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MidEast

Instability triggered by the Syrian civil war – which is being fought as a three-way proxy war between Sunni states on one side, Iran and its proxies on another, and international Kurdish groups on a third – spilled into Israel again this weekend. Gunfire from the Syrian side of the...

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Palestinian Affairs

Hamas scrambled at the end of last week and into the weekend to maintain the ceasefire which ended hostilities around Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. The Iran-backed group called on other Palestinian terror groups to maintain the ceasefire, and even dispatched its own officers to pull Palestinians away from the...

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Israel

As an official ceasefire between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups took hold 9 p.m. Israel time, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared Wednesday that Operation Pillar of Defense had been completed successfully. Evaluating Israel’s progress in degrading Hamas’s ability to terrorize Israeli civilians, firstly by targeting Hamas’s military hierarchy and secondly by...

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Israel

Terror groups in the Sinai Peninsula launched rockets into Israel Friday night, another worrying sign that the territory may be in the midst of a percipitous slide into anarchy and violence. The rockets caused some damage but no injuries. The Morsi government has overseen a dramatic deterioration in the security situation in...

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Israel

Responding to months of rocket barrages by Hamas-led terror groups targeting more than a million Israeli civilians, the IDF today launched a widespread campaign targeting military infrastructure and operatives in the Gaza Strip. The campaign has been identified by Israeli military officials as “Operation Pillar Of Defense,” and began with a pin-point strike targeting...

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MidEast

Syria: Israel conducted an air defense drill simulating a possible attack by Syrian and Iranian long-range missiles on Monday, part of a joint military drill with the United States done with an eye on terror organizations and border security threats. The drill comes as an array of destabilizing factors –...

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Global Affairs

Lebanon/Hezbollah: Pressure is mounting within the European Union to designate Hezbollah a terrorist group. The Iranian proxy, which militarily controls southern Lebanon and politically dominates the country, has been linked to terror operations in the Middle East and central Asia, in North America, in South America, in Africa, and in...

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Diplomacy

West Bank: Media and political analysis of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s diplomatic gambit to achieve statehood via a United Nations declaration, rather than through negotiations with Israel, is increasingly revolving around the diplomatic consequences of Abbas’s open “defiance” of U.S. President Obama. The language, which was used yesterday by Reuters...

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Palestinian Affairs

Gaza: Over 160 rockets and mortars have been fired at Israeli civilians since Saturday by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorist groups. The rocket escalation, which comes in parallel to other tactics and raises concerns that Hamas is trying to drag Israel into a diplomatically costly group war, drew condemnation from UN Secretary-General...

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Diplomacy

On a phone call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, U.S. President Barack Obama reiterated his opposition to a planned diplomatic gambit by the Palestinian leader, under which the Palestinians would secure non-member statehood at the United Nations. What journalists are labeling Abbas’s open ‘defiance’ of Obama’s explicit appeals may...

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