Conflict Blotter

Ahh, the joys of covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The International Midde East Media Center reported yesterday:
Three Palestinians have been reportedly wounded in southern Gaza after an Israeli shell landed on a local house near the Sofa crossing in eastern Rafah city, media sources said.
Reported the Jerusalem Post yesterday:
A Palestinian boy was […]

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Here’s the Gaza City based Palestinian Center for Human Rights’ latest 100-page report on the Fatah-Hamas clashes in June that culminated in Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip. The report comes to the stunning conclusion that neither Fatah nor Hamas fought particularly nice during the infighting. The report details dozens of alleged violations of international […]

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Al Qaeda’s Internet communications system went suddenly dark to American intelligence after the leak to ABC News of Osama bin Laden’s September 11 anniversary speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that the US had penetrated the enemy’s system, Eli Lake reports in today’s NY Sun. The Washington Post also has the story, though with somewhat less […]

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Here’s the lastest on the E1 settlement expansion I wrote about a few days ago.
The Israel Defense Forces recently issued an order expropriating over 1,100 dunams of land from four Arab villages located between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
The land is slated to be used for a new Palestinian road […]

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Tired Israeli soldiers on leave wait for the bus in Dimona.

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In case you missed yesterday’s column by Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post:
But highly classified U.S. intelligence reports say that the Israelis destroyed a nuclear-related facility and caused North Korean casualties at the site, which may have been intended to produce plutonium, according to a senior official with access to those reports. The Israelis have […]

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Israel blames Hamas for firing a longer range Katyusha into southern Israel yesterday. The Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the attack, and it’s a matter of debate to what extent the PRC and Jihad and other factions are firing rockets with a nod from Hamas. In past weeks, there have been several reports of […]

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Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon in yesterday’s cabinet meeting as quoted in today’s Maariv:
We have to talk to the Palestinians about handing over the neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to them. Anyone who thinks that it is possible to go to the conference and talk about a National Insurance Institute in the Palestinian state does not […]

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Reuters’ Adam Entous has the fascinating back story on why Israeli banks decided to sever ties with banks in the Gaza Strip. Bank Hapoalim, the first bank to decide to cut off Gaza, said it was doing so simply because the government had declared Gaza an “enemy entity.” But that now seems to be only […]

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Needless to say, it’s not just Israel that is having its secrets exposed by Google Earth. The Federation of American Scientists, which is one of the premier sources for military data of all kinds, has been doing some pretty sophisticated sat photo analysis on their Strategic Security Blog. Yesterday, they published new Google Earth photos […]

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