In its "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State" program presented in August 2009, the Palestinian Authority said that one of its objectives is the construction of Palestine International Airport in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said in the forward to the document that this program "centers around the objective of building strong state institutions capable of providing, equitably and effectively, for the needs of our citizens, despite the [Israeli] occupation." He gave his program two years to be implemented.

The Ministry of Transportation, delegated the task of following up on building the airport, said Wednesday that it had completed all necessary feasibility studies and that groundbreaking will take place in the first half of next year.

There is a diplomatic storm brewing between Canada and the United Arab Emirates, and the latest twist involves a mystery assassin.

On Tuesday, Dubai's chief of police, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan, slammed Canadian authorities for allegedly dragging their feet in investigating a suspect in their custody who had been linked to the asssassination of a Hamas official in Dubai in January.

But on Wednesday, the Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail quote unnamed Canadian officials denying that Canada had made such an arrest and calling the Emirati assertion "baseless."

The current spat is set against a background of heightened tensions between the formerly friendly countries following Canada's refusal to grant the Emirates' two main airlines, Etihad and Emirates, increased access to its airports. Shortly after, the Emirates shut down what had been a secret Canadian air base, nicknamed "Camp Mirage," on its soil in what was widely viewed as a retaliatory measure.

Now that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has concluded his controversial two-day tour of Lebanon and returned home without provoking a war with Israel, the real question is what, if anything, has changed?

Both Iran's ally in Lebanon, the militant Shiite group Hezbollah, and the Lebanese government tried to cast Ahmadinejad's stay as a routine visit from a neighboring head of state, an assertion that was somewhat at odds with the hero's welcome the Iranian leader received from the party and its supporters.

"I don't think this was a routine visit at all," said political analyst Kamel Wazne, founder of the Beirut-based Center of American Strategic Studies. "The Shia and Hezbollah came out in force to make sure that those who still doubted now know that Ahmadinejad has support and that he is welcome in large parts of the country."

Iran,  said Wazne, was able to send a strong message to Israel that it has powerful friends within striking distance of the Jewish state should Israel launch an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

As Lebanon braced for the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Beirut on Wednesday, the Arab media outside the country was able to say explicitly what the Lebanese media on both sides of the political divide could not.

Israel's warning that the Iranian leader's trip to southern Lebanon was a "provocation" put Arab commentators on the defensive, citing Lebanon's right as a sovereign nation to host an official visit from the head of a neighboring state.

But many Arabs accuse Iran of undermining Lebanese stability and stoking sectarian tensions by arming the militant Shiite group Hezbollah. Arabian Peninsula countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in particular, have voiced concerns that Iran's nascent nuclear program could tip the regional balance of power.

The local media, bound by internal diplomatic considerations, tended to be more tempered in their approach, while the mostly Saudi-funded pan-Arab outlets largely went straight for the jugular.

"The best description of the meeting between [Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan] Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad I heard from a Lebanese figure who hinted to me that it would be 'a meeting between two wanted criminals,'" wrote Tariq al Hamid, writing in the Saudi-funded pan-Arab paper Al Sharq al Awsat.

An Israeli military court Monday sentenced Palestinian nonviolence activist Abdullah Abu Rahmeh to one year in prison and a $1,400 fine after it found him guilty of “incitement” and “organizing illegal demonstrations.”

Abu Rahmeh’s arrest had provoked strong international reaction, with some describing it as an attempt to silence freedom of expression.

The court gave the military prosecutor one month to appeal the decision and ask for a harsher sentence. The prosecutor had sought a sentence of more than two years to make an example of Abu Rahmeh.

Barring an appeal, Abu Rahmeh should be released in a couple of months because he has already served 10 months.

Barring a breakthrough proving that the former settlement freeze was a stroke-of-genius gamble, for now it seems to have frozen peace talks more than anything else. Genius or not, the now-thawed freeze presents quite a quandary.

But in the past you negotiated with us during construction, says Israel. Yes, well. We're not repeating that mistake, the Palestinians say.

One possible solution to the moratorium mess is for Israel to limit construction to the settlement blocs, large, populated areas in the West Bank it believes it can retain under most scenarios. 

The Palestinians reject this. No freeze, no talks.

U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who arrived Tuesday on a Mideast trip to try to salvage the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, seemed determined to continue his efforts to bridge the fast-growing gap between Israel and the Palestinians on the issue of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

Mitchell held one round of separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the last couple of days. He will now hold a second round in the next couple of days with both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, looking for what he called “common ground between the parties” to salvage the month-old direct negotiations.

It is not yet clear whether he will succeed in bringing Abbas and Netanyahu together again at the same table, as was the case before the settlement freeze expired Sept. 26.

Images of Israeli settlers cheering as the first cement for a new foundation was poured dominated much of the Arabic news cycle on Monday, the day after a 10-month partial moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank expired.

The tone of the coverage was subdued but also pointed. Pan-Arab satellite channels such as Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and Al Hurra reported that construction began "within hours" of the settlement freeze "despite" pleas from the United Nations for Israel to extend the ban.

Al Hurra, which is funded by the U.S. government, appeared to make a half-hearted attempt to highlight some Israeli opposition to the government's decision to allow the ban to expire, while the Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera focused on the current government's dependence on its right-wing base.

In the eyes of regional media, the resumption of settlement construction threatens to seriously undermine the Palestinian Authority, which recently entered into peace talks with the Jewish state despite widespread skepticism among Arabs. The authority has not pulled out of talks so far, but has already lost considerable face.

The London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi published a scathing editorial on Sunday that basically accused the leadership of selling out the Palestinian cause.

"The settlers wasted no time beginning construction yesterday throughout the settlements, while [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's government committed itself to silence and the Palestinian Authority, its leadership and spokesmen disappeared from view, and there was a hushed agreement with their Israeli counterparts not to make statements to the press," the editorial said.

Iyad Shilbayeh, 38, was asleep at his home in Nur Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm Friday when he was awaken at the sound of heavy bounding at his front door.

“Who is there?” he shouted three times before he was quickly silenced by three bullets to the neck and chest.

According to Iyad’s brother, Muhammad, about 30 Israeli soldiers first came to his house in the camp at 2:30 in the morning local time. After questioning him for about 30 minutes, the soldiers ordered Muhammad to take them to Iyad’s house some 150 feet away.

“When we got to Iyad’s house, the soldiers ordered me to face the wall and keep quiet,” Muhammad said. The soldiers used a sledge hammer to knock down the front door to Iyad’s house.

“I heard Iyad yelling from inside three times ‘Who is there?’ Then I heard three shots and could not hear Iyad’s voice anymore. I called out Iyad’s name but the soldiers ordered me to be quiet,” he said.

Five minutes later, the soldiers appeared carrying Iyad’s body and took him away.

Since reopening with much fanfare last week, peace talks between Israel and Palestinians continue to generate the typical mood swings. Parades are promptly rained on, windows of opportunity pronounced open one minute are declared closing the next. The first local meeting was slated for the West Bank town of Jericho. Didn't happen. 

The festive relaunch was shoehorned into the last opening available among Labor Day, the Jewish high holidays and the Muslim Eid al-Fitr, leaving everyone only a handful of working days to prepare for the next event, next week's meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, under the watchful eye of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But the next really important date is Sept. 26, the end of the settlement freeze. It's a pity, says Israel, that the Palestinians waited until the freeze was nearly over to talk. The Palestinians say talks will be over before they begin if construction resumes.

Israel is dogged by boycott initiatives from different directions. Academic, commercial and cultural ties are threatened as organizations and individuals protesting Israel's policies turn to boycotting in an attempt to apply practical pressure that will lead to change -- or at least exact a tangible price.

Some direct their efforts against any kind of collaboration with Israel. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine movement, or BDS, says academic and cultural cooperation with Israel boosts its international image and that refusing to take part in any exchange can send Israel the message that its "occupation and discrimination against Palestinians in unacceptable."

Other efforts are more selective, boycotting Israeli products and produce originating in the territories, such as Ahava. A while back, a campaign to boycott the popular Dead Sea cosmetics was dubbed "stolen beauty" and called on consumers to shun the products made with "stolen Palestinian natural resources." "Sex in the City" actress Kristin Davis, who promoted Ahava products, was entangled in the controversy, losing her position as an Oxfam ambassador.

Israel also faces taxation issues over settlement products. The European Union exempts from tax most products hailing from Israel proper and the Palestinian territories, but goods coming from the settlements get a different customs arrangement. One Israeli company faking an inside-the-Green-Line address was busted by a peace organization earlier this year.

More recently, the Palestinians have introduced a legal ban on settlement goods, deeply displeasing Israeli authorities.

There are also calls for boycotts from within Israel. A group of theater actors and playwrights recently signed a letter stating their refusal to perform in the territories and asking the country's main theaters to perform within "the sovereign borders of the State of Israel within the Green Line" only. Their move came a few days before the relaunching of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians in Washington last week and in advance of the expected inauguration of the new center for the performing arts in the settlement of Ariel.

Can Israel be a democratic and Jewish state at the same time? It's a divisive, long-running debate that has now found its way into the classroom -- or rather, it's about to get kicked out of school.

Israeli Education Ministry officials have moved to slash funding for high-school civics classes, where students learn about democracy, equal rights and government, and shift the money to religious teachings about the Bible, the Talmud and Zionism.

"We have nothing against Jewish studies,'' one teacher told Haaretz newspaper,"but bolstering them should not come at the expense of civics."