Israel’s warnings to its Arab neighbors and the Palestinian Authority to curb violent assaults on its borders on the annual Israeli Arab Earth Day Friday, March 30, have fallen on deaf ears.

The Palestinian Authority is for the first time making it a joint Palestinian-Israel Arab event, organizing mass anti-Israel disturbances in Jerusalem, Jaffa and other places, while also instigating West Bankers to rally and smash through Israeli border checkpoints and fences.
Syria is lining up buses for thousands of Palestinians to storm Israel’s northern border at Quneitra on the Golan.
Scattered Palestinian disturbances are already springing up outside the Damascus Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem, at the Jerusalem-Bethlehem checkpoint, Rachel’s tomb and the Kalandia checkpoint north of Jerusalem. They are exercises for splitting Israeli police and troops among several points of disorder.
Palestinian websites, social networks and media are whipping up frenzied anticipation for confrontations with Israel forces, the knife-edge atmosphere further inflamed by the impact of the murder in Toulouse of a rabbi, his two small children and a third child by a French Islamist terrorist at the Ozar Hatorah school.

Along with a general IDF and police alert for trouble, anti-terror units are on the lookout for terrorists taking advantage of the mayhem. March 15, a Palestinian man stabbed a woman soldier on the light train; March 25, a Palestinian gang beat up an unarmed Israeli soldier on the street.
A Palestinian marathon was staged with many children runners - both to compete with the international marathon Israeli staged in Jerusalem last Friday, March 23, and to gridlock East Jerusalem’s roads so as to slow down riot police responses

Taking a hand in Israeli Arab protests for the first time, the Palestinian Authority is organizing a march in Jaffa from the port to Ajami Square. The main event of this year’s Earth Day will take place in the Galilee town of Deir Hanna. Expatriate Palestinians were also instructed to stage demonstrations outside Israeli embassies in key cities.

The Palestinian Authority aims to make the outbreaks as striking and clamorous as possible in order to reach the ears of Arab rulers attending the 23rd Arab League summit in Baghdad at the same time. The Palestinian delegation was ordered to keep a low profile there because Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates each have serious issues with the PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Since those countries have cut off regular financial aid, the Ramallah-based PA has run up an all-time record deficit of $1.4 billon and is too broke to buy medicines, DEBKAfile’s sources report. No Arab or Middle East bank will extend the defaulting PA any more credit. When they saw no hope of getting paid, many contractors have downed tools in the middle of projects.

Bashar Assad also has a big stake in getting even with the Arab mainstream which has roundly condemned his brutal crackdown on dissent. He was told his presence at the Arab summit was undesirable and he should send foreign minister Walid Moallem instead. His reply was to send no-one and prepare a convoy of buses to carry thousands of Palestinians to the Israeli Golan border at Quneitra. They are instructed to rush the Israeli border and knock over its Israeli guards Friday in tune with the Palestinian-generated showdown with Israeli forces planned for Israel and the West Bank.
The Syrian ruler’s object is to show up his Arab colleagues on widely propagated footage as lounging at ease in the sumptuous halls of Baghdad while leaving the Palestinians to the mercies of Israeli troops.