• Hamas head sent message to Netanyahu asking for restraint.
• Not having enough bullets for live-ammo exercises, Hamas uses laser tag simulation.
• The LA Times looks at Hamas rejectionism.
• The Independent‘s Tom Doran is visiting Israel with a delegation of UK journos. Today, he shared some interesting impressions of a trip to the Temple Mount.
• For more commentary/analysis, see Craig Balsam (music industry comfortably numb to Roger Waters’ bigotry), Einat Wilf and Michael Curtis on water issues, and Shlomo Avineri and Jonathan Tobin on Abbas raising false hopes.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• I have a bad feeling we’ll be hearing about the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, the Sinai Islamist group which claimed responsibility for this week’s attack on a tourist bus near Taba. Jonathan Spyer provides more background on the group, including this ironic snippet:
The group’s name will raise a wry smile for Israeli and Jewish readers. The Arabic term Bayt al-Maqdis (House of the Holy) for Jerusalem derives from the older Hebrew name for the Jewish Temple – Beit Hamikdash, with the same meaning.
Contemporary Islamists and jihadis, of course, would fiercely deny that any Jewish Temple ever stood in Jerusalem.
But this absence of logical consistency appears to have little impact on the organization’s energy for violent activity.
• Egypt’s fortifying its border with Israel, reports YNet.
• Uh-oh.
• Pass the popcorn? Be wary? Maybe both.
Is Al Qaeda about to expand the ‘field of jihad’ to Lebanon?
• For more commentary/analysis, see Amir Taheri on Russia’s expanding influence in the Mideast.
• AFP: Daniel Pearl’s killer tried to kill himself in a Pakistani prison. Omar Sheikh was convicted of beheading Pearl, a Wall St. Journal reporter and US-Israeli citizen, back in 2002 after abducting him in Karachi.
(Image of Geneva talks via Flickr/US State Dept., Haifa via Flickr/David Lisbona, laser tag via Flickr/Nathan Yergler)
For more, see yesterday’s Israel Daily News Stream.
[sc:bottomsignup].
