• According to an analysis in The Scotsman, Khaled Meshaal’s Gaza trip “effectively turned the international boost for Hamas into political capital for himself.”
• Did the presence of press photographers tie the hands of Israeli soldiers on patrol in Hebron?
• A special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists has me wondering: Might Palestinian Press Freedom Gain From the UN Statehood Vote?
• Another soccer star denies signing a petition that called for UEFA sanctions against Israel. This time, it’s Chelsea forward Eden Hazard. According to the Daily Mail:
However, it emerged yesterday that Hazard had not contributed to the petition. His agent John Bico said: ‘Eden never speaks about his political opinions and he certainly never signed anything.’
Former Chelsea star Didier Drogba had earlier strongly denied endorsing UEFA stripping Israel of the tournament.
Drogba had been one of the marquee players listed along with Hazard as having done so on the website of former Tottenham striker Frederic Kanoute.
• Joel Pollak wonders why the UN is hosting an art exhibit depicting Palestine as all of Israel.
• The US is selling $647 million of munitions to Israel to replenish IDF stocks after Operation Pillar of Defense. The sale includes bunker busters that could hit Hamas’s underground facilities, but Bloomberg News adds:
The move “does not appear intended to transfer any new capability that Israel could use against the most hardened sites of Iran’s nuclear program,” Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst for the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, said in an e-mailed statement.
Iranian Atomic Urgency
• Sudanese rebels accused Khartoum of making a secret agreement to with Tehran to set up an Iranian military base on the Red Sea. Israelis, Saudis, and Egyptians won’t like this. According to the Jerusalem Post:
By extending its naval presence as far as Sudan and the Red Sea, Iran would gain several advantages, including in regards to combating Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden but also in gaining control over the Red Sea shipping route, part of the channel through which Iran ships arms to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. An Iranian naval presence in Port Sudan would also upset Iran’s Sunni rival Saudi Arabia, located just across the Red Sea.
Arab Spring Winter
• Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl on Syria:
A slightly more likely scenario is that the West will get lucky and Assad’s regime will soon collapse in Damascus. In the resulting vacuum, the coalition will gain recognition from the outside world, and most of the rebel forces and Syria will follow the shaky path of Libya, with a weak government coexisting with a panoply of militias — some of them allied to al-Qaeda. The difference is that any spillover of terrorists and weapons will affect not Mali, but Israel, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.
• Egyptians talked to the NY Times about Islamic vigilante thuggery against Mohammed Morsi’s opponents.
The abuses, during a night of street fighting between Islamists and their opponents, have become clear through an accumulation of video and victim testimonies that are now hurting the credibility of Mr. Morsi and his allies as they push forward to this weekend’s referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution.
• Frida Ghitis weighs in on the latest from Egypt.
Rest O’ the Roundup
• Facebook shuts down Taliban recruiting account:
In fact, the most intriguing part of the now-defunct page may be the people who “liked” it. Regardless of your motive, identifying yourself as the “friend” of a known terrorist organization takes guts — or fervor, or social media ignorance, or some combination of the three.
More details at the LA Times, which broke the story.
(Image of Syrian flag via Flickr/FreedomHouse2, Hazard via Wikimedia Commons/Ben Sutherland)
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