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Haaretz learned that Lieberman told Borg Brende, Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is visiting Israel, that Hamas lied when it said Cairo had not sent it the cease-fire proposal, which Israel initially accepted. He said Egyptian intelligence officials had given the details of the initiative to Mousa Abu-Marzook, head of the Hamas mission in Cairo. Meanwhile, Israel agreed on Wednesday night to a request from Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East for UNRWA, to a five-hour cease-fire on Thursday in order to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. “Hamas was ready to consider the...

Palestinian and other Arab commentators are blasting Egypt's cease-fire offer this week in the Israeli-Gazan fighting, saying it was a gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accepted it, and a trap for Hamas, which rejected it. Azmi Bishara, the fugitive former Knesset member who now heads the Arab Center for Research and Policy in Doha, Qatar, wrote in the pan-Arab alaraby.co.uk that the offer gave no relief to Gaza, nor freedom for the Hamas members recently returned to Israeli prisons. "This Egyptian declaration represents a stab in the back to the resistance and the people of Gaza. … [T]his...

“ The region has seen nothing like it since the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. Perpetual war has turned into a snowball that accumulates people and resources as it rolls downhill and strips the ground bare of sustenance. Those who are left shiver in tents in refugee camps, and their young men go off to the war. There is nothing new about this way of waging war; it was invented in the West during the Thirty Years War by the imperial general Albrecht von Wallenstein, and it caused the death of nearly half the population of Central Europe between...

It’s highly unusual for a high-ranking soldier, let alone a high-ranking Marine, to publicly question White House and Pentagon policy. Yet that’s exactly what four-star Gen. James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps, did yesterday in Washington. Speaking at the Brookings Institute Tuesday, Amos said the Obama administration paved the way for the emergence of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) by completely withdrawing American troops in 2011. “I have a hard time believing that had we been there, and worked with the government, and worked with parliament, and worked with the minister of defense, the minister of...

A recent United Nations report, still classified, confirms that Iran is implicated in exporting longer-range missiles to the region, such as the M-302 rockets launched from Gaza. UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. — Evidence that Hamas is firing more sophisticated weapons at Israel – including longer-range rockets – than in past conflicts is focusing a new light on Iran’s role in arming the militant organization....

The celebrations in Israel Tuesday morning over the Egyptian ceasefire initiative were premature. Contrary to the assessment of all manner of eminent Israeli notables, Hamas is not sufficiently weakened to accept an immediate ceasefire that meets none of its demands. Far from it. As Hamas made clear in the course of a rocket-filled Tuesday, it doesn’t give a damn about Egypt or Arab public opinion, and it is continuing on its own path, one of escalation. You can say a lot to Hamas’s detriment in its handling of this conflict: It was wrong to enter this round of hostilities and...

Military sending voice messages advising Palestinians to vacate by 8 a.m. Wednesday as part of efforts to avoid causing harm to civilians ahead of supposed strikes; Hamas urges residents against heeding IDF calls. The IDF was sending voice messages to residents of the northern Gaza Strip late on Tuesday, advising them to evacuate their homes by 8 a.m. as part of Israeli efforts to avoid causing harm to civilians ahead of supposed strikes. Hamas' Interior Ministry urged residents of Gaza not to heed to the IDF calls to leave their homes, saying the warning were part of Israel's "psychological war."

Qatar, the world’s top liquefied natural gas exporter, is using its gas money to cash in on some top-of-the-line U.S. supplied military hardware. Qatar’s defense minister, Hamad Bin Ali al-Attiyah, met with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and signed acceptance letters for $11 billion worth of Apache attack helicopters, Patriot missile defense batteries and anti-tank Javelin missiles, the Pentagon said in a statement Monday. “Today’s signing ceremony underscores the strong partnership between the United States and Qatar in the area of security and defense and will help improve our bilateral cooperation across a range of military operations,” said Rear Adm....

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who for years has been on record supporting the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, appears to have abandoned the idea, according to The Times of Israel. "He made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank," the Times reported. While he did not renounce support for the two-state solution, his comments reflected a view that he believes such a state is no longer a possibility after Israel repeatedly evacuated Arab territories only for it to come under the control of Palestinian extremists...

Despite devastation in Gaza, and its inability to inflict Israeli casualties, the organization is in robust shape — personnel unharmed, rocket supplies plentiful, popularity soaring. headquarters and the IDF have been repeating over the past two days assertions like “Hamas is frustrated” and “Hamas wants a ceasefire.”In principle, they’re right,but those statements must be accompanied by two critical caveats that in practice prevent a halt in the fighting. True, Gaza’s Hamas rulers are frustrated to a certain extent. They aren’t happy that the almost 1,000 rockets they’ve fired at Israel so far have caused few injuries and haven’t even significantly...

ISIS unveils ‘cabinet’ lineup: report By Staff writer | Al Arabiya News Friday, 11 July 2014 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has reportedly formed a cabinet to be in charge of his newly established “caliphate.” Documents published by The Telegraph newspaper this week revealed for the first time in details the structure of the group, which has claimed universal authority throughout the Muslim world, declaring Baghdadi its caliph. The British newspaper published an infograph that explains the leadership arrangement under Baghdadi, based on documents seized from an ISIS member’s house...

HERMEL, Lebanon: Further fighting broke out Monday night along the Lebanese-Syrian border following fierce battles which flared over the weekend between Syrian rebels and Hezbollah as the group seeks to root out the last opposition fighters from the region. At least seven Hezbollah fighters and over 30 Syrian rebels were killed in the clashes, which erupted Saturday night in the border area between Baalbek, Arsal and the Syrian village of Nahleh, sources told The Daily Star. In April, Syrian forces backed by allied fighters from Hezbollah retook control of most of the Qalamoun region. According to a high-level source, Hezbollah...

I remember once when -- we were sitting shiva for my paternal grandmother, I think-- I mentioned to my grandfather how smart I thought my youngest cousin, David, was. He replied, “All my grandchildren are smart, but the longer they go to school the dumber they get.” I thought of this when Drudge reported “42% of Millennials say they’re socialists, 16% know what a socialist is.” I guess the other 26% think it means they twitter. On the other hand, though the news of the world seems grim, there are small rays of intelligence starting to beam through the dopiness....

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expressed “extreme, extreme concern” on Sunday over reports that bomb makers from Yemen responsible for the 2009 underwear-bomb plot are now in Syria cooperating with foreign militants there, possibly to develop new, nearly undetectable explosive devices. Asked on Sunday whether that threat was a “clear and present danger,” Mr. Holder responded: “I think it is. In some ways, it’s more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general.”

If Nouri al-Maliki wanted to dissolve the Iraqi union purposefully, he could hardly be doing a better job. While Kurds fight ISIS in the north — and more effectively than Maliki’s politically purged army has — Maliki accused them of being in league with the extremists even as Kurds mull over whether to just go on their own. Now they want Maliki out, or they’ll be leaving for good: Iraq’s Kurds said Thursday Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was “hysterical” and not fit to run the country, further dimming the prospect of a new leadership uniting to face jihadist fighters.The...

Seventy thousand Gazans from Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah were in the dark Sunday night after a Hamas rocket hit the power line that supplies electricity to those places. It's not clear when Israel Electric Company workers will be able to repair the system, but they are apparently in no rush to do so. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked the IEC not to risk the lives of its employees in trying to restore power to the affected sector in Gaza, an operation that could take hours. As Operation Protective Edge enters its seventh day, many Israelis are demanding that...

The UN's special refugee agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, reported Sunday that about 4,000 residents of northern Gaza have fled their homes after the IDF told them to do so, starting last night. In addition, about 850 Palestinians with foreign nationalities are leaving Gaza through the Erez checkpoint. Three hundred of these had already done so by the early afternoon. Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on border areas in northern Gaza, calling on the citizens to evacuate their homes before noon Sunday as it prepared to bomb the area. The IDF warned that those who do not obey their instructions will be...

The map of the Middle East displayed in an Obama administration video released days before President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel shows the Jewish state dispossessed of substantial parts of its current territory, including its capital. The map of Israel, displayed repeatedly during the video, shows the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, northern Israel, and areas surrounding what is currently the West Bank as non-Israeli territory. The Golan Heights is shown as part of Syria; Jerusalem is shown as part of the West Bank; and northern Israel is shown as part of Lebanon. The itinerary on the White House website also implies...

On a February trip to the Middle East, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) told Qatari leaders that the Golan Heights should be returned to Syria, that a Palestinian capital should be established in East Jerusalem as part of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and that he was "shocked" by what he saw on a visit to Gaza. Kerry discussed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in a visit to Qatar during separate meetings with Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani and the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa, as revealed by the disclosure of diplomatic cables by the website...

Israel paid Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend of Sadat. Israel paid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend to assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Dr. Mahmoud Jame’ said Sadat was briefed on the deal, according to the Jordanian-based Albawaba website. Jame’, a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, said, “One morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan...