Conflict Blotter

A nice post by Google Earth whiz and virtual life ambassador Stefan Geens on why the Kyl-Bingaman amendment, which gives Israel special protection from Google Earth and satellite pic takers, is bad law.

When it comes to Israel, there is the additional issue of needing to justify the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment to the US National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1997, which forbids US remote sensing operators from selling imagery of Israel at resolutions that are higher than what’s available commercially elsewhere in the world — currently 2 meters per pixel. No other country in the world enjoys such protection. What is it about the nuclear research complex at Dimona that makes it more worthy of censorship than Three Mile Island?

Daniel Levy’s review of the Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer book on the Israel lobby is posted on his blog Prospects for Peace. It’s the most thoughtful, measured, knowledgable, and, in my opinion, spot-on response to the book I’ve yet seen. Here’s how Levy himself summarizes his position, but the whole peice is a must read:

While I certainly take issue with the specific recent policy examples in the book (Iraq and Syria in particular), I am convinced that the relationship between the US, Israel and the lobby that speaks in its name needs to change for everyone’s sake, that this book contributes to a re-think and that the authors are not driven by prejudice.

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 seriously injured in the Gaza Strip on Monday after playing with a tank shell. According to Israel Radio, the boy brought the shell into his home in southern Gaza, where he and several other boys played with it.

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 law by both sides, including executions, attacks on ambulance crews, the shooting of peaceful demonstrators, and the shelling of a nunnery.

Most worthwhile, however, is the report’s detailed time line of the week long battle that rocked the Gaza Strip in June and the 15 month power struggle leading up to it. It also lists the name and affiliation of every Palestinian to die during the fighting in June. Between Thursday June 7 and Friday June 15, 161 Palestinians died in the fighting in Gaza, 27 members of Hamas, and 92 from Fatah and the security services, according to the report.

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 dramatic details. Here’s Lake:

But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda’s internal security division that the organization’s Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda’s production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.

This is the dramatic and, if true, quite remarkable detail from Lake’s account:

One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America’s Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda’s internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America’s intelligence community saw. “We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak,” the official said. “We lost an important keyhole into the enemy.”

What’s unusual about this incident is that the leaked video was first uncovered by the SITE Institute, an independent organization that monitors Jihadi Web sites. The institute’s founder and director is Rita Katz, an Iraqi-born Israeli citizen whose father was killed by Saddam Hussein. Upon finding the video Katz promptly turned it over to the US government and within hours it had been leaked to ABC News. The NY Sun article suggested Michael Leiter, deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center was to blame. The WaPo pointed the finger at the Bush Administration.

First of all, this is another example of private citizens’ ability to gather cutting edge intelligence thanks to the internet (would this be called iInt? Intint?). Katz has apparently done a better job at infiltrating the Jihadi web than the US government has. It also illustrates the perils of having such an effective private intelligence gathering network. Though the leak appears to be absolutely not Katz’s fault, had the video originated within the US intelligence establishment it would have been much less likely to leak.

How does Katz beat our government at intel gathering on the net? She goes undercover with more savvy and cunning than our government. Katz is the author of the book Terrorist Hunter, an account of her undercover campaign to infiltrate Hamas and other Islamic groups operating in the United States. In that book Katz describes how she spent months or years dressing as a devout Muslim woman and attending fundraisers for assorted violent Islamist groups. Today, with the SITE Institute, Katz and her team are doing much the same thing: posing as jihadis on the internet, building up credible virtual Salafi personalities, and slowly working their way into Jihadi Web forums and bulletin boards.

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 that would connect East Jerusalem with Jericho. That in turn would “free up” the E-1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim - through which the current Jerusalem-Jericho road runs - for a long-planned Jewish development consisting of 3,500 apartments and an industrial park.

The Palestinians and the international community, including the United States, have long objected to the E-1 plan on the grounds that it would cut the West Bank in two and sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Israel claims that the new road will solve this latter problem. 

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

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 provided the United States with photographs, physical material and soil samples from the site — taken both before and after the raid — according to two independent sources.

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 Hamas stepping in to stop Al Aqsa, Jihad and others from firing rockets at Israel without Hamas consent.

That being said, with Gaza going to hell under its watch and their modest compromises rejected, Hamas’ best chance of shifting the political momentum back in its favor, is by baiting Israel into overreacting in Gaza. A punishing Israeli offensive in the Hamas-run territory would make it politically costly for Abbas to continue peace talks with Olmert,  and would keep countries like Saudi away from the November conference. It would also earn Hamas a groundswell of public sympathy from across the Arab world. And reports such as this one suggest the Islamists are preparing for an armed showdown.

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 know what he’s talking about.

Ramon was a pro-peace labourite before joining Kadima, remains close to Israeli peaceniks, and is reportedly trusted by Palestinians. He is shaping up to be one of the key forces in Olmert’s government pushing for something substantive to come out of next month’s peace conference.

But look who else seems to have softened their stance on the Jerusalem issue: right wing hardliner Avigdor Leiberman. Here’s what Leiberman, known to most for his past support of transferring Israel’s Arab population out of the country, had to say at yesterday’s cabinet meeting:

We must make concessions on the Jerusalem issue, or transfer to Palestinian control some of the neighborhoods and refugee camps. But the Old City and Mt. Scopus are an inseparable part of Jerusalem and so they will remain. As to all the rest, the only connection between Israel and Shuafat and Anata is that day in the month that they come to get their National Insurance allowance from us.

When it comes time for the public to decide whether or not it supports whatever peace deal/declaration Olmert is cooking up with Abbas, it is assumed that much of the Israeli right will be taking their cue from Leiberman, the most right wing member of Olmert’s government. If Olmert makes too many concessions and Leiberman pulls out of the government, the PM’s already shakey right flank is likely to collapse.