Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahuhas his hands full calming the uproar in his cabinet over infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's failed meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu in a bid to narrow the widening rift between their governments. debkafile reports the prime minister has four days to stabilize his government before flying off to Washington.
Erdogan is exploiting the upset in Jerusalem to intensify his smear campaign against Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, after responding to US pressure for establishing an independent public probe of the May 31 flotilla incident, is also quietly falling back under the international clamor to ease the sea and land siege of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip by installing international supervisory mechanisms in place of the Israeli military and navy.

debkafile's political sources note for the first time, Israel has exposed its military activities to a public probe in which international figures take part.

The US military engineers helping Egypt build a steel anti-smuggling wall along the strategic Philadelphi Route dividing Gaza from Sinai were suddenly recalled this week, debkafile's military sources report, during the talks President Joe Biden and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak held in Sharm el-Sheikh. Anxious to placate Turkey, Washington abandoned its half-a-billion dollar investment in the steel wall and turned to reviewing the Netanyahu government's future.

After more than a year, US president Barack Obama has suddenly stepped back from his icy treatment of Israel and its prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, debkafile's Washington sources report. In an effort to make amends, he sent his top advisers, including his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, with a public apology (of a kind) to leading American rabbis. George Mitchell has also been instructed not to twist Israel's arm in talks with the Palestinians.

High officers leading last week's big war game in northern Israel confronted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi with harsh criticism over the lack of a clear government strategy for dealing with the rising Hizballah threat of aggression and the uninterrupted flow of advanced weaponry from Syria to Hizballah. They said Syrian Scuds reached Hizballah because Israel was over-anxious to keep the borders calm at all costs.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has given ground on Jerusalem to bribe Palestinian leaders to go back to peace talks albeit an indirect process mediated by the United States. He has agreed to freeze construction on an East Jerusalem project at Ramat Shlomo for two years. As a result, Palestinians are celebrating their success in manipulating the Obama administration into squeezing concessions out of Israel even before the talks begin - and on Jerusalem, no less.

US president Barack Obama reaffirmed his commitment to back up Israel's policy of
nuclear ambiguity in a 20-minute telephone conversation with prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday, May 3 in connection with the UN conference on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Ahead of the start of proximity talks with the Palestinians, Obama assured Netanyahu that the joint US-Egyptian drive for a nuclear-free Middle East would not apply to Israel before a comprehensive peace is forged with all its neighbors.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and president Hosni Mubarak agreed on a joint strategy when they talked at Sharm el-Sheikh Monday, May 3, debkafile reports.  it was to go for a partial solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict based on setting up a Palestinian state within temporary borders, although this formula was repeatedly rejected by Washington and the Palestinians. Both also see Hamas control of the Gaza Strip slipping sharply as a result of their joint embargo on Gaza.

US National Security Adviser James Jones denied the US had a new Middle East plan. He was replying to reporters' questions aboard Air Force One on their way back from Prague. His denial followed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's withdrawal from the US-sponsored summit on nuclear terror opening in Washington April 11. Washington saw this as a protest against a US policy Israel considered detrimental to its security interests, such as ignoring its need for secure borders and trying to impose peace.

All the fine words about America's friendship and strategic support for Israel melted away in the flames of the rift between the Obama administration and Israel which burst out in the open during the Israeli prime minister's visit to Washington. President Barack Obama made it brutally clear that the Netanyahu government is an obstacle to his Mid East goals. He therefore has no qualms about seeking regime change in Jerusalem - even ahead of Tehran.
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US president Barack Obama kept on turning the screw on Israeli minister Binyamin Netanyahu Wednesday, March 24, after their harsh conversation Tuesday: Netanyahu was told bluntly to issue a White House-dictated public pledge to eschew further construction in East Jerusalem, or else face a US presidential notice condemning Israel and holding its government responsible for the failure to restart indirect Israel-Palestinian talks. This standoff was unsolved when Netanyahu flew home that night.

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's high-stakes talks with President Barack Obama March 24 deepened the crisis marring relations between the two governments, debkafile's Washington sources report. The White House's hand is suspected behind London's decision to expel an Israeli diplomat over unproven passport allegations, to underline its threat of isolation.
In the Middle East, Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Palestinians stand ready to exploit the US-Israel rift.

 

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's next issue reveals that, behind the scenes of the Netanyahu-Obama White House meeting, their protestations of friendship and row over construction in East Jerusalem, the Israeli prime minister was willing to pay dearly to keep the administration's support.
He paid in the coin of issues related to Israeli security, which are first disclosed in our next issue, out Friday, together with its profound bearing on America's Middle East strategy, Israel's regional standing and Netanyahu's chances of survival.
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