Amir Oren

Major General Dan Halutz, commander-in-chief of the Israel Air Force, will be appointed deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces in the summer, thereby becoming the front-runner to be the next chief of staff.

The Shin Bet security service believes that if Yasser Arafat remains in charge of the Palestinian Authority, terror attacks can be expected all the way to 2006, for lack of any political progress that includes the Palestinian security services fighting terrorism.

A joint committee comprised of representatives of the Shin Bet security service, the police and the IDF will convene tonight to prepare for the interrogation of Elhanan Tennenbaum after he is returned to Israel in the prisoner exchange with Hezbollah.

The Pentagon's intelligence service, the Defense Intelligence Agency, was receiving highly classified information from knowledgeable Israeli sources, throughout the 1967 Six-Day War, according to just released U.S. documents dating from the era of Lyndon Johnson's administration.

Members of the Israel Defense Forces' General Staff will soon take part in a war game based on the assumption that the Palestinian front is likely to heat up in the coming months.

The Israel Defense Forces' Military Intelligence division believes that over the last 100 days, Hamas has refrained from carrying out terror strikes against Israeli civilians west of the Green Line.

An operation to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities if necessary is under consideration, according to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.

In capturing Saddam, President George W. Bush showed how to deal with a pesky fly: You demolish the house in which the fly is buzzing and then scour every corner until the fly is found. That's the advantage a superpower has over small, sophisticated countries that are trying to kill an enemy leader who is trying to elude it.

The death of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat would set in motion a sequence of events that could culminate in an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, a report released this week by the U.S. intelligence community predicts.

In Stephen Crane's novel on the American Civil War, "The Red Badge of Courage," one of the soldiers is proud to be called "a real Jim Hickey," which in those days meant something like "a great guy."

NATO will not serve as an international buffer force between Israel and the future Palestinian state, and Israel is not a candidate to join the international military alliance, NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson told reporters yesterday.

Israel Defense Forces Brigadier General Eliezer Shakedi will be the next commander-in-chief of the air force. Shakedi will be promoted to major general, and take up his post next April, replacing Commander Dan Halutz.

Major general Dan Halutz has announced that his four-year term as commander of the Israel Air Force will come to an end on April 4, 2004. When he turns over the command to his successor, perhaps at 4 P.M. that day, a foursome of Phantom or F-16 warplanes will undoubtedly roar through the skies above.

The U.S. Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) has recommended to the Bush administration to apply 'clear and intentional pressure' on Israel regarding the settlements, as part of making headway with the Palestinians, as well as helping to calm the situation heating up in Iraq.

Senior officers in the IDF, including Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon, have strong reservations about Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz's decision to call up reserve infantry battalions to beef up the seam zone between the territories and Israel.

In the days when he was defense minister, Ezer Weizman used to get angry every day at the articles and opinion pieces that appeared in the morning newspapers or on the radio.