DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Palestinians Brought Advanced Arms into Gaza - Avi Issacharoff, Yuval Azoulay and Amos Harel (Ha'aretz)
    Israel Security Agency chief Yuval Diskin told government ministers on Sunday that large quantities of advanced weapons were smuggled into Gaza after the border between Egypt and Gaza was breached.
    Diskin said long-range rockets, anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and materials used for rocket production were some of the arms brought into the territory.
    Defense Minister Ehud Barak called for the immediate construction of a fence along Israel's border with Egypt.
    Israeli security remains high along the Egyptian border out of fear Palestinian militants who had already entered Sinai would attack targets in Israel.
    See also Shin Bet: Trained Terrorists Returning to Gaza - Roni Sofer (Ynet News)
    Diskin said the border breach allowed many Palestinian militants trained in Egypt, Syria, and Iran to return to Gaza.
    James Hider, Middle East correspondent of The Times, said there were unconfirmed reports Sunday that two busloads of Palestinian militants who had been in Syria and Iran had arrived at Rafah and walked into Gaza and that Hamas officials were waiting there as a reception committee. (Times-UK)

A Hamas Hardliner (Economist-UK)
    Hamas' foreign minister, Mahmoud Zahhar, denies that the accord between Fatah and Hamas in Mecca last year entailed accepting the PLO's previous agreements with Israel - though other Hamas people have so implied.
    He said Hamas might accept a two-state offer if most Palestinians agreed. But it was entirely "fantastical."
    He certainly would not now "accept the reality" of Israel, looking ahead to a distant future when, "like your European Union," the Arab nation will form one state across its historic lands, joining up with other Muslim nations such as Turkey.
    "We [Palestinians] were never an independent state in history," he notes. "We were part of an Arab state and an Islamic state."

Pope Rewrites Prayer Following Jewish Protest - George Conger (Jerusalem Post)
    Jewish leaders have welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's decision to reformulate the Catholic Church's traditional Good Friday prayers.
    In July, Benedict issued an edict permitting the use of the 1962 Latin Tridentine missal during prayers, which contains references to the "darkness" and "blindness" of the Jews for their refusal to recognize Jesus as the messiah.
    The new text will drop all reference to the "blindness" of the Jews, Milan's Il Giornale newspaper reported on Jan. 18.

U.S. Methodists Renew Drive for Divestment from Israel - Mark D. Tooley (FrontPageMagazine)
    United Methodist officials are urging their 7.9 million denomination to divest from Caterpillar, Inc. stock to punish Israel.
    While Rev. Steven Sprecher, a director on the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, insisted that his board's divestment stance "is not anti-Semitic and it's not anti-Israel," Israel is the only country against which the United Methodist board is urging a substantive divestment.
    "Don't give in to the demonization of Israel," Rabbi Gary Greenebaum of the American Jewish Committee implored a Methodist meeting on Jan. 25.
    The issue will arise at the denomination's governing General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, starting on April 23.
    The writer directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

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

Observations:

Lebanon War Report: Implications for U.S.-Israeli Relations - David Makovsky (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

• The second report on Israeli government decision-making during the summer 2006 Lebanon war highlights the degree to which the prime minister's office was subsequently blindsided by the draft ceasefire resolution negotiated by the U.S. and France. The released text provides detailed accounts of shocked Israeli government officials charging that they had no idea the U.S. would allow carefully negotiated terms to be suddenly reversed.
• According to the report, this reversal occurred between a draft that Assistant Secretary of State David Welch shared with Israelis on August 10 and a fax of the new draft from Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns late that same night. The Burns draft reportedly included no enforcement for a weapons embargo on Hizballah and no mention that embargo violations would be sanctioned by chapter seven of the UN Charter (which authorizes the use of force). As such, Olmert believed he had no other choice but to approve the ground assault, partly in order to improve the ceasefire terms.
• The Winograd report - at least the unclassified version - is careful not to blame the Bush administration, admitting that it did not interview U.S. officials who may have their own view of the events.
• The one person who does blame the U.S. outright is John Bolton, who served as U.S. ambassador to the UN at the time. In his memoirs, he wrote that Washington prioritized its relationship with Europe and the fragility of the Lebanese government over Israeli concerns about the exact terms of Resolution 1701.
• In essence, then, the report demonstrates that when coordination between the U.S. and Israel weakens, there can be tragic military consequences.