February21, 2007: The new Palestinian government is attempting an end run around Israel and the U.S., but appealing to Europeans for support. Most of the billion dollars a year in aid, currently withheld because Hamas wants Israel destroyed, comes from the Europeans. If the the new Fatah-Hamas government can convince the Europeans to ignore the Hamas policy (Fatah insists that all the "death to Israel" stuff is just a cultural quirk and the Europeans should accept it) and restore aid to the suffering Palestinian people. Most of the suffering is because of the seven year Palestinian terror campaign against Israel, and the Israeli response (shutting off access between Israel and the Palestinian territories, which cuts the Palestinians off from jobs and other economic opportunities.) The Palestinians want the Europeans to condemn Israel and send in peacekeepers.

February 20, 2007: Police caught a Palestinian suicide bomber, from the West Bank, in Tel Aviv, along with his handlers. The police caught the bomber team before they could get to their explosives, which were also, seized in another location. The attack was hours away from being carried out. The last terror attack in Tel Aviv was in April, 2006 (11 died). Most of these attacks are stopped while the perpetrators are still in the West Bank, but in this case, the police were either unable to catch the terrorists inside the West Bank, or got information about the attack plans after the bomber team was inside Israel.

February 19, 2007: Immigration to Israel (19,264 in 2006) was down nine percent last year. Nearly three million people have immigrated to Israel since 1948, and the number fluctuates depending on the violence in Israel, or against Jews in other countries, and the willingness of police states to let Jews immigrate. The Israeli economy is growing, and Palestinian terror attacks have largely been stopped (one or two a year take place). But the Hizbollah rocket attacks last Summer killed 57 Israeli civilians and caused lots of evacuations. This made Israel a less desirable place to move to.

February 18, 2007: Israel won't recognize the new Palestinian government, because the Fatah-Hamas compromise soes not recognize Israels right to exist, nor renounce the use of violence against Israel. Hamas refused to compromise on those two points.

February 17, 2007: Israeli intelligence officials report that, in Lebanon, Hizbollah has replaced all of the 4,000 rockets it fired at Israel last Summer, as well as the ones lost to Israeli bombing. Including rockets and other weapons still being moved from Syria to southern Lebanon, Hizbollah now has more weapons than last year. However, most of the short range rockets are not in position, because over 70 percent of the storage and launching sites along the border were destroyed last Summer, and not rebuilt. At least not yet. UN and Lebanese peacekeepers in southern Lebanon have, for the most part, not interfered with the Hizbollah movement of ammunition and rockets. It's expected that they will not oppose Hizbollah efforts to rebuild rocket launching sites. However, UN and Lebanese troops probably would resist any Israeli efforts to stop Hizbollah work on rocket firing facilities.

February 16, 2007: In Gaza, a Palestinian policeman who found, and reported, a smuggling tunnel, was shot by masked men. The tunnel also contained 30,000 rounds of ammo, that was in the process of being moved from Egypt to Gaza. The shooting was sending a message to the Palestinian police, that they should not interfere with the smuggling tunnels.

February 15, 2007: Israel put webcams up at the Temple Mount (the site of the ancient Jewish temple, and current Moslem mosque) to try and counter Islamic radicals claims that Israeli repairs on a ramp were not attemps to destroy the mosque. The Islamic radicals denounced the web images as an Israeli trick and repeated their claims of damage to the mosque. The Arabs have adopted the victim mentality to such an extent that imaginary claims like this, even when revealed as false by the webcam, still find many believers.