the wider public.
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Palestine DeepDive