Conflict Blotter

The Wall Street Journal’s Jerusalem correspondent Cam Simpson has been focusing on arms trading around the Middle East in recent weeks and months. He has a story reported out of Gaza City before last week’s flare up and the Hamas takeover in today’s paper that’s worth a read:
Shin Bet, Israel’s state security agency, says about […]

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Here’s famed Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s latest poem (in arabic). It’s a moving and stinging indictment of Hamas and Palestinian society as a whole really. I’ve posted bits and pieces of the English translation here:

Did we have to fall from a tremendous height so as to see our blood on our hands…to realize that we […]

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Hamas has moved to restore law and order in Gaza, including putting traffic cops at busy intersections to direct traffic. We passed a particularly tough looking bearded militant-turned-traffic cop and I couldn’t help but reflect on how dreary governing must now seem to a lot of these guys. To go from masked, gun-toting, rebel militant […]

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The Erez crossing is a bit of a mess. Swarms of Palestinians are waiting to leave amassing just before the Israeli controlled elctronic gate that is about two-thirds of the way through the half-kilometer long cement corridor connecting Gaza to Israel. There are also dozens of kids milling about looting what little scrap metal and […]

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A lot of talk about Alan Johnston today. First Reuters saying he’ll be released in hours, quoting a Hamas official in Tehran, and then his captors gave a rather brutish interview on interview with Al Jazeera, carrying M16s and RPGs, and vowing they’d kill him if their demands weren’t met.
Hamas has momentum and confidence and […]

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Here is a timeline of events in the 48 hours leading up to civil war as relayed to me by a close adviser to the Commander of the now dissolved Presidential Guards:

SATURDAY 10:30 a.m. - A family closely tied to Hamas’ armed wing the Ezzedine al Qassam Brigades sets up a checkpoint outside the Abu […]

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I’ve had a busy day and haven’t had time to post much until now. We spent most of the day interviewing Fatah fighters and officers from the routed security forces. There is an important story to be told here, but I am going to hold off another day to tell it so I can do […]

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Here is the video of Fatah commander Samih al Madhoun executed in the street in Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza on Thursday afternoon. Madhoun was famed for ruthlessly battling Hamas. He remains a hero to Fatah soldiers and detested by Hamas. He helped kick off the latest flare-up last Saturday at a graduation ceremony for […]

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This piece by former Ehud Barak adviser Daniel Levy at the Propects for Peace blog was linked to by Steve M in the comments but I thought it was a particularly sage bit of analysis and warranted a post of its own. Levy says why the likely response by the US and Israel to Hamas’ […]

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For those of you who have been reading you’ll remember the interview with deputy intel chief Ahmed Al Afifi on Tuesday. Hamas banged on his door today. He opened, and asked if they had come to take him away. No, they said. They just wanted his car. He handed them the keys to his SUV […]

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