American and Hamas officials secretly met numerous times over the last six months, according to a report in the online news website BuzzFeed. The meetings were held between U.S. intermediaries and Hamas’ leadership, which lives outside the Gaza Strip in third-party countries ranging from Egypt to Qatar and Jordan. Topics...

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Iran has become the “the new priority” for Saudi Arabia in orienting itself toward Israel, replacing the Palestinian issue that had for decades been emphasized by Riyadh as having prominence, according to a not wholly sympathetic account of the shift published Thursday by London School of Economics professor Madawi Al-Rasheed....

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The Lebanese-Shiite Hezbollah may have set up a branch in the Gaza Strip, according to the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar. The flag and logo of an organization that was launched a few days ago in the Gaza Strip suggest a Hezbollah now exists in Gaza. The organization is called al-Sabirin (the...

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Lebanon’s Daily Star on Wednesday conveyed a statement from the anti-Hezbollah March 14th coalition blasting the organization’s chief Hassan Nasrallah over a recent speech in which he had among other things doubled down on Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict: The March 14 coalition Wednesday slammed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan...

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NOW Media reported Thursday that the Lebanese parliament had failed for the fifth time in a row to successfully elect a president, after Hezbollah-linked parliamentary blocs again boycotted the relevant session and prevented a quorum from forming. The months-long crisis – which has seen the Iran-backed terror group leverage its political power to consistently stymie...

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NOW Lebanon senior journalist Ana Maria Luca on Wednesday rounded up assessments from top analysts regarding congressional progress in advancing the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act of 2014, which was introduced last week in the Senate after parallel legislation had begun making its way through the House of Representatives: “This...

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Bipartisan legislation targeting Hezbollah and its enablers continued this week to wind its way through the Senate, with Al Monitor describing the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act of 2014 – introduced by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) – as part of an effort by U.S. lawmakers to...

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Lebanon’s NOW Media on Sunday conveyed statements by a top figure from the anti-Hezbollah March 14 bloc, Assem Araji, worrying that political maneuvering by Hezbollah would lock in a political vacuum at that country’s presidential level over the medium term, after the Iran-backed group and its allies last week managed to...

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A Hezbollah-linked member of Lebanon’s parliament took to Voice of Lebanon radio to declare that lawmakers from his Loyalty to the Resistance bloc would exercise what he described as their “constitutional right not to enter parliament,” setting up a deadlock in what will be that body’s third attempt to elect...

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When Pope Francis arrives in Jerusalem at the end of May, among those to greet him will be the Lebanese-based Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, unless Lebanese politicians prevent his trip to an “enemy state.” In responding to threats and criticism, al-Rahi said: “I am the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch and...

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