Ze'ev Schiff

The bombing of the buses yesterday proves Hamas' unwillingness to accept a cease-fire in anticipation of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, as its people told Egyptian officials in Cairo last week.

The warhead of the Iranian Shihab-3 missile has been considerably upgraded, according to photographs published in Iranian newspapers of test launches three weeks ago.

Before former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency head George Tenet retired, he made stinging comments on various occasions to Israeli officials in the intelligence community, especially the Mossad, saying Israel had a spy in America.

A delegation of senior officers from Egypt, including several generals, visited Israel this week and discussed ways to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt to Gaza.

The IDF's difficulty at putting an end to the firing of Qassams into the Negev and the town of Sderot, despite the presence of troops in the Beit Hanun area in northern Gaza, will force the army to expand the area it controls so it can operate from there.

The threat from the rockets supplied by Iran and Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon has grown both in range and quantity. The commander in chief of the army in Syria army considers the rocket array to be part of his country's general deployment against Israel in case of war.

The Mossad has been entangled overseas in messy affairs over the years involving the use of foreign passports, but the current New Zealand debacle has taken on unusual proportions because the New Zealand claims that local Jews are involved.

Israel must take the spread of nuclear technology into account and remember that terror is getting more sophisticated: Other countries could get nuclear weapons, and the ordinary deterrence that worked in the past may not be effective any more. This was the key message in a Haaretz interview with IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei.

In spite of a massive IDF presence in the northern Gaza Strip, in the area from which Qassam rockets are being fired against Sderot, exchanges of fire continue unabated.

With the Israel Defense Forces' Operation Rainbow in Rafah drawing to a close, it's clear that the army's accomplishments were minimal.

Israel intends to offer compensation to the owners of hundreds of homes along the Philadelphi route, on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, if the buildings are damaged in the framework of the Israel Defense Forces' operation to broaden the road.

Proposal raised during talks between IDF officers, AG Mazuz about legal repercussions of the Philadelphi expansion plan.

It doesn't matter who pulled the trigger and hit dozens of innocent Palestinian civilian demonstrators. It doesn't matter what were the circumstances of the mishap that led to the killing and wounding of so many.

The decision to hold onto Philadelphi route, running between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, despite the separation plan for withdrawal from Gaza, led the IDF to an operational decision - expand the road, to make it easier to defend.