By Barry Rubin

The Italian government, it has just come to light, let Palestinian terrorist groups operate freely in its country from the 1970s onward as long as they promised not to attack Italians. As former President Francesco Cossiga explained, the agreement with the PLO and PFLP was that if you “don’t harm me… I won’t harm you.” Thus, these groups could move terrorists and equipment destined for use in murdering [non-Italian] civilians in and out of Italy-protected by Italian security agencies.

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By Jonathan Spyer

President Bashar Assad of Syria began a trip to Russia this week. Russian news agency RIA Novosti has quoted the Syrian Information Ministry as confirming that the trip will last two days.

According to the statement, the purpose of the trip is to discuss bilateral relations and the latest world and regional developments, particularly relating to the Middle East peace process and to Iraq.

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By Phyllis Chesler

Senator Obama has released his line-up of convention speakers. His choice of speakers is neither wise nor moral nor are there that many new faces among them. Yes, I know: Senator Obama has to invite the previous living Democratic Presidents, it would be a break with tradition for him not to do so. But isn’t “change” Senator Obama’s mantra? And if not now, when?

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Here’s an excellent short film by Aish.com about Sherri and Seth Mandell, whose 13-year-old son Koby and a friend where beaten to death with rocks by 4 or 5 Palestinian terrorists. The Mandell’s wanted to, “Create something out of the tragedy of Kobi’s death,” and started a camp to help heal families who have lost children to terrorists. The Mandell’s turned adversity into advantage. Here is their story:

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by Cinnamon Stillwell*

This weekend, the “Popular Palestinian Conference 2008” will be held in Chicago, and if past is prologue, a slew of anti-Israel propaganda will be part of the repertoire. The organizers make no effort to conceal their nefarious intentions, titling one of the workshops [emphasis added], “Inserting Palestine into High School Curricula in the US & Empowering Students to Challenge Dominant Narratives” and subtitling the conference, “Palestinians in the US: Reclaiming Our Voice, Asserting Our Narrative.” Unfortunately, this “narrative” is a false one in which Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians its perpetual victims, and the United States an accomplice in crime.

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by Asaf Romirowsky*

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict long ago spilled over into America’s departments of Middle East studies. In an attempt to appear balanced in the face of charges of anti-Israel biases, some departments or programs of Middle East studies have added Israeli scholars to their ranks—a move that at first glance appears welcome.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The release of Samir Kuntar and his four colleagues, and the national jubilation that greeted their return to Lebanon, bring to a close a week of achievement for the regional bloc of which Hizbullah is a member. The events of the week, however, do not resolve any of the issues of which they form a part. Rather, they plant the seeds of further confrontation.

After six weeks of disputation, the formation of a new government was announced in Beirut on July 11, with Hizbullah gaining veto power in the new cabinet. The pro-Western parliamentary majority holds 16 cabinet seats, against 11 for the opposition (including Hizbullah) and three named directly by President Michel Suleiman.

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By Jonathan Spyer

Over the last two months, Israeli security forces have arrested six young Arab men suspected of seeking to form an extreme Islamist cell for the purpose of carrying out high-profile terror attacks in the capital. Two of the six held Israeli citizenship, while the other four were residents of east Jerusalem. It appears that they were radicalized through involvement in an Islamic study circle and via the Internet. Two Arab Israeli citizens from the town of Rahat were arrested in recent weeks on similar suspicions.

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by Daniel Pipes*

Israel has lived the past sixty years more intensively than any other country.

Its highs – the resurrection of a two-thousand year old state in 1948, history’s most lopsided military victory in 1967, and the astonishing Entebbe hostage rescue in 1976 – have been triumphs of will and spirit that inspire the civilized world. Its lows have been self-imposed humiliations: unilateral retreat from Lebanon and evacuation of Joseph’s Tomb, both in 2000; retreat from Gaza in 2005; defeat by Hizbullah in 2006; and the corpses-for-prisoners exchange with Hizbullah last week.

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By Jonathan Spyer

The deal for the return of convicted terrorist Samir Kuntar, four Hizbullah men captured in the 2006 Second Lebanon War and a number of corpses in return for the remains of kidnapped IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser comes at an opportune moment for the Hizbullah leadership.

Indeed, some analysts have suggested that group leader Hassan Nasrallah accepted a less favourable deal than he had originally held out for, in order to conclude the negotiations as speedily as possible. What is clear is that the prisoner swap is having the desired effect for Hizbullah - rebuilding its legitimacy. Most (though not all) of the leaders of the pro-western and pro-Saudi March 14 movement appear to be accepting the portrayal of the swap as a victory for Lebanon, and the consequent depiction of the infanticidal Kuntar as a Lebanese national hero.

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By Barry Rubin

The Israeli prisoner exchange with Hizballah is a psychological victory for both sides. Nevertheless, I don’t like the decision, I understand both ends of the debate over it, and my job is to analyze them. So rather than make some simple conclusion, I want to think out loud with you about all the factors involved.

For Israelis, the prime consideration–something a world which so often demonizes them fails to understand–is to feel that they have acted in a proper humane manner. Everyone can put themselves in the place of the two families who want their son’s bodies to come home rather than to be in the hands of their murderers.

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By Jonathan Spyer

Since the agreement on the tahadiyeh (lull) was reached between Hamas and Israel on June 19, the border crossings between Israel and Gaza have already been closed six times in response to Palestinian rocket fire. Israeli officials acknowledge that none of these attacks was carried out by Hamas. Hamas, nevertheless, is keeping itself busy.

The organization’s military wing is putting in place preparations based on a comprehensive strategy for facing an expected eventual large IDF operation into Gaza. Hamas gunmen are training extensively to play their allotted roles within this strategy.

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by Steven Stotsky*

On December 17, 2007, eighty-seven countries and international organizations met in Paris and pledged to provide $7.4 billion over three years to the Palestinian Authority[1] (PA), an amount far in excess of any previous level of U.S. or European aid to the Palestinians. The conference participants justified the aid as a means of providing “immediate support to the entire Palestinian population,”[2] and as a reward intended to strengthen those Palestinians who favor peaceful coexistence with Israel.[3]

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by Denis MacEoin*

The use by Westerners of the word hudna highlights an anomaly. Whenever journalists, diplomats, or commentators covering the Middle East use a non-English word, it will almost always be Arabic or perhaps Persian; seldom do they use any Hebrew words. Never has a U.S. or British newspaper, for example, used the Hebrew word for cease-fire (hafsakat esh). This is odd as Israel is the other side to these cease-fires. The majority of Arabic terms reproduced in Western language newspapers are concerned with either military topics (jihad, mujahideen, fida’iyin, shahid)[1] or religious affairs (fatwa, mulla, ulema, ayatollah, Shari’a, Allahu akbar).[2] There is nothing wrong with borrowing Arabic words. However, doing so without understanding the word’s nuance and historical development will render deficient any understanding of that word’s true meaning.

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By Barry Rubin

Hamas celebrated its first anniversary of power in the Gaza Strip amidst massive misinterpretations regarding the situation there.

Ironically, Hamas’s victory and survival has less to do with Israel than the rotten strategy of Yasir Arafat. He ruled the Palestinian movement for 35 years by establishing a weak, anarchic, corrupt, and factionalized structure which he played like a violin. After Arafat’s death, Fatah paid the price by collapsing in the Gaza Strip, first electorally then militarily. Having proved a failure in government, Fatah then showed itself a failure as an opposition.

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