Tens of millions of locusts hit Egypt this weekend, just before the Passover holiday that recalls the 10 Plagues of Egypt (among them the voracious grasshoppers). In a sharp deviation from the Passover tale, however, the insects also migrated north into Israel and Jordan, darkening skies and raising fears of...

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Egyptian youths may be returning to the social media-tinged political protests that marked the early days of the Arab Spring. Students and other opposition groups have become increasingly disenchanted with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked president Mohamed Morsi, who has engaged in a series of power grabs and overseen an institutionalization of Islamic...

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Egyptian, Palestinian, and Israeli sources tell The Tower that the Iran-backed terror group Hamas is now believed to have been responsible for Tuesday’s rocket strike on the Israeli city of Ashkelon, the first and so far only violation of the ceasefire that ended Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012. Egyptian media,...

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An Egyptian court has declared that the smuggling tunnels linking the Egypt-controlled Sinai Peninsula to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip constitute a threat to the country’s national security. As such… A Cairo court ruled on Tuesday the government must destroy all tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, removing a route...

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Almost four months have passed since the end of Operation Pillar of Defense, and  Southern Israel is learning to live under new circumstances with which it’s scarcely familiar: quiet from the Gaza Strip. This time it’s not a just a fragile period of calm in which the odd Qassam rocket or...

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Reports that Hamas is somewhere between frustrated and angry with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked government – which trickled out of Arabic-language media and were picked up by English-language Western and MidEast outlets – are gaining traction: Hamas condemned Egypt’s decision to flood smuggling tunnels linking Sinai and Gaza, according to a...

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An Al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly bombings that killed 21 people and wounded more than 100 last Sunday in Baghdad. The group, calling itself The Islamic State of Iraq, described the attack as a sectarian strike: “The operation was in response to the repression...

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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s humiliating episode at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University – which came during a recent Cairo visit and saw the Iranian leader publicly upbraided by Sunni figures – may have been symptomatic of structural barriers blocking a restoration of Egyptian-Iranian ties. The two countries have been at odds since...

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Egypt is sending a security delegation to Israel this week to discuss a range of security issues including the ongoing implementation of the Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas that ended last November’s Operation Pillar of Defense. The Israeli campaign came after weeks of escalatory rocket and missile fire by Hamas-led...

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Egypt has seized two tons of explosives headed toward the Sinai Peninsula just days after military forces began flooding tunnels that connect the strategic area and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The operation will deepen concerns over the extent to which smuggling remains prevalent on the Peninsula. Israel and Arabic analysts have expressed concerns that...

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