The Palestinian Authority government is again facing criticism for suppressing civil liberties in the West Bank. David Keyes, executive director of Advancing Human Rights, has described the Western-backed government as becoming “worryingly similar” to the Iran-backed Hamas government in the Gaza Strip that “shuts down social media conferences, represses women, tortures dissidents...

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Unity talks between Palestinian rival groups Fatah and Hamas have ended with the two sides failing to come together on the procedures that would govern a new election. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is currently in the eighth year of his four-year presidential term in the West Bank, while Hamas rules the...

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Egypt has begun flooding the smuggling tunnels that run between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The tunnels’ destruction is among the terms of an Egyptian-brokered agreement to end Israel’s eight-day Operation Pillar of Defense, which the Jewish state launched in November 2012 after weeks of escalatory rocket and missile...

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The UN has cut ties with a controversial public affairs officer at the Jerusalem branch of the United Nations Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs a year after anti-Israel activities by the officer were publicly exposed. Kulhood Badawi was heavily criticized last year when she used her Twitter account, titled...

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Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq has described as “baseless” reports that the Iran-backed terror group is prepared to accept the existence of Israel. The denial was echoed by Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel, who denied that the group was ready to accept a two state solution and further delineated between accepting...

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Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday announced the opening of a Gaza-based military academy that will train schoolchildren to violently target the Jewish state. Haniyeh said that the new academy would prepare children as young as 12 for the establishment of a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.”...

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Nearly twice as many Israelis were injured by terror attacks in 2012 than in 2011, according to a report by the Israel Security Agency. Domestically, most of the fatalities and injuries were the result of attacks from the Gaza Strip in October and November of 2012. The Palestinian terror group Hamas...

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Iran is attempting to expand its influence into impoverished African nations by funneling ammunition and supplies to state actors and terror-linked rebel groups throughout the continent, fueling ethnic conflict and government repression. A recently published expose in The New York Times reporting on a global Iranian arms network stretching from Afghanistan to...

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Iran’s 24th fleet will begin a new three-month tour of duty next week that will take the warship and submarine into the Mediterranean Sea to “block threats to the Islamic republic.” Similar deployments have been used as symbolic moves channeled into domestic propaganda channels, but have also been used to deliver...

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Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani Wednesday called on Palestinians to accept further Iranian assistance in targeting Israelis. Larijani made the comments in the context of a meeting with top Hamas official Emad Al-Alami, who in turn has linked Hamas’s self-described military victories over Israel to Iranian assistance. Hamas has been attempting...

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