Mideast roundup

• Ha’aretz has some details on some of the weapons it says the U.S. government denied Israel out of fear they’d be used to attack Iran. They include bunker-buster bombs, permission to use an air corridor over Iraq to fly to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes, the report said.
• Gabriela Shalev, who this week officially began her job as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, came out swinging in her first public statement on the job. Responding to an Iranian protest of remarks by Israeli ministers that Israel could kidnap Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Shalev said: “It is absurd that Iran preaches morality to Israel,” and more.
• Following a boat trip to Gaza that thwarted Israel’s blockade of the strip and resulted in his arrest by Israeli authorities, the director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Jeff Halper, faces a major funding crisis. The European Union, which provided much of the funding for the controversial organization (which blames Israeli Jews for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), is not renewing its grant to the group, NGO Monitor reports.
• Former Israeli national security adviser Giora Eiland is troubled about Israeli-Syrian negotiations. In a piece in Ynet, he writes: “The three most bothersome issues are as follows: The order of our actions, the absence of a genuine security assessment, and the disregard shown to the United States.”