• Egypt Intercepts Weapons from Sudan for Gaza - Marwa Awad
  Egypt's army shelled at least six vehicles trying to smuggle weapons into the country from Sudan last week, security sources told Reuters on Monday. The vehicles, intercepted near the southern Egyptian city of Aswan, were carrying ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades. (Reuters)
• Security Forces Rout Protesters from Bahrain Square - Ethan Bronner
  Two days after the king of Bahrain brought in 2,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring allies, his security forces moved Wednesday into Pearl Square, the stronghold of the antigovernment protest movement, using tanks, helicopters and jeeps with machine guns mounted on their roofs to expel demonstrators clamoring for reform. (New York Times)
      See also Bahrain's Crisis: Saudi Forces Intervene - Simon Henderson (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)
• Gaddafi’s Forces Likely to Push Rebels Back to Benghazi, Analysts Say - Craig Whitlock
  Libya’s military has leveraged its overwhelming advantage in firepower to rout rebel forces in recent days, turning the tide of the conflict. Gaddafi leads the worst-trained, worst-maintained military in North Africa, but his decrepit armed forces have consolidated control around Tripoli and steadily reclaimed several cities and coastal territory that had temporarily fallen into the opposition’s hands. Absent foreign intervention, officials and analysts say, leaders of the uprising will be forced to retreat completely to their base in the eastern city of Benghazi. Gaddafi has survived a popular revolt because he has largely retained the loyalty of his armed forces. (Washington Post)

• IDF: 50 Tons of Weapons Found on Gaza-Bound Victoria - Boaz Fyler
  IDF commandoes who seized the Victoria some 200 nautical miles off Israel's coast found 50 tons of weapons in containers that were meant to hold cotton and lentils, roughly the same amount that was found on the Karine A in 2002, the army said Tuesday. Deputy Navy Commander Rear Admiral Rani Ben-Yehuda said this was "a clear attempt to arm the terror organizations and change the situation in the entire region."  (Ynet News)
      See also C-704 Anti-Ship Missiles Found On-Board the Victoria
  Strategic weapons found on-board the Victoria included C-704 anti-ship missiles. The C-704 shore-to-sea missile has a range of 35 km and its use in Gaza endangers Israeli cities in close proximity such as Ashkelon. Iran is known to possess these type of missiles, which, along with identifying documents, gives substantial evidence of Iran’s involvement in the weapons smuggling attempt. (Israel Defense Forces)
      See also List of Weaponry Found on the Victoria (Israel Defense Forces)
      See also Video: Boarding of the Victoria (Israel Defense Forces)
      See also Iran Exploiting Upheaval in Egypt to Send Weapons - Ron Ben-Yishai
  The Victoria docked in Ashdod on Wednesday. Alongside the weapons was a Persian-language manual with an Iranian Revolutionary Guards logo. It is estimated that the Iranian authorities are taking advantage of the weakening of Egypt's security apparatuses to send weapons and terrorists into Sinai unchecked.
      Israel considers efforts to smuggle anti-ship missiles to Gaza a strategic threat. The weapons directly threaten any vessel docking in Ashkelon and the Yam Thetis oil rig, an important source of gas for Israel. (Ynet News)
• Israel to Build Fence along Jordan Border - Ilana Curiel
  During a tour of the fence being constructed along Israel's border with Egypt on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the IDF to begin planning the construction of another fence along the border with Jordan. "We will have to build a fence in the east as well, because if we block one border they will come from the Arava [desert adjacent to Jordan]," he said. Since the construction of the fence along the border with Egypt began, there has been a significant drop in infiltrations. (Ynet News)

• Massacre of the Innocents - Jeff Jacoby
  In Itamar, terrorists infiltrated the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel and perpetrated a massacre of the innocents. The civilized mind struggles to make sense of such savagery. There are those who believe passionately that all human beings are inherently good and rational creatures, essentially the same once you get beyond surface disagreements. Such people cannot accept the reality of a culture that extols death over life, that inculcates a vitriolic hatred of Jews, that induces children to idolize terrorists. Their mindset sees a massacre of Jews and concludes that Jews must in some way have provoked it. (Boston Globe)
• The Importance of Blockading Gaza - J. E. Dyer
  Israel's interdiction of arms shipments to terrorists is not just a boon to Israel. It's a boon to regional stability. Israeli enforcement of the Gaza blockade, and Jerusalem's policy of interdicting arms shipments to Hizbullah, are some of the key measures preventing Iran from consolidating advantage in Gaza and Lebanon. They also serve to discourage the widening of the terrorists' operating theater and logistics range. (Commentary)
• High Stakes over Bahrain - David Ignatius
  The Obama administration and its support for democratic change in the Middle East has been on a collision course with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other traditional monarchies of the Persian Gulf. U.S. officials have been arguing that Bahrain's Sunni monarchy must make political compromises to give more power to the Shiite majority there. The conservative regimes of the Gulf on Monday backed Bahrain's ruling Khalifa family with military force. "We don't want Iran 14 miles off our coast, and that's not going to happen," said a Saudi official.
      The Bahrain issue is the most important U.S.-Saudi disagreement in decades. The Obama administration, in effect, is altering America's long-standing commitment to the status quo in the Gulf, believing that change in Bahrain is inevitable and desirable. (Washington Post)
• Iran Looms Large in Libya Decisions - Gerald F. Seib
  The Iranian factor forms the backdrop to the argument about whether to impose a no-fly zone over Libya. Those pushing for intervention worry that if Gaddafi survives, Iran will see that leaders who give ground to democracy protesters are swept away, while those who brutally crush protesters are the ones who hang on. For Iranian leaders already disposed to crushing their own pro-democracy dissidents, the message will be clear.
      The narrative Tehran's leaders have been spinning is that the U.S. and its Zionist allies are waiting to take advantage of any Mideast unrest to seize control of the region and its oil assets. This Iranian narrative holds that the protesters in Tehran's streets are either active or unwitting agents of this insidious American conspiracy. (Wall Street Journal)

Palestinian Incitement: The Real "Deal Breaker" - Joel Fishman (Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs)

• Incitement to hatred and violence is a weapon of political warfare. It is not the result of a misunderstanding, nor does it happen randomly. States and insurgent movements that are waging war openly or engaging in low-intensity conflict use it to advance their ends.
• Persistent reports based primarily on information from Palestine Media Watch describe the pervasiveness and intensity of Palestinian incitement against Israel. The public discourse and the media of popular culture convey a message of hatred. The destructive effects of incitement are not immediately apparent because they are cumulative.
• At present, the continuation of incitement indicates that fundamentally there is no real prospect of reaching a stable, long-term arrangement through the political process. The PA, which after the Oslo Accords many hoped would be committed to democracy and become a good neighbor, has turned into a corrupt, authoritarian Middle Eastern regime that plunged its own population into war and has taken a high toll of innocent Israeli civilians.
• The Palestinians discovered that they could derive considerable advantage by pursuing a policy of fomenting incitement, domestically and abroad, making capital from a festering sore. Using this method, they have driven their maximalist demands to the top of the world's agenda. At Durban, they hijacked the agenda of a conference ostensibly devoted to human rights and prevented other groups with grievances from being heard.
• Likewise, by going through the motions of negotiating, creating crises and impasses, and at the same time refusing to agree to much, they have succeeded in pocketing valuable unreciprocated concessions.
• Those who foment incitement hope that the Palestinian problem will assume larger proportions. What will happen, for example, when Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Hizbullah decide to support such grievances with military force while America and Europe choose to look the other way?
  
  Dr. Joel Fishman is a historian and a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.