Palestinians are hardest working people in the Middle East

How else do you explain a 2 km tunnel from Gaza into Israel?

Obviously Mitt had it wrong when he accused Palestinians of being lazy last year.

How do you think Israelis would feel if the government corralled a bunch of conscripts and told them they were going to build a tunnel through two kilometers of sand?

The Orthodox guys would say "fuck off, we're busy studying the Tora."

The other guys would say "fuck off, we're busy smoking that Bekaa Valley Blonde."

Build a two kilometer tunnel through sand?

No thanks, Mr. Gantz!... here's you're shovel... go for it!

Why is Muslim Brotherhood doing Israel's dirty work in Gaza?

There has to be a good deal more to this story than Bloomberg Businessweek is sharing with us.

Flooding the Gaza tunnels is the sort of gesture we would have expected from Mubarak. After all, he was an unapologetic US stooge and everybody knew it.

But Morsi is supposedly a different breed of cat. Hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, just like the Hamas leadership on the other side of the fence.

Is it possible that after mere months in power Morsi has capitulated to US pressure to distance himself from his Islamist brothers in Gaza?

Is it not curious that this story emerges just as Hamas and PA delegations are in Cairo negotiating a reconciliation?

Is this story true or have a few token tunnels been temporarily flooded to make photo-ops and float a propaganda story?

"Oh look, that Morsi is not such a bad chap after all! We can do business with him..."

Egypt intercepts US missiles bound for Gaza

It's long been obvious to all who have eyes to see that if those enterprising folks who run the Gaza tunnels can squeeze a full size Mercedes sedan through there, they can certainly accommodate much else besides.

Agence France-Presse is reporting the seizure of a cache of US made surface-to-air and anti-tank missiles in the Sinai just on the Egyptian side of the Gaza border. The weapons are most likely residual fall-out from the the collapse of the security infrastructure in Libya over a year ago.

This story raises a number of questions. According to AFP the discovery was the result of a "tip," which would immediately raise the question of who provided the tip and why.

It should also raise the question of how much US and NATO ordinance has already found its way into Gaza. It was evident during the recent Operation Pillar of Cloud  that IAF helicopters were being held back from the skies over Gaza. Was this a silent acknowledgement that the IAF Apaches are sitting ducks for the Stinger missiles that have found their way into the territory?

The presence of significant stock-piles of advanced weaponry in the coastal territory would also explain Netanyahu's haste to wind down hostilities, and the cockiness of the Hamas administration afterwards.

Could it be that the presence or presumed presence of those American missiles allowed Hamas to bluff the IDF into a stand-down?

Here's to the news that disappears...

I'm a hard-core news junkie. When a story disappears I notice. I miss it. I want to know where it went.

One story that I really miss is the Bandar bin Sultan story. Bandar got a promotion in the hierarchy of the Kingdom last summer. Head of Saudi intelligence. Top spook.

Cynics would say that promotion just formalized the de facto role he's played for the last thirty years.

Which could well be true.

But within days of the official announcement Bandar disappeared from the global news radar. I noticed.

The disappearance coincided with a story well out on the fringe of the blogosphere that Bandar had been assassinated, allegedly by a Syrian hit squad. That story disappeared just as fast as Bandar disappeared.

But Bandar has been missing ever since. I've e-mailed a number of government agencies in the Kingdom looking for confirmation that Bandar is alive and well. Nothing.

I've e-mailed a number of top-drawer journos who would have access to the latest insider rumors. Nothing.

Wither Bandar?

Even more troubling, the country of Jordan has disappeared. The disappearance of Jordan is an important development. Jordan is an integral part of the Syria war narrative, the Gaza war narrative, and the Arab Spring narrative. That's three high profile narratives that suddenly see one of their main actors go missing.

Wither Jordan?

And wither all that hardware that was going through the Gaza tunnels ever since the collapse of Libya? We saw little or none of it in the imbroglio of the last ten days. Mind you, there was a conspicuous absence of attack helicopters in the air. Was that a silent acknowledgement that the Stingers are in Gaza?

These are all news nuggets that a hard-core news junkie misses when they're not around. I miss those stories. I worry about them. I want to know what became of them.

I raise a glass to the stories that disappear...