Israel’s air force chief Major-General Amir Eshel yesterday described “thousands” of military installations created by Hezbollah in residential buildings across Lebanon. “We will have to deal aggressively with thousands of Hezbollah bases which threaten the State of Israel and mainly our interior,” Eshel said in a speech, citing Beirut, the Bekaa Valley...

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The Daily Beast this morning published an extensive investigation, written by the outlet’s Eli Lake, describing the Obama administration’s efforts to lobby inside Israel on behalf of specific conditions outlined by a U.S.-backed peace deal. Special administration envoy Martin Indyk has been “quietly been meeting with Israeli reservist generals and...

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The rollout to the Geneva 2 conference stumbled over the weekend and into yesterday, marked by a series of diplomatic missteps regarding the conference’s composition and violence in Lebanon that underscored the degree to which instability in the region may deepen regardless of the talks’ outcome. A car bomb detonated...

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The erosion of American influence in the Middle East has created power vacuums which are being filled by geopolitical rivals from across the region, forcing Washington’s allies to “take matters into their own hands,” according to analysis published Wednesday in the New York Times. Michael Doran and Max Boot – senior fellows...

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Lebanese outlet Ya Libnan reported yesterday that Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is attempting to “increase control over [I]nternet access at a time when the government is also tightening its grip on the country’s legal institutions.” But some critics have alleged that the legislative initiative is part of a general trend in...

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Reuters on Monday published photos taken earlier that day showing “Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif… lay[ing] a wreath at the grave of assassinated Hezbollah military commander” Imad Mughniyeh, a terrorist who was killed in 2008 after having spent literally decades killing Americans and others on behalf of his paymasters in Tehran....

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Ariel Sharon – the 11th prime minister of Israel, and a man who dominated the Jewish state’s political scene first as a pertinacious force from the right and eventually as a heterodox diplomat who oversaw broad Israeli territorial concessions – died today, eight years after slipping into a coma in...

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The Wall Street Journal yesterday published an extensive report, based on previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence, assessing that Hezbollah is smuggling advanced anti-aircraft, anti-ship, and surface-to-surface missiles into Lebanon. The moves illustrate how both Hezbollah and Israel are using Syria’s civil war as cover for what increasingly is seen as a complex and...

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A massive car bomb – which yesterday tore through Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold of Dahiyeh killing at least five people and injuring scores – marked the point at which Lebanon succumbed to the almost three year Sunni-Shiite conflict raging in neighboring Syria, according to an extended regional analysis published yesterday in the Weekly Standard....

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Elements inside Lebanon on Sunday fired a volley of rockets into Israel, drawing Israeli artillery fire reportedly targeting the launch site. The attack comes a few weeks after a cross-border sniper attack in which a Lebanese soldier targeted and killed an Israeli soldier driving to base. That attack caused analysts to...

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