Conflict Blotter

I’m on vacation on the Greek island of Paros so blogging will be very slow until I’m back in Jerusalem on Monday. In the meantime, there’s this latest sign that the Iraq adventure is going swell:
BASRA, Iraq, July 11, 2007 (AFP) - The Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war […]

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Just days after Gaza fell to Hamas, the Islamists’ senior most official in Beirut Osama Hamdan met with a prominent western lawmaker to lay out Hamas’ side of the story. In a candid, wide ranging conversation, Hamdan offers a fascinating and compelling narrative of the course of events that led up to the Gaza takeover. […]

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I met in Amman today with Mohammad Bashar al Faidi, the spokesman for Hareth al Dhari, the influential head of Iraq’s Muslim Scholars Association. We talked about the possibility that the London attacks last week were a first example of spillover from Iraq. It’s too early to say of course. Perhaps in the end these […]

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Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy has written an important piece in the latest TNR called “Time for Plan B for Gaza.” The takeaway is that every player involved in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is facing a bleak future and there is no way that things can continue on their current course. Ever since Sharon’s unilateral disengagement […]

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Talal Okal, a political science professor at the Fatah-dominated Al Azhar University in Gaza City, wrote this column titled “Important Messages from Hamas” in the Palestinian daily Al Ayyam. It echoes much of what I’ve been arguing here:
Important messages from Hamas
The messages that Hamas has been sending to different regional entities are important […]

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I’m in Amman on something of a fishing expedition for information connected to last Saturday’s London/Glasgow bungled terror attacks. There are still way more questions than answers and everyone is racing to try to piece together what happened, who was involved, how they were connected, etc.
The big unanswered question is where the center of gravity […]

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Great news Alan’s release. His composure and professionalism live on air just minutes after his release were remarkable. The decisive factor seems certainly to have been Hamas’ very credible threats to use force against the Dagmush clan. It’s a definite PR coup for the Islamists. It’s a concrete accomplishment and an irrefutable contrast between the […]

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Here are a few quick observations from a day’s reporting in Gaza City. Hamas has surrounded the Dagmush neighborhood with checkpoints and is checking IDs of everyone going in and out. Anyone with the last name Dagmush gets arrested. The Hamas Executive Force gunmen manning the checkpoints are talking tough and ready to rumble. “We […]

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It looks like the ring leaders of the London terror plot were a Jordanian and Iraqi doctor. The obvious question is now whether or not these guys track back to the insurgency in Iraq, to Zarqawi and to Tawhid w’al Jihad, or other such groups. If so this could be the first direct example of […]

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The latest issue of Sada al Jihad (The Echo of Jihad) a sprodically published Jihadi magazine put out by the Global Islamic Media Front includes a five page interview with Momtaz Dagmush. I’ve done a very quick and rough translation of the most interesting parts, including Momtaz’s denial that the Dagmush family has any connection […]

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