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In-Depth Issues:

Steep Rise in Arms Smuggling into Gaza - Including 70 Katyushas - Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff (Ha'aretz)
    There has been a sharp increase in the quantity of explosives, including various types of rockets, smuggled into Gaza from Egypt over the last few weeks, say senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces.
    Hamas now has complete control over the smuggling routes from Egypt, having forced the clans that previously controlled these routes to take orders from it.
    They added that the arms smuggling has expanded markedly since Hamas seized control.
    Fatah sources said Sunday that terrorist organizations in Gaza recently received a shipment of about 70 Grad Katyusha rockets.
    See also Gazans Dig for Profit - Nidal al-Mughrabi (Reuters)
    The flow of people and commercial goods through border terminals has been cut sharply since Hamas took control of Gaza.
    That has translated into huge profits for the Palestinian clans that dig the smuggling tunnels.
    "There has been an increase in demand especially since June," said Abu Salman, a veteran tunnel builder. "Many other tunnels are being constructed."
    He said each tunnel is built with several shafts so that if one opening is blocked by Israeli forces or by the Egyptians, smuggling can continue.
    Now that Israeli forces have left Gaza, tunnel-diggers are able to break ground closer to the Egyptian frontier.

Poll: Israeli Occupation Low on List of Palestinian Concerns (IMRA)
    A survey of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by Near East Consulting on September 28-30, 2007, asked about the "main issue that makes you feel concerned."
    Responses: Economic hardship - 35%, the internal power struggle - 22%, the absence of security - 20%, the Israeli occupation - 8%.

Petraeus: Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Member of Quds Force - Jim Clancy (CNN)
    Gen. David Petraeus told CNN that Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazzem Qomi, is a member of the Quds force that controls Iranian policy.
    There was "no question" that Iranian arms were ending up in the hands of the Iraqi militias and there was "no debate" that six Iranians detained by the U.S. military in northern Iraq are Iranian Quds force members - the Iranian unit the U.S. accuses of training and arming insurgents.
    "There's no question, absolutely no question that Iran is providing advanced RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], RPG 29s," Petraeus said.
    "It has provided some shoulder-fired, Stinger-like air-defense missiles. It has provided the explosively formed projectiles and it has provided 244 mm rockets, in addition to mortars, mortar rounds and other small-arms ammunition."

Egyptian-Bedouin Violence Erupts in Northern Sinai - Ashraf Sweilam (AP/Washington Post)
    On Saturday scores of masked Bedouins randomly opened fire in the town of El-Arish in northern Sinai, injuring three people and damaging shops and cars.
    Three more people, including two policemen, were injured when residents demanding better protection from the Bedouins clashed with police.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Suicide Bombers Head to Iraq from Damascus - Hala Jaber and Ali Rifat (Sunday Times-UK)

• Ahmed, 23, has a degree in chemistry. He knows all about explosives. Last year, he says, he took 15kg of TNT, packed it into pouches with some nails, and strapped the bomb to his 19-year-old brother's waist. He placed detonators in both his brother's trouser pockets and a third in a shirt pocket, just in case the others failed.
• The Damascus flat where we met was rented by a handler who channels aspiring "martyrs" to insurgent groups. More than 1,300 suicide bombers have struck in Iraq since 2003. The bombers have killed and injured more than 4,000 people in the first nine months of 2007. In interviews with men passing through Syria on their way to die in Iraq, we found articulate, middle-class men in their twenties and early thirties who had come from good homes and gone to university. One was a newly married accountant. Yet all had reached the chilling conclusion that killing "sinners" would transport them to paradise.
• According to Mohammed Hafez, a visiting professor at the University of Missouri and author of Suicide Bombers in Iraq, the Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom, the influence of the Saudi Wahhabis is key to any understanding of the phenomenon. His study of 139 suicide bombings found that 53 were carried out by Saudis, compared with 18 by Iraqis, seven by Syrians and four by Jordanians. The Saudis had already fought foreign jihads in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, Hafez said. In Iraq they exploited the culture of martyrdom established by Palestinian suicide bombers. The targeting of so many Shi'ites has been consistent with their beliefs. "Wahhabi tradition sees the ascendancy of Shia as [a] worse evil than occupation by infidels, because Shia are heretics and apostates," said Hafez.
• Abu Ziad takes eager volunteers, inveigles them into Iraq for a fee and delivers them to insurgents who consign them to a bloody death with clinical efficiency. His network includes the imams who drum up the volunteers and forgers who create new identities for their journey across the border with Iraq. Then there are the officials he bribes to turn a blind eye, and insurgent groups ranging from the pan-Arab, fundamentalist Al-Qaeda in Iraq to the Iraqi nationalist 1920 Revolution Brigade, started by former members of Saddam's armed forces.