A few weeks ago, news broke that two senior Israeli defense officials had visited Qatar, the major source of funding for Hamas as well as for many other Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations. Most likely, they came to discuss a continuation of the status quo, in which Israel has allowed the emirate to keep the Gaza Strip from economic collapse while ensuring Hamas’s continued rule there—in exchange for Qatari pressure on the terrorist group to engage in less terrorism. Udi Levi comments:

According to the Lebanese government, the explosion in its capital city on Tuesday that left over 100 dead and many more injured or homeless was caused by the accidental detonation of some 2,750 of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer often used for making bombs. (Less than one-thousandth of that amount was used by Timothy McVeigh to destroy the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.) Previously, police have discovered Hizballah warehouses in London and Germany storing many tons of the same explosive. Hussein Ibish comments: