AP reports about Israel's preliminary approval to build new homes in the West Bank: the timing of the move may further hinder already troubled Mideast peace efforts. It casts a shadow over a trip by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington in March, in which he is expected to discuss Iran's nuclear program and other regional issues.

The U.N.'s Mideast envoy, Robert Serry, called the Israeli announcement "deplorable" and said it "moves us further away from the goal of a two-state solution."

Speaking to reporters, State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to comment about the announcement, but said the U.S. policy on settlement activity is clear. "We don't believe it's in any way constructive to getting both sides back to the negotiating table. And we want to see clearly a comprehensive settlement that delineates borders and resolves many of these issues."

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Msnbc.com ran this picture by AFP photographer Hazem Bader in our Jan. 26 The Week in Pictures. Other publications including The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian also ran the picture. Controversy has swirled since publication. Both the photographer and the picture agency have been accused of biased reporting.

The Israeli embassy in Washington wrote to U.S. newspapers shortly after publication. The letter said that the vehicle in the picture was stationary and that medics from the Israeli Defense Forces and Red Crescent determined the construction worker had not been injured. In its letter, the embassy asked newspapers to issue a correction that the construction worker’s injury was not confirmed independently and possibly was staged. The embassy asked newspapers “to consider ceasing to publish the photographs of Hazem Bader.”

The Agence France-Presse (AFP) picture agency responded to the criticism in a press release dated Feb. 3, “After several days of thorough research by our Jerusalem Bureau, AFP wishes to confirm the veracity of both the picture and the accompanying caption.”

AL-DIRAT : An injured Palestinian construction worker screams in pain after an Israeli army driver drove a trailer hooked to a tractor over his legs, as he tried to block him when Israeli forces stopped workers on January 25, 2012 from building a house in al-Dirat village, south of Yatta in the southern Bank town Hebron region. The Israeli forces were seizing the equipment and trailer from the construction workers as the site falls in the occupied zone C in which Israel prevents Palestinians from building on their land. AFP PHOTO / HAZEM BADER

The picture agency’s Jerusalem bureau photo editor interviewed other media representatives who were present at the scene. They say, “Their trust in the events described by Hazem Bader is unequivocal.”

AFP also interviewed the injured construction worker, Mahmud Abu Qbeita, on Feb. 1, as well as the doctors who treated him at the Yatta hospital. A medical certificate is included in AFP’s press release. It states, “In the medical examination we found that he has pain in his right knee, pain in his pelvis, and pain in the neck, and has difficulty in walking. We conducted x-rays on him and found fractures. He has been advised to consult the orthopedic department."

However, Tamar Sternthal argues the other side in his Feb. 6 opinion piece in ynetnews.com. Sternthal says AFP claims to have viewed video footage of the construction worker being carried away after the incident, but does not claim to have seen footage of him actually being run over.

AFP unwittingly drew attention to a key point: of the several photographers on site who were snapping away, not one has released a single image of Abu Qbeita as he was being run over.

Sternthal also attacks the medical certificate that AFP offered and challenges the existence of the construction worker’s x-rays when he writes, “He (Mahmud Abu Qbeita) does not offer to show the x-rays, nor has AFP released them.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) also criticizes AFP’s response, saying there are discrepancies between Bader’s original caption and what AFP says in their Feb. 3 press release.

AFP appears to be done with the argument. The last line of their press release says, “We will not make any further comment.”

Related:

• Op-Ed: Are journalistic ethics dead
• AFP responds to accusations surrounding a picture taken in the West Bank village of Al-Dirat
• CAMERA: AFP Defense of Photo Raises Additional Discrepancies
• The Week in Pictures: Jan. 19 – 29

Marwan Barghouti, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002 for his involvement in anti-Israeli attacks during the second intifada, said in a rare court appearance Wednesday that the Middle East conflict will end only when Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 lines and a Palestinian state is established, Agence France Presse reports.

"I call on the great Palestinian people to embrace unity and cohesion and to establish a national unity government and also to embrace popular, peaceful resistance to end the occupation," he said.

Barghouti is a senior member of the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and remains one of its most popular figures, according to recent polling data cited by The Associated Press. With Abbas having said he is retiring and Barghouti behind bars, Fatah faces a struggle for survival as it prepares for an electoral showdown with the Islamic militant movement Hamas.

Reuters reports:

Israel killed the leader of an al-Qaida-inspired faction in the Gaza Strip on Friday, accusing him of involvement in firing rockets and a planned attack on the Jewish state from the neighboring Egyptian Sinai.

The deadly air strike was Israel's second against a Salafi Islamist militant this week. Militants identified him as Momen Abu Daf, chief of the Army of Islam, among a loose network of Palestinian groups which profess allegiance to al Qaeda and have been reinforced by volunteers who slip in from the Sinai. Full story.

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