The murders of two Israelis last week – one by a Palestinian coworker and one by a Palestinian sniper – had already deepened fears that incitement by official Palestinian organs was driving a spike of violence in the West Bank. This weekend a nine-year-old Israeli girl was shot and wounded...

• Kindle

There are pockets of the diplomatic world where characterizing Hamas as a moderate, pragmatic organization has become something of a cottage industry. Very occasionally, the Iran-backed group has banned particularly controversial policies and, thereby, provided material for that cottage industry. The last time Hamas executed someone for a criminal offense...

• Kindle

Reconciliation between the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah factions has traditionally been treated as a prerequisite to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and Fatah controls Palestinian portions of the West Bank, and all are territories that the Palestinians reserve for a single Palestinian state....

• Kindle

The Palestinian Hamas faction has spent the last few months in something of a freefall, finding itself almost totally isolated regionally and losing control inside the Gaza Strip. The Iran-backed terror group has sought to restore its visibility via spectacular terror attacks, and has sought to reassert domestic control by...

• Kindle

Reports of spiking anti-Semitism in several European countries have analysts again asking whether Europe’s increasingly marked diplomatic hostility toward the Jewish state is a function of something more than geo-strategic and humanitarian evaluations. A recent report in the Jerusalem Post described among other things “outrageous” anti-Semitism in Belgium. A recent...

• Kindle

The war of words between Hamas and Egypt – which occasionally slips into more than words – seems to be escalating despite efforts by Hamas to prevent its leaders and Gaza-based preachers from antagonizing Cario. AFP earlier this week noted that that Hamas had redoubled such efforts: The Hamas rulers...

• Kindle

Last month Iranian diplomats who spoke to Al-Monitor floated rumors that Hamas was seeking to reestablish close ties with Tehran, after a period that saw the Palestinian terror group drift toward Sunni extremist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s decline in Egypt had, according to both those diplomats...

• Kindle

There are credible arguments to be made that Turkish-Egyptian relations have literally never been worse since the two countries took shape as modern states. The two countries had exchanged ambassadors soon after WWII, signed a free trade agreement in 2005, and been declared by Ankara to be part of an...

• Kindle

The Egyptian army’s ongoing campaign to uproot jihadist infrastructure in the Sinai Peninsula has in recent days focused heavily on the territory’s border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The military has begun demolishing buildings within a kilometer of the border, hoping to locate hidden tunnels which are used to move...

• Kindle

The Egyptian military’s ongoing campaign to uproot terrorist infrastructure in the Sinai Peninsula is more and more focusing explicitly on securing the territory’s border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The army is clearing buildings – many of which are used as cover for smuggling tunnels that Cairo blames for facilitating...

• Kindle