The United Nations-supported diplomatic group seeking to promote peace in the Middle East today condemned Israeli moves to expand settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory of East Jerusalem.

In spite of the inflammatory rhetoric heightening tensions between Israel and Lebanon, a senior United Nations official today said that both sides do hope for an end to hostilities.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today reiterated his alarm at Israeli plans to expand its settlements in East Jerusalem, stressing that he shares the deep frustrations of Palestinian leaders and of the members of the Arab League.

More than three years after the Security Council adopted a resolution calling for a complete halt to fighting between Israel and the Lebanese group Hizbollah, the situation in the region remains fragile, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says in a new report, which also raises concerns over increasingly bellicose rhetoric warning of renewed fighting.

The short answer is yes, but hopefully not as much as some people think.

At YIVO in New York, on March 4, I attended a lecture by Prof. Jeffrey Herf, a historian at the University of Maryland, on his new book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press). It shows how Nazi Germany planted its own brand of antisemitism in the Muslim Middle East. First of all, Nazi officials went to great lengths to explain to the Arab world that its antisemitism was not against all “Semites,” that it only targeted Jews.

A US diplomat, Alexander Kirk, documented how consistently and cleverly the Nazis propagandized in the Arab world to create a “meeting of minds” and a “cultural fusion.” This involved an identification with Arab anti-Zionism and the notion that Islam and Nazism held common values: i.e., that both Nazism and Islam were in opposition to liberal individualism, prizing unity and family instead. Bringing this up to contemporary times, Prof. Herf noted that the notoriously antisemitic charter of Hamas goes back to the French Revolution, which it blames on the Jews–and not by accident, according to Herf. He indicates that the Nazis also blamed the French Revolution on the Jews, and were dedicated to its reversal, because Nazism associated the ills of modernity with the ideals of liberty, equality and human rights that were born with the French Revolution. Hamas would not have any such conception without having inherited it from Nazi Germany.

I am reminded of a forum I attended a few months ago at Columbia University. On that occasion, I asked the prominent historian and Palestinian-American activist, Prof. Rashid Khalidi, about the role of the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini; he downplayed his importance—opposite to Herf’s view and I think somewhat contrary to the truth. Herf indicated that the Mufti had escaped Allied imprisonment in France to influence Palestinian politics (from Cairo) by heading the Higher Arab Committee and other leadership bodies in 1946-’48. Herf feels it’s a pity that Husseini and others were not prosecuted for war crimes—specifically for incitement to genocide in broadcasting from Nazi Germany in July 1942 that the Egyptian public take up arms and murder the Jews in their midst.

But Herf’s notion (voiced briefly by him) that if the conflict between Israel and the Arabs were only about land, it would have been settled already, seems rife for exploitation by voices on the right who will discount all efforts at peacemaking. Unfortunately, the writing of history remains, all too often, a weapon of political conflict.

The situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly dire as the Israeli blockade approaches its 1,000th day, allowing an illegal economy to flourish, the new head of the United Nations agency tasked with assisting millions of Palestinian refugees said today.

Special United Nations bomb disposal units today successfully destroyed two unexploded ordnance (UXO) containing white phosphorus in the Gaza Strip, the first of a series of planned activities to be conducted in the region over the coming months.

The situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly dire as the Israeli blockade approaches its 1,000th day, allowing an illegal economy to flourish, the new head of the United Nations agency tasked with assisting millions of Palestinian refugees said today.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has repeatedly called for Israel’s settlement construction to come to a halt, has condemned its announcement that it is building 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.