Yesterday was a giving news day.

• Item 1: Upon walking into the office we learned of a new influx of gun-toting settlers to a village in the Jordan Valley. 
• Item 2: Midday the IDF showed up in a village in Hebron and teargassed a funeral. 
• Item 3: After lunch, a bomb exploded at Jerusalem's central bus station. 
• Item 4: As the sun began to set, I got a call from my editor to write up a story about two youth down the street threatening to set themselves aflame. 

Why might we have received these four stories on the same day? Follow the blood (don't slip):

On March 12th, someone snuck into a home in the illegal Itamar settlement, located in the Samaritan Mountains, and stabbed to death three children and their parents. This has prompted a few instances of retaliation by settlers in Hebron: on Monday one opened fire at a Palestinian funeral in Beit Omar while another stabbed a Palestinaian man in At-Tuwani. I imagine that the settlers in the Jordan Valley are a different face of this same retaliatory movement. They arrived at dawn on Wednesday in a group of 25, armed with rifles, claiming that they didn't want trouble—but they've come to kick the Arab shepards out of their homes.

The IDF showed up shortly after and told all the Arab villagers who've lived there for 15 years to pack up.

Later that day, the IDF saved any settlers the trouble of interrupting another funeral; since there are a wealth of settlements around Beit Omar, the village has seen increasing crackdowns, raids, and general harrassment. The Itamar killings have hardly lifted that fog of paranoia. So:

Earlier in the afternoon on Wednesday, during a woman’s funeral in Beit Omar, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets at mourners leaving one man with slight injuries.

According to Muhammad Awad, spokesman for the National Committee Against the Wall, during the clashes other Israeli soldiers set up a checkpoint at the entrance to Beit Omar and searched civilians resulting in at least three arrests.

This is the right hand of Israeli policy. The left hand—which knows what the right hand doeth—is currently striking Gazans from the air and shelling them from afar. Saturday saw two dead civilians and Tuesday saw four. These attacks are in response to the 50 rockets fired by Hamas and its proxies on March 20th, which made a splash but didn't end up killing or injuring anyone.

Then yesterday an explosion rings out in West Jerusalem. It comes after many rumblings from Palestinian militant organizations about "response to Israeli crimes." But we do not yet know who is responsible for the Jerusalem bombing. One would suspect Islamic Jihad, but they have only praised the bombing, not taken credit. The same goes for Hamas. Praise, no credit. Why has no one taken credit?

I am not yet persuaded to conclude what the editor-in-chief at PNN wrote this morning (that English rendition is mine). I am aware of Israel's resort to false flags in the past—the Lavon Affair, its funding of Hamas during the PLO's heydey—and I've heard rumors that Wednesday bomb was remote-controlled from a cell phone, and that this is wholly foreign to Palestinian terrorist methodology (though I know it isn't to Hezbollah). But I don't know how likely it is that the Israelis wish to be the ones to inaugurate a new era of attacks in Jerusalem after eight years of quiet; by all accounts so far the bomb was hastily placed, and one can imagine the secret service organizing something a bit more impressive. But as usual, in the absence of information, conspiracy theories thrive. I suppose we'll have to stay tuned.

So: Innocent chldren are murdered in Itamar, which spurs other settlers to violence; they are protected by the IDF, which simultaneously knocks off innocents in Gaza; this lands a bomb in Jerusalem, which Hamas praises and Fatah condemns.

And the split between those two parties drives two boys in Bethlehem to threaten self-immolation if reconciliation does not occur.

But by the end of the day, their families talk them down, and the two boys leave the Mosque of Omar with sizzling hearts rather than smouldering skin. And the sun sets on another day in the Holy Land.