When clashes erupted yesterday between Israeli forces and the unarmed Palestinian marchers, leaving more than a dozen dead and scores injured, some West Bank towns saw intense protests met with teargas and violence. But the fighting that nabbed the most headlines was with those residing outside of the Occupied Territories: Palestinians from Lebanon and particularly Syria (in focus because of its ongoing domestic unrest).

If you read most mainstream coverage of the protests, you could be forgiven for thinking that Iran and Syria hatched a master-plan to get Palestinians to stage coordinated marches to drive the Jews of Israel into the sea. But as is often the case in the Middle East, the narrative of mainstream outlets and official sources left something to be desired, propagating myths about the weekend’s demonstrations.

Here’s four things you might be surprised to learn about yesterday’s protests:

• The Palestinians were not out in force to “mourn Israel’s creation,” though the phrase appeared in the teaser on the front page of the New York Times’ website. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was of course more blunt, but here’s some clever innuendo: “It is important to point out that these events are taking place on a day which marks the establishment of the State of Israel.” Yes, it does, but…

• Palestinians march to commemorate events concurrent with Israel’s creation in 1948. Known collectively to Palestinians as the Nakba, or Catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands were expelled from their homes before, during and after the creation of Israel, mostly during the resulting Arab-Israeli war. Those Palestinians have never been allowed to return home, and are either inside the Occupied Territories or in the Palestinian diaspora, many of the latter in refugee camps in neighboring countries.

• Palestinians in Syria organized on social media to march toward Israel, but they never crossed into internationally recognized Israeli territory. What then is the footage of them approaching and crossing that fence, you ask? The divider is a line of disengagement, not “Israel’s border with Syria.” According to international law, both sides of the fence belong to Syria, making the only distinction that one is occupied and the other unoccupied . The Palestinians were indeed making a run on Israeli-controlled territory, but not Israeli territory (according to anyone other than Israel, that is).

• The U.S. and Israel have both condemned Syria for its role in the protests, with Israel naturally adding Iran, but neither providing much of anything in the way of proof. The New York Times reported that an IDF general “said on Israel Radio that he saw Iran’s fingerprints in the coordinated confrontations, although he offered no evidence.” The Times also noted “signs of grass-roots support for the protests,” including online organizing. The Obama administration, for its part, also condemned Syria’s “involvement in inciting yesterday’s protests,” but also offered up no evidence. White House Spokesperson Jay Carney did add: “It seems apparent to us that is an effort to distract attention from the legitimate expression of protest by the Syrian people.” Again, that might be true, but no proof is offered of anything other than Syrian passivity in allowing “the legitimate expression of protest” by Palestinians.

Despite proclamations from Israel that this protest movement was something insidious and frightening, it seems most analysts have gotten the clue and the Arab Spring has come to Israel. Even Israel’s reaction has a familiar ring to it. “This is the typical tactic of the whole Arab Spring. This is what every government has done,” Oklahoma University professor and Syria expert Joshua Landis told ThinkProgress. “They’ve all had the same response to people who have protested to demand justice and human dignity: They’re blaming it on foreign governments and infiltrators.” What’s next? Al Qaeda slipping LSD into Palestinians’ coffee?

Last week, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced his run for the presidency. If he wins the Republican primary, Gingrich will have to garner the votes of a sizable percentage of the Latino vote to make it all the way to the White House. It’s no coincidence that one of Gingrich’s first appearances as a presidential candidate was on one of the most popular Spanish-language programs, Unvision’s Al Punto.

Anchor Jorge Ramos grilled Gingrich on his immigration platform which will play a big role in how Latinos vote in 2012. While the immigration debate during the Republican primary leading up to the 2008 presidential election focused on which candidate could present himself as being the toughest on the issue, Gingrich clumsily staked out a middle ground, suggesting that it might be a good idea to set up local community panels that decide which immigrants get to stay and which don’t. Gingrich’s remarks were cut out of the final video clip on Univision’s website, but they were included in a transcript of the interview issued by the network:

RAMOS: Exactly what do you mean? What are you going to do with the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country? You are not for immigration reform, I mean, you will not favor legalizing 11 million people in this country.

GINGRICH: I would favor finding steps that determine who is clearly going to remain in the United States and I think you got to start from that point

RAMOS: But how can we do it?

GINGRICH: First, somebody who’s been here 20 years, somebody who’s been here 20 years and is married and has three kids and has been paying taxes and lived a totally peaceful life and is a citizen – but by the way they came here 20 years ago outside the law. We got to find the way to routinize and get them in the law without necessarily getting them on a path to citizenship. Now there ought to be a way to do that. And one of the things I’m looking at, and this may come as a surprise to you, is in World War II we had a selective service board where every local community could apply common sense to the draft process.

We may want to think about a citizen board that can actually look at things and decide, is this a person that came in two months ago and doesn’t nearly have any ties here? Or is this a person who clearly is integrated into the society but unfortunately has been undocumented, therefore, we have to rethink how we are approaching them.

Gingrich didn’t get the chance to flesh out his vision of “citizen boards,” but it sounds like Gingrich is essentially proposing local communities take up individual citizenship applications on a case-by-case basis. It’s hard to imagine that such boards would be either a fair of efficient way to deal with the nation’s broken immigration system. Yet, as long as a comprehensive legislative solution remains taboo within the GOP, Republican candidates who are smart enough to recognize the importance of the Latino vote will have to think creatively about how to address one of the most pressing issues facing the Latino community.

Gingrich’s new stance differs from the proposal he extensively laid out on Al Punto in 2009. Back then, Gingrich suggested that the best way to deal with the undocumented population would be to convince 11 million undocumented immigrants to leave their families and jobs in the U.S., go back to their home countries for two to three years, in exchange for a temporary guest-worker visa.

And although Gingrich worried in the past that American civilization will “decay” unless the government declares English the nation’s official language, he is now starting to learn some Spanish himself. At the end of his interview, Gingrich announced his candidacy in Spanish and awkwardly asked Ramos, “Do I get an A? Do I get an A, B or C on that?” Ramos replied, “I guess, let’s wait for the voters to decide.”

Watch the interview (in Spanish):
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Last month, the neocons thought they’d stumbled upon a gem of a gaffe from an anonymous Obama administration official, who was quoted in a New Yorker article as describing President Obama’s action in Libya as “leading from behind.” It turns out though that “leading from behind” isn’t really all that controversial considering that it’s a concept that even Nelson Mandela espoused.

But if Mandela and Obama authorizing a raid that killed Osama bin Laden (in what New Republic’s John Chait called “annals of mistimed propaganda,” the Weekly Standard had a cover story out the next day mocking Obama for “leading from behind”) haven’t quieted the right, perhaps the fact that one of their own praised Obama on Libya might do the trick. Talking with Fareed Zakaria in a taped interview that aired yesterday on CNN, Condoleezza Rice spoke highly of the President’s decision to allow U.S. allies to take the lead in Libya:

RICE: I think it’s good that others can take lead like the British and French. You know, NATO is not an alien being to us. We are indeed central to NATO. And so you can’t actually hand an operation off to NATO. The United States is too central and too much important part of its capability. And so we’ll see how this comes out.

Watch it:

That should pretty much close the book on the neocons’ criticism of “leading from behind.”