just 31 minutes before the onset of Shabbat in Jerusalem and less than 24 hours after the Palestinians succeeded in upgrading their status at the UN, a senior diplomatic source sent out a text message to diplomatic reporters saying Israel “had decided to approve the building of 3,000 housing units in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due in Berlin on Wednesday for talks likely to focus on the growing crisis over settlement plans that could torpedo the viability of a Palestinian state... “Our top public diplomacy mission is to explain that the root of this conflict is not territorial. It is over our very existence in any borders whatsoever.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a splash with a hand-drawn cartoon of a bomb, its fuse lit, at the podium of the UN's General Assembly in September. He drew, in red magic marker, a thick red line.

Since 1948, Israeli-Turkish relations have been through periods of disagreement and tension, as well as periods of cooperation and understanding. Relations developed gradually over the years and eventually reached their peak in the 1990’s when the two countries forged a strategic partnership, supported and strengthened by the United States. During those years, the Turkish general staff and the Israeli defense establishment were the main proponents for an enhanced relationship between the two countries.

The public aspects, trade, culture, science, are all strong and Britain was one of Israel’s main supporters during last month’s Operation Pillar of Defense against Gaza. Last year, Britain changed its universal jurisdiction law, greatly limiting (though not totally ending) the possibility of senior Israeli officials being prosecuted in London.

Nowadays, the news about Russian-Iranian arms deals and fueling the Bushehr nuclear power plant might overshadow the less spectacular information about cultural activities, but they are happening, nevertheless.

What makes better headlines? Is it numbing figures such as the 8,000 Palestinian rockets fired at Israel since it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and the 42.5 percent of Israeli children living near the Gaza border who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Or is it high-resolution images of bombed-out buildings in Gaza and emotional stories of bereaved Palestinians?