June 18, 2008
IICC

The arrangement for a lull in the fighting
 Overview
(left-Senior Hamas figures Khalil al-Hayeh and Mahmoud al-Zahar announce the expected beginning of the lull in the fighting (Al-Jazeera TV, June 17).
1. On June 17, 2008, at the end of several months of contacts between Egypt and Israeli and Hamas representatives, Egypt and Hamas separately announced that a lull in the fighting ( tahadiya ) 1 between Israel and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had been agreed on. According to the announcements, it was expected to go into effect on the morning of Thursday, June 19, at 06:00 Israeli time.
 

June 19, 2008
INSS Policy Brief No. 13
Benn, Aluf

One question that has long plagued Israel-Syria negotiations is the route of the future border between the two countries. While in meters the gap between the positions of the two sides is narrow, it has held great symbolic and political significance, to the point of complicating any possible agreement.

June 18, 2008
INSS
Tel Aviv
Preface of from the Institute for National Security Studies, 2008 by Heller, Mark A., ed. (Full PDF report linked below)
Veteran observers of the Middle East scene are understandably prone to skepticism about the prospects of any fundamental transformation in regional realities. After all, the sense of dynamism and change that characterizes developments in Asia or Latin America is virtually absent from reviews of the Middle East. Instead, it seems that the same themes of instability, terrorism, political authoritarianism, socio-economic stagnation, enduring intra- and inter-state conflict, and the crucial role of oil that dominate current analyses were those that prevailed in analyses two, three, or four decades ago. Hence the somewhat jaded view that in the Middle East, there is nothing new under the sun.

June 18, 2008

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Stratfor
Friday June 13 turned out to be an unlucky day for the guards at Sarposa prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. At approximately 9:20 p.m. local time, some 30 Taliban insurgents launched a complex and highly coordinated attack on the facility. The operation freed all 1,100 inmates incarcerated there, including a reported 350 to 400 Taliban militants. The attack also resulted in the deaths of several guards — reports on the actual number vary between six and 15.

June 17, 2008
By George Friedman
Statfor
The creation of a European state was severely wounded if not killed last week. The Irish voted against a proposed European Union treaty that included creation of a full-time president, increased power to pursue a European foreign policy and increased power for Europe’s parliament. Since the European constitutional process depends on unanimous consent by all 27 members, the Irish vote effectively sinks this version of the new constitution, much as Dutch and French voters sank the previous version in 2005.

June 16, 2008
HRW’s Letter to President Bush on Gaza: The "Collective Punishment" Hoax
NGO Monitor
In the first five months of 2008, HRW has issued thirteen statements condemning Israel’s response to deliberate attacks aimed at Israeli civilians launched from Gaza. [1]  These statements exploit international legal terminology, repeat incomplete or false analyses of international law, and minimize or omit Hamas’ attacks on Israeli border crossings where humanitarian aid is delivered, as well as the diversion of this aid by Hamas. In contrast to carefully written, accurate and well-sourced legal analyses, these publications reflect a dominant political agenda.

June 17, 2008 | 0123 GMT
Stratfor Geopolitical Diary

Speaking at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush expressed support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s June 15 remarks that Kabul would send forces into Pakistan to prevent the Taliban from using the South Asian country as a launchpad for attacks in Afghanistan.

June 16, 2008
By Jacob Laksin
Front Page Magazine
Earlier this month, the columnist Mark Steyn went on trial for being mean. Steyn’s offense was to have published, in the fall of 2006, an excerpt from his book, America Alone, in the Canadian newsweekly Maclean’s. In it, Steyn advanced the provocative but by no means untenable argument that plunging birthrates in Europe would precipitate a demographic decline, forcing Continental countries to reach an “accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots.” Europe’s future, Steyn suggested, “belongs to Islam.”