All Policy Analysis by Matthew Levitt

It's been a year since the bombing of a U.S. diplomatic convoy in Gaza that killed three Americans. Palestinian officials say they know who was responsible but will not arrest them, Washington does little about the case. The convoy the terrorists targeted was bringing State Department officials on a mission

On October 4, 2004, Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Peter Hansen unapologetically admitted to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that the UN employs members of Hamas. "Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll," Hansen stated, "and I don't see that

The Sept. 11 Commission report is a remarkable and important document. The product of a serious and professional staff that enjoyed unprecedented access to highly classified information, the report is rich in information and has already shaped much of the discourse over the upcoming US election. To be sure, the

Last week, federal authorities in Chicago indicted three senior Hamas members—two of whom were arrested in the United States, while the third remains at large in Syria—on charges of racketeering and (in the case of one defendant) providing material support to terrorists. The indictment marks a watershed in the prosecution

The 9/11 Commission Report is a remarkable and important document. The product of a serious and professional staff that enjoyed unprecedented access to highly classified information, the report is rich in information and has already shaped much of the discourse over the upcoming US election. To be sure, the report

In 1995, Jewish extremist Yigal Amir caught Israeli society off guard when he assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in an effort to derail the Labor government's pursuit of a peace accord with the Palestinian Authority (PA). Today, Israeli society is coming to terms with a similarly acute Jewish extremist threat

When the IDF withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hizballah realized that it had to change direction somewhat, primarily because it had lost its avowed justification (and any hint of international legitimacy) for carrying out attacks from Lebanon. Accordingly, Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah, the group's secretary-general, instantly changed his rhetoric

BOOK REVIEW The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America By Stephen F. Hayes HarperCollins. 194 pp. $19.95 Proponents of the war in Iraq traditionally point to three primary justifications: the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Saddam Hussein's torturous regime and Iraq's ties to

Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a stalemate that is worsening over time. The withdrawal initiative by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon creates an opportunity to transform the situation, but the direction of that transformation remains an unanswered question. Many Palestinians view an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an evacuation

The attack that killed 185 Shi'a Muslims in Iraq during the religious festival of Ashura bore the hallmarks of operations planned by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to US Central Command. Matthew Levitt examines Zarqawi's role as a co-ordinator of diverse extremist networks in Iraq and beyond. According to General John

Responding to the March 22, 2004, assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinian prime minister said, "Yassin is known for his moderation and he was controlling the Hamas" from being more radical. Though frequently called the group's "moderate" leader, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin has been directly implicated

Responding to Monday's assassination of Hamas founder Shaykh Ahmed Yassin, Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qurei stated, "Yassin is known for his moderation, and he was controlling the Hamas" from being more radical. Though frequently called the group's "moderate" leader, Yassin has been directly implicated in authorizing, directing, funding, and providing

Paper presented at the workshop "The Dimensions of Terrorist Financing," University of Pittsburgh I. Introduction: Getting Up to Speed Many of the charitable and service organizations serving as fronts for international terrorist groups today grew out of the network of organizations established in the 1980s to provide funding, materiel, recruits

Confusion dominates what has been described as Spain's "place in the history of infamy" because of multiple clues about who could have blown up the Madrid trains that killed about 200 people. Spanish authorities were already on high alert for a possible attack by the Basque terrorist group ETA (Basque

The following is aÿrapporteur's summary of Matthew Levitt's remarks to the CNA Corporation's Center for Strategic Studies workshop on "Oil, Terrorism, and More: The Growing Strategic Significance of West Africa." As we succeed in denying terrorists safe havens in Afghanistan in elsewhere, international Jihadist networks seek new locations in which

Union Transport Africaines (UTA) Flight 141 bound for Beirut crashed on take-off from Cotonou in Benin, West Africa on 25 December 2003. According to accounts in the Arab press, a "foreign relations official of the African branch of the Lebanese Hizbullah party and two of his aides" were among those

On February 5, 2004, a German court acquitted Abdelghani Mzoudi, a thirty-one-year-old native Moroccan, of 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization (al-Qaeda). Mzoudi is suspected of having provided material and financial support to the Hamburg cell that helped organize and perpetrate the terrorist attacks

Since June, intermittent reports have suggested Riyadh was on the verge of taking firm action against terror financiers among the Saudi elite. After a series of unexplained delays, a U.S. delegation visiting the Saudi capital in December finally secured Saudi agreement to shut the offices of the al Haramain Foundation

Pundits and politicians alike tend to think of the war on terror against al Qaeda as a completely disparate phenomenon from the battle against other terrorist groups. This is, in part, a logical supposition as groups like Hamas and Hezbollah do not belong to the more tightly knit family of

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher bravely told an audience at the American University of Kuwait recently that "we [Arab nations] have failed in taking a stand against targeting civilians in all sides, including Israeli civilians." His Jan. 13 comment is significant because it followed the "strong condemnation of terrorism in