1) At the Long War Journal, David Daoud reports on Hizballah’s rocket arsenal.
“Hezbollah entered the 2006 war against Israel with an arsenal of 14,000 projectiles – a mixture of rockets and missiles of various ranges. By the end of the 34-day conflict, Hezbollah had lost approximately half of this arsenal – expending it in attacks against Israel or having caches destroyed by Israeli military operations.
In the aftermath of that war, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1701, hoping to install guardrails to prevent Hezbollah’s rearmament and, through that, the outbreak of another lethal war between the group and the Jewish state. Those guardrails have failed. In the intervening 18 years, Hezbollah has transformed into the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor, amassing an arsenal qualitatively and quantitatively dwarfing its old cache, estimated at somewhere between at least 150,000 – 200,000 projectiles – which include unguided artillery rockets, as well as ballistic, anti-air, anti-tank, antiship missiles, mortars, and drones.”
2) At the INSS, Orna Mizrahi and Stephane Cohen discuss demarcation of the land border between Israel and Lebanon.
“As part of the American-led efforts to use diplomatic means to end the fighting that has been ongoing for nearly five months between Israel and Hezbollah, the need to demarcate an agreed-upon border between Israel and Lebanon was also on the agenda. The Lebanese government is eager to include border demarcation in any ceasefire agreement and has adopted the same policy on this matter as Hezbollah, linking an end to the fighting to the cessation of Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip and presenting a hardline maximalist approach to border demarcation. Negotiations over the land border between the two countries are likely to be exhaustive due to the complexity of the issue and the wide gaps between the sides. It would be wrong, therefore, to conduct them under fire.”
3) At the JISS, Uzi Rubin looks at ‘Missiles and UAVs in the Battle for Freedom of Navigation in the Red Sea’.
“Closing straits to hostile ships and navies is not a new phenomenon. This strategy has been employed in past wars. The innovation this time is in weapon systems: the torpedo missiles and long-range coastal guns of past wars have been replaced by anti-ship cruise missiles, drones and ASBMs. Anti-ship cruise missiles are nothing new: the Soviet Styx and the Israeli Gabriel, the French Exocet and the American Harpoon were developed in the 1950s and 1960s. In contrast, the use of drones and ballistic missiles to attack ships is an innovation of Iran’s arms industry.”
4) WINEP provides interactive maps ‘Tracking Maritime Attacks in the Middle East Since 2019’.
“The Hamas-Israel war has put a spotlight on local maritime threats, with Houthi militants and allied military forces exchanging strikes while international shipping companies scramble to keep their vessels from being targeted. Yet these threats have been evolving since well before the Gaza crisis.
To capture the pulse of these attacks and their recent escalation, The Washington Institute has traced major shipping incidents in a series of interactive maps covering the periods before and during the Gaza war, with regular updates to come as the situation evolves.”
5) At the JCPA, Yoni Ben Menachem explains ‘Why the Palestinian Authority Opposes Marwan Barghouti’s Potential Prison Release’.
“Security sources believe that Barghouti is working through various channels to incite unrest in Judea and Samaria ahead of the month-long Ramadan, scheduled to begin March 10, potentially aiming to spark a third intifada.
Barghouti believes his release is imminent as part of a deal between Israel and Hamas and seeks to bolster his position among Palestinians while incarcerated.
Sources within the Fatah movement suggest that senior PA figures, such as Hussein al-Sheikh and Majed Faraj, close associates of Mahmoud Abbas, informed Israel about Barghouti’s activities.”
6) MEMRI provides a backgrounder on Al Jazeera Arabic.
“The Al-Jazeera TV network is an arm of the Qatari regime. It is owned by the government and carries out its foreign policy by means of indoctrination of the Arabic-speaking masses worldwide. Al-Jazeera, therefore, should not be discussed as a means of telecommunications, but instead as an unyielding and forceful political tool of Qatari foreign policy under the guise of a mass media network.
This report will present the policies of Qatar and will review how these policies are implemented through Al-Jazeera, discussing the current Israel-Hamas war as a case study of Al-Jazeera’s role and activities.”
Arab tribes from Jordan invaded east Jerusalem,killed the jewish population and destroyed the synagogues—–all under the Nazi Mufti Al-Hussseini. In 1940 15,000 mostly Kibbutz youth were part of the British anti-fascist army called the
Palestinian Jewish Brigade and marched against Nazi arabs and defeated them—the first of many victories. It took until 1968 for the Israeli army to vanquish the
Arab fascists and took East Jerusalem and West Bank bank. Terrorists like Abbas
were allowed to govern but paid murderers to constantly murder Jews—-and no
election in 18 years. Arabs have no concept of self-governing capacity.-must learn!!Info from History of Zionism by Martin Gilbert- (official Churchill biographer.