The Tower has learned that just days before President Barack Obama arrives in Israel for discussions on sensitive regional issues, a high-ranking group of Egyptian army intelligence officers has made a quiet trip to Israel to meet counterparts. The discussions this week come at a time of increasing strain between Hamas, the Iran-backed terror group based in...

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Israeli sources who spoke to The Tower today described a “Cold War” being fought in the media between Egyptian authorities and Hamas, as Hamas announced that it was suing [Arabic] an Egyptian news outlet over a report linking the group to a Sinai Peninsula attack that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers. Hamas...

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Hamas is complaining over a February arrest sweep in the West Bank, conducted by the Palestinian Authority, that netted 66 of the Iran-backed terror group’s operatives. Those detained included 32 who had once been held in Israeli prisons. An additional 38 Hamas members and supporters had been summoned for interrogation....

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The United Nations Relief and Works Agency announced this morning, regretfully, that an annual marathon conducted in the Gaza Strip to raise money for U.N. children’s summer camps would have to be cancelled. The statement issued by the organization linked the decision to a Hamas prohibition on the participation of...

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Officials from the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas this week threatened President Barack Obama with violence and “catastrophe” during his upcoming March visit to the region. Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs and a member of the Western-backed Fatah faction, instructed the president to pressure Israel to...

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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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On-again off-again reconciliation talks between the rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have reportedly shifted from temporarily off again to something more than just temporarily delayed.  Hamas cancelled the scheduled February 27 meeting in Cairo between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal, and no date...

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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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Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are currently in the Gaza Strip, high-level Palestinian security sources tell The Tower. The Iranians, according to our security sources, are experts in missile production, and are in Gaza to help Hamas and Islamic Jihad develop long-range missiles. Israeli security and political officials declined...

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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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