Conflict Blotter

Ellen Knickermeyer writes in today’s WaPo that Egyptian security forces have uncovered 75 percent fewer smuggling tunnels into Gaza since Hamas’ takeover there. Egypt border guards used to find four tunnels a week into Gaza, but since Hamas took charge they have uncovered just four, the Egyptian colonel told the Post.
Palestinian border guards, identified by […]

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This issue generated a lot of debate in this blog’s comment section and it looks like it’s finally going to be sorted out. The Palestinians who have been stranded on the Egyptian side of the Gaza border are going to be allowed back into Gaza. This seems about par for the course with these sort […]

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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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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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Tensions between Hamas and Alan Johnston’s captors seem to be coming to a head. Early Monday morning Hamas nabbed Army of Islam spokesman Khattab al-Maqdissi. Hamas said they grabbed him after he opened fire on members of the Executive Force. The Army of Islam said he was leaving dawn prayers.
A few hours later the Dagmush-controlled […]

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Here’s the full text of the Hamas Ministry of Interior press release put out at about 2:00 p.m. this afternoon about the capture of Army of Islam members connected with the kidnap of Alan Johnston. More on this later.
 
 

Press Release
Ministry of interior

 
The Executive Force has arrested some individuals involved in the kidnapping […]

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Martin Indyk, twice the US ambassador to Israel, writes in this month’s Foreign Affairs that an international trusteeship for the West Bank and Gaza is the only way out of the current quagmire. He made the same argument in 2003 and sums up that argument at the top of his latest essay:
Despairing that Palestinians […]

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I’m back in Gaza for a couple of days and the story here is law and order under Hamas. Gazans of all political stripes seem to be enjoying a sort of blissful honeymoon with the new regime here. Families are sitting in cafes and wandering the streets until well past dark. Everybody is talking about […]

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This from today’s Maariv newspaper:
While hundreds of refugees are abandoning their homes and fleeing the Gaza Strip, their house pets and farm animals are being left behind to die of hunger and thirst. Hedva, from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Jerusalem, said she had heard […]

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Heads have started rolling after Gaza debacle as Abbas dismisses Rashid Abu Shibak as head of the Preventative Security service and ordered the Palestinian national security council dissolved. Mohammad Dahlan’s job looks secure. Shibak, Dahlan, and Samir Masharawi, another powerful Fatah leader in Gaza, were all out of Gaza in the runup to and during […]

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