Middle East Update

616 Palestinians have been killed in factional fighting since Hamas defeated Fatah in elections in January last year. . The commission also reported an increase in the number of Palestinians tortured by members of the Palestinian security services.

Israel may permit US-backed transfer of Egyptian weapons to Fatah A gunfight between forces from the warring Palestinian Hamas and Fatah factions in the Gaza Strip left at least one Fatah loyalist dead before daybreak , June 7 - the first fatality in Palestinian infighting since an alleged truce between the rival groups was agreed [...]

Amos Harel
Syria is in the midst of an effort to strengthen its armed forces, at all levels, through multibillion-dollar arms procurements, mostly funded by Iran. The arms purchases, mostly from Russia, include short-range ground-to-ground missiles. In addition, the Syrians have acquired short-range rockets with satellite guidance systems, whose precision capabilities are very high. A report [...]

Egyptian police seized 1-1/2 tons of explosives in central Sinai on June 4, Security forces on a routine patrol found the explosives packed in 40 sacks and hidden in a mountainous area.

IDF strikes bombers in Gaza, carries out arrest raid in Hebron
IDF forces killed two Palestinians in counter-terror operations on June 6: In Gaza, the IDF targeted two armed Palestinians determined to be planting explosives, killing one and wounding the other. In the West Bank city of Hebron, troops fired on and killed a Palestinian man [...]

Syrian parliament member Muhammad Habash told the pan-Arab Al Jazeera news network ON June 5, that Damascus is actively preparing for war with Israel, which it expects to break out this summer. Habash claimed that the Israeli government was the one that wanted the war so that it could survive politically.

Forces searching for information on terror tunnels
IDF forces pulled out of the Gaza Strip this morning June 5, after a raid into the southern reaches of the coastal strip in which at least 40 Palestinians were detained. According to The Jerusalem Post, the IDF released all but a few of the arrested that were transferred [...]

Internal fighting resumes on anniversary of Six Day War
Today June 5, on the 40th anniversary of Israel’s capture of the West Bank, Gaza and parts of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said that his people are literally on the verge of a civil war, and that the current [...]

Yaakov Katz
A rapid-fire cannon called the C-RAM (Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar), currently used by the Americans to protect the Green Zone in Baghdad, reportedly has a 70-80 percent success rate in intercepting incoming shells and rockets. The C-RAM, manufactured by Raytheon, is a variant of the Vulcan Phalanx, a radar-controlled 20mm cannon designed to defend [...]

Four Israel Defense Forces soldiers were wounded by shrapnel on June 3, when Palestinians in Gaza fired four mortar shells at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Palestinians fired nine Kassam rockets at Israel over the weekend, including one that damaged a Sderot house on Saturday.