Will Gaza or Lebanon be attacked first? Israel is sending mixed messages, and deliberately so. Hamas, Hizbullah and their supporters understand well the Israeli tactic and must be preparing for the various possibilities. They know Israel cannot live without its iron walls, and are determined to prevent any more from being built at their expense. 

Israel won't hear about a Palestinian right of return, and deprives all rights to every Palestinian who goes abroad, after his or her family lived here for generations. But it is opening its gates to people who haven't lived here for decades. Now they will vote with their acquired American accent. Benjamin Netanyahu knows a thing or two about them personally. Most of his uncles and cousins on his father's side left Israel or were born to Israeli expatriates. Exemplary patriots.  

Hassan al-Err, aged 67, and his seven-member family are moving into a mud house built by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip, because other building materials are not available. The two-bedroom house in the Ezbet Abed Rabbo neighbourhood of Jabaliya town, north of Gaza City, is an improvement on the tent in which they had been living - next to the rubble of their former home. 

Israel's Supreme Court ordered two pro-Palestinian foreign activists released on bail on Monday, saying Israeli immigration officers overstepped their bounds by detaining them in the West Bank. Their lawyer described their arrest as part of a campaign by Israeli authorities to choke off weekly demonstrations by Palestinians, left-wing Israelis and foreign activists against Israel's West Bank barrier as peace efforts remain at a stalemate. 

Jerusalem's mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil. His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan, a deprived and overcrowded Palestinian community lying just outside the Old City walls, in the shadow of the silver-topped al Aqsa mosque. 

Israeli forces have raided a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, arresting at least 40 people. The arrests on Monday at the Shuafat camp in annexed east Jerusalem were part of an operation that Israeli police said was aimed at "putting order" in the area. Al Jazeera's Elias Karram said: "The raid was divided into two parts: the first of which ended on Monday when Israeli army and intelligence forces invaded the came and detained around 40 poeple based on their political affiliation.  

Nearly half a million children in Gaza returned to overcrowded and dilapidated schools on 1 February, many attending in a shift system, with missing textbooks, stationery or uniforms. Israel's 23-day military offensive on Gaza which ended on 18 January 2009 had "devastating consequences for the education system", according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 

Following heavy international pressure, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to the U.S. proposal to hold talks with Israel - in the format of indirect negotiations conducted by U.S. special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell. Abbas has agreed in principle to the U.S. proposal for indirect talks and intends to ask for a number of clarifications with the U.S. administration and will consult with Arab leaders prior to giving Washington his final response.