Electioneering for Israel’s March 17 general poll is fairly lackluster while exhausting the voter's patience with drummed up scandals. On traditional issues, no party leader can promise to alter the Obama administration’s views on Jerusalem, or break down Palestinian Authority resistance to a negotiated peace. Opposition efforts to prioritize social disparities in place of security concerns, or the Palestinian issue fall flat, whereas the chronic faultfinding over soured relations with Washington has faded since President Obama hitched his Mid East policy to the Iranian cart.
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Dec 27, 2014, 11:28 AM (IDT)
Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshaal, having found sanctuary from Damascus in Doha, is again being hounded from pillar to post. debkafile: A deal struck this week between Egypt and Qatar could force the Hamas leader to settle in the Iranian capital. This would afford Tehran a foothold in the Gaza Strip, its second Mediterranean outpost on the Israeli border after Lebanon. The Egyptian-Qatari memo of understanding, signed in Cairo Wednesday, Dec. 24, pulls emirate support from Brotherhood and Hamas operations against Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
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Jordanian tribal leaders and the US military are making intense efforts to keep the pilot captured by ISIS, a member of the Bararsha tribe oif South Jordan, safe. Washington regards his fate as potentially pivotal to the continued participation of four Arab air forces in the war on ISIS.
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The hacking attack on Sony most likely had a Sony insider accomplice, says DEBKAfile - a staff member with high security cover and direct access to the company’s computers.
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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and top Qatari envoys went through the motions of formalizing the Saudi-brokered reconciliation between them, when they met in Cairo Saturday, Dec. 20. But the Hamas leader's presence in Qatar remained a bone of contention.
More>DEBKAfile reports: A combined Iraqi-Kurdish force captured Mt. Sinjar and, accompanied by US advisers, attacked the northern town of Tal Afar. ISIS has meanwhile focused on grabbing the oil regions of Syria and Iraq and renewed its siege of the Iraqi refinery town of Baiji.
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The red alert for the incoming rocket from Gaza which hit the Eshkol District Friday morning Dec.19, followed dull thumps in parts of Beersheba Thursday. debkafile: They were an omen of Hamas’ return to Tehran’s sway. Their reconciliation accord provides for Hamas to revive low-key rocket fire against Israel while coordinating all its operations with Iran. Hamas will pretend “anonymous groups” are responsible. Israel is onto this turn of events but is keeping quiet for now. But Hamas celebrated with an unheard-of military parade on Temple Mount, Jerusalem.
The Syrian rebel Yarmouk Shuhada Brigades, backed and trained in Jordan for two years by US officers and supported by the Israeli army, has abruptly dumped them and switched to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, debkafile’s exclusive sources reveal. This sudden defection leaves IDF defense formations on the Golan, US and Jordanian deployments in the northern part of the kingdom, and pro-Western rebel conquests in southern Syria in danger of collapse. ISIS gains direct access to a long section of Israel’s Golan border with Syria.
Unconfirmed reports swirled around Arab capitals Sunday, Dec. 14, that President Barack Obama, in league with Moscow and Tehran, had turned his Syrian policy on its head to recognize Bashar Assad’s rule. He was said ready to accept the Syrian army as the backbone of the force battling the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. If true, the Middle East faces another strategic upheaval – and one in the eye for Israel and the Gulf. US-Russian cooperation on Syria and Palestinians would help overcome the Ukraine breach and expand US-Iranian rapprochement.
US military sources revealed Monday, Dec. 8, that Israel’s air strikes near Damascus the day before wiped out Russian hardware including missiles dispatched post haste to help Syria and Hizballah frustrate a US no-fly zone plan for northern Syria. The Kremlin has warned that any no-fly zone over Syria would be treated as direct US intervention in the Syria war, and incur Russian military intervention. The advanced anti-air missiles and radar Moscow sent Syria and Hizballah to back up this warning were destroyed by Israel. Damascus threatens Israel with “unimaginable harm.”







