Conflict Blotter

Asharq Alawsat reports today (arabic) that Hamas has announced a new plan to share control over the security services in Gaza. The short of it: Hamas will temporarily transfer responsibility for the security services, presidential headquarters and all the crossings into Gaza to the Egyptian government, until the security services can be reconstituted along national […]

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Israel is stepping up its military offensive in the Gaza Strip and Defense Minister Ehud Barak is warning that more is yet to come. “We are getting closer to carrying out a widespread operation in Gaza,” Barak told Israel’s Army Radio Wednesday, the Labor Party leader’s 100th day as defense minister.
As Barak readies an assault […]

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Yesterday and again today the Israeli press is awash with reports that Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas have been secretly toiling away at final status talks in recent months.
Yediot Aharanot reported yesterday that the two planned to present a joint document on the core issues at a US sponsored peace conference in November.
The two [Olmert […]

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Max Blumenthal, who blogs over at the Huffington Post, has posted a tremendous 10 minute video about his day at and subsequent expulsion from the Christians United for Israel summit. It is an unpleasant political exercise that sees Israelis and Jews, like Joe Lieberman and Dore Gold, both of whom attended the summit, willingly ally […]

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At last, a US-sponsored peace conference for Israelis and Palestinians. At last, the Bush administration is heeding pleas that it get vigorously involved in Mideast peacemaking. Of course, it won’t work. The time in which a sit down with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could have proved fruitful has long passed. Abbas rules over just two […]

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I finally found time to read the latest paper by Nathan J. Brown from the Carnegie Endowment called “The peace process has no clothes.” Brown understands the inner workings of Mideast governments better than anybody and he’s always worth reading. His latest paper is an indictment of every party involved in this mess over here […]

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