Can Israel allow itself these drums of war? The funerals? The sirens? The forces deployed across the border?

A little-publicized report released during the final weeks of Israel’s summer offensive on the Gaza Strip last year accuses Israel of targeting water and wastewater infrastructure during the 51-day assault, despite having been provided the coordinates of all water and wastewater facilities.

Entitled Water Sector Damage Assessment Report, the paper by the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) meticulously documents $34 million in damages that have caused a humanitarian and environmental crisis throughout the Gaza Strip.

Israel said it had received a message from UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, that Hezbollah was not interested in further escalation.

In Beirut, a Lebanese source briefed on the situation told Reuters that Israel informed Hezbollah via UNIFIL „that it will make do with what happened yesterday and it does not want the battle to expand“.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to both Houses of Congress to rebut President Obama’s Iran policy is a full-on fiasco. It keeps stirring things up and getting attention. Opposition to the speech is mounting on Capitol Hill, say both the US Campaign to End the Occupation and Jeffrey Goldberg. And any reasonable person has to wonder, Wait, why are the warmongering Israelis messing in our negotiations? Where did a rightwing foreign prime minister derive the power to take on the president on equal terms?

„Given the political uncertainty, it‘s fair to say that U.S. government officials are in communication with various parties in Yemen about what is a very fluid and complex political situation,“ Kirby said.

As President Obama performs a delicate tango with Saudi Arabia’s new monarch, King Salman, the critical question facing Washington is this: Does the United States stand with the Houthis against Al-Qaida, i.e., on the side of Iran and against Saudi Arabia?

Evangelical political operative planned 9-day freebie trip for national committee members, on behalf of the conservative Christian AFA group which blasts Muslims, gays. SPLC rights group staffer: Our issue is not with the trip, but with the ‚heinous beliefs‘ of those sponsoring it.

Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN), along with CPC Peace and Security Task Force Chair Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) sent a letter to Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chairman Richard Shelby and Ranking Member Sherrod Brown and House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce and Ranking Member Elliot Engel urging them to postpone enacting new sanctions legislation on Iran. The letter opposes sanctions that threaten to derail the P5+1 negotiations, which is an ongoing effort to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

The text of the letter is below and a signed version can be found here.

If the goal of House Speaker John Boehner asking Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress in early March was to undermine the Obama administration‘s nuclear negotiations with Iran, well, that backfired — at least in the short term. On Tuesday, a key group of Senate Democrats, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez „told the White House they will hold their fire on Iran sanctions until March 24, taking pressure off the Obama administration as it seeks to complete negotiations about the country‘s nuclear program,“ NBC‘s Frank Thorp reports.