Residents of the predominantly Christian village of Jifna, north of Ramallah in an area of the West Bank administered by the Palestinian Authority, were attacked  late Sunday following a personal dispute between a female resident of the village and the son of an individual tied to the Fatah faction, which dominates the PA. The woman reportedly filed a complaint with the PA police after she said she and her children were assaulted while driving through the village, leading to an apparent revenge attack on the entire village by a mob led by the father of the accused and including several men with weapons.

Reports emerged in Iranian media Monday that Russian and Iranian warships will soon be engaged in joint maneuvers in the Persian Gulf, perhaps in reaction to a recent US naval deployment in the eastern Mediterranean. The move is the latest indication of increasingly close military and diplomatic ties between Moscow and Teheran, and also comes a day after the Chief of Staff of the Iranian armed forces threatened a kinetic response to economic sanctions, saying “if our oil does not pass, the oil of others shall not pass the Strait of Hormuz either.”

A political cartoon published in the international edition of the New York Timesdepicting a blind US President Donald Trump being led by a seeing-eye-dog with a Star of David attached to its collar and a face meant to resemble Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been roundly condemned across the political spectrum, with some even casting partial blame on the cartoon for the deadly shooting attack Saturday on a synagogue in San Diego. The New York Times issued an apology for the cartoon following the uproar but many Jewish organizations rejected the apology as being inadequate.

The Palestinian Authority is urging their rivals in the Islamist terror militia Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, to join with them in efforts to pre-emptively de-railing the so-called “deal of the century” plan soon to be unveiled by the Trump Administration in the US to settle the decades-long dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. “We will launch an international campaign to foil Trump’s deal of the century,” a PLO official in Ramallah told the Jerusalem Postover the weekend. “We want the world to know that this is a dangerous conspiracy to liquidate our cause and national rights.”

Negotiations aimed at forming a governing coalition following recent elections for the 21st Knesset were ongoing Monday, following Sunday’s meetings between officials for the Likud party led by incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) factions Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) which have both said they are unwilling to compromise on key demands. The Yisrael Beytenu faction led by Avigdor Lieberman has demands which are diametrically opposed to those of the haredi factions and both he and they have said they’d be willing to go to new elections rather than compromise.

The consolidation of revolutionary regimes through demonization of ideological and political foes is a common practice, and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been no exception to this rule. Indeed, the Islamist regime’s intense preoccupation with constructing a negative image of its adversaries has become one of its foremost defining features.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force controls sub-state Shia militias all over the Middle East. CSIS’s Seth Jones and Joe Bermudez explain how Iran trains and deploys these proxy forces to expand their regional influence.

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