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IDF Investigation: Palestinian Was Not Forced to Play Violin at Checkpoint (IDF)
    Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, the head of Central Command, conducted an investigation into a filmed incident reported widely in the media of a Palestinian man shown playing a violin at the Beit Iba checkpoint.
    The investigation found that the Palestinian arrived at the checkpoint and was asked by the soldiers to open the violin case.
    He opened the case and started to play the violin of his own volition. Several moments later, he was asked by the liaison officer to stop playing.
    The investigation was based on testimony of the soldiers at the checkpoint, footage filmed by the women of "Checkpoint Watch," and a letter written by members of the group which supports the soldiers' testimony that the man was not asked to play the violin.

Military Intelligence: Egypt Facilitated Smuggling of Weapons and Terrorist Trainers (Middle East Newsline)
    Military Intelligence reports over the last two months include a determination that Egypt has facilitated the smuggling of weapons and insurgents from Sinai into Gaza for attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
    "We are not only talking about weapons," a senior military source said. "We are talking about the infiltration of Egyptian and other trainers to help improve the capability of Palestinian terrorist groups and the Palestinian Authority."
    The MI assessment comes amid Israel's effort to launch security cooperation with Egypt.
    Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abu al-Gheit and intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman are scheduled to visit Israel and the PA on Dec. 1.

Senior Fatah Leader Killed in West Bank (AP/Washington Post)
    Nasser Badawi, 37, a senior Fatah official, was walking at the entrance to Balata in Nablus Tuesday when three gunmen in a taxi opened fire on him, killing him, Fatah officials said.
    The Israeli military said it had no troops in the area.
    Balata is ruled by competing armed factions of Palestinians, and infighting is not uncommon.

Falluja Yields a Trove of Arms and Information - Patrick J. McDonnell (Los Angeles Times)
    Among the most novel finds in Falluja, the capital of the Iraqi insurgency, was an ice cream truck that had been converted into a mobile car-bomb factory.
    "You got an ice cream truck, it's loaded with munitions, weapons, equipment to construct a car bomb," said a senior U.S. military official.
    66 of the city's 133 mosques were discovered with significant quantities of weapons, and U.S. forces exchanged fire with snipers who took cover in minarets and inside the compounds.
    U.S. officials are processing a bounty of seized intelligence material, including telephone records of suspected insurgent group leaders and their contacts, ledgers of foreign fighters, and data on insurgents found on computer hard drives, compact discs, and other media.
    U.S. troops discovered several crude chemical laboratories, including caches of poisons, beakers, and protective gear including gas masks.
    Notes found in the labs indicated that rebels were conducting training and research on chemical weapons.

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Time to Get Tough on Terrorism, UN Warned - Anton La Guardia (Telegraph-UK)

• After decades of argument over whether one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, a group of international "wise men" will this week tell the UN to outlaw all terror attacks on civilians or risk losing its moral authority.
• In a report to be unveiled on Thursday, the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, a panel appointed to reform the UN, said it must send "an unequivocal message that terrorism is never an acceptable tactic, even for the most defensible of causes."
• This is a slap in the face for Palestinians, Iraqi insurgents, Kashmiri rebels, al-Qaeda militants, and other groups that claim to be fighting foreign domination.
• It is also a rebuke to Muslim states that have for years blocked agreement on an all-embracing UN convention on terrorism on the grounds that it should exclude groups fighting "occupation" or "colonialism."
• On the question of "resistance" to occupation, the report declares that "there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians."
• The panel was appointed by UN secretary general Kofi Annan to find ways of healing the divisions over Iraq and fending off Washington's threats to treat the UN as "irrelevant" in dealing with modern dangers.
• The report proposes a definition of terrorism which refers to "any action that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."