Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas follows Saudi, Libyan and Syrian rulers in turning their backs on the Obama administration. He opted for a partnership with the military-capable Hamas and thereby thrown the US-Turkish-Israeli axis off-course.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejected the accord initialed by the two Palestinian rivals Fatah and Hamas in Cairo April 27 before the ink had dried. "You can't have peace both with Israel and Hamas," he warned the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, although at least three previous pacts vanished without a trace. He was not alone in being caught napping by the fast work in Cairo; so too were Washington and Ankara, although both are running Palestinian back channels.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas received a stern ticking-off when he called Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Saturday, March 12, to condemn the savage murder Friday night by Palestinian terrorists of the parents and three small children of an Israeli family while they slept at their home at Itamar on the West Bank.  The Prime Minister, knowing Abbas had quietly tipped Fatah heads to endorse the perpetrators, accused him of hypocrisy. Does Abbas want to stir up another Palestinian uprising?

 

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has joined the foreign and domestic chorus pushing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to launch a fresh initiative to end the stalemate in the peace process with the Palestinians. debkafile's analysts advise Netanyahu to hold his horses until the Arab revolt is better defined and the shape of the Palestinian leadership and state emerging from the Middle East turmoil is clearer. Arab protesters are ignoring Israel and, for now, its conflict with the Palestinians is a non-issue.

Most worrisome question for Middle East rulers is this: How come that all the revolts in Arab countries have somehow benefited Tehran and its allies? Unease is growing in Israel over US policy the uprisings and the changing regional landscape in favor of its enemies.

The government headed by Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak survived the Galant episode drummed up by the media and opposition, but lost its preferred candidate for chief of staff of the armed forces. The contest is not yet over.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, Jan 31 he feared Egypt could end up with a radical Islamic regime as in Iran that would go against the region's interests for peace and stability.He also made the gesture of allowing the first Egyptian military troops to enter Sinai since the military since the 1979 peace treaty.

Netanyahu's first reactions to events in Egypt did not represent  a far-sighted assessment of the fast-moving Egyptian epic but resistance to change.

Behind the obvious effects of the defense minister's parting with Labor and creation of a new party, there were two unpublished determining factors: A new opening for talks with the Palestinians and the defense minister belief that he cut short a dangerous coup against the government with military overtones.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has resigned from Labor and formed a new party called Atzmaut (Independence.) Four of the 13 party members have so far followed him. Barak stays on as defense minister in the coalition headed by Binyamin Netanyahu. debkafile reports the two were in sync every step of the way. Three Labor ministers, Yaacov Herzog, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Avishai Braverman quit the government. Barak introduced the new party Monday, Jan. 17, as "centrist, Zionist and democratic."

Jordan's King Abdullah's phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Wednesday Jan. 5 dealt marginally with stalled diplomacy with the Palestinians. He was more concerned about the devastating effect of Iran's advancing domination of Iraq in the face of America's inaction. That day, the anti-US radical Iraqi cleric Muqtada Sadr, a close ally of Hizballah's Hassan Nasrallah, marched home from Iran; the new Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi paid his first visit to Baghdad.

The onslaught waged by aerial firefighters from half a dozen countries Saturday, Dec. 4, has begun to contain the calamitous Mt. Carmel wildfire raging since Thursday - although the situation remains volatile, depending on the wind during the night. The evacuees allowed to return home did not include Ein Hod or Nir Etzion, while Isfiya is still threatened. Volunteer defense teams caught six individuals trying to start fires in different parts of Galilee Saturday night.

Obama administration officials deny Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu came away from his marathon meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Nov. 11 with a pledged package of major incentives for a 90-day settlement construction freeze, debkafile's Jerusalem and Washington sources report. The scale of US benefits as presented by the prime minister to Israel's security and foreign affairs cabinet and the full cabinet is seen in Washington as misleading.

Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have made a big deal about the security benefits they say Barak Obama is offering for a second, 90-day moratorium on settlement construction.  However the delivery date of the second lot of 20 F-35 stealth warplanes is 2020 – ten years from now! So how will they help Israel stand up to current security threats from Iran, Hizballah, Syria and Hamas? The Obama letter of commitment is meanwhile delayed.

The package Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has accepted for US-sponsored talks with the Palestinians contains more substantial concessions than merely a freeze on settlement construction and goes far beyond the deal put before the security cabinet Saturday night, Nov. 13, debkafile reports from Jerusalem and Washington. The deal unveiled in Jerusalem early Sunday is only stage one of a larger secret package to which only Netanyahu and his close adviser Yithzak Molho are privy.

debkafile's Washington sources disclose that the three-month settlement construction freeze-for-incentives deal Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu discussed with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday, Nov. 12, also included a commitment to hold negotiations with the Palestinians during that period on final borders. Assuming the talks collapse, the Obama administration will itself chart those borders and present an American map to both sides before the three months are up. This map will closely adhere to Palestinian aspirations.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates rapped Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's knuckles for his comment in New Orleans Sunday, Nov. 7, that "Iran must be made to fear a military strike against its nuclear program." Gates shot back: "I disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran …to end its nuclear weapons program."  debkafile: The Obama administration is building up military pressure on Iran and resents the Israeli prime minister's bid to force the pace beyond its calibrated momentum.

Direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, interrupted in September after less than a week, will resume in January, 2011 following a quiet deal between the US, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, debkafile's sources disclose. Obama administration officials are upbeat after four new developments unsnarled the gridlock. Most significantly, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to a second, partial settlement building freeze and Mahmoud Abbas to drop a bid for UN recognition of unilateral statehood.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's offer to trade a settlement construction freeze for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state was not only rejected by the Palestinians and ruled out by Washington. It was criticized at home. Opening up the question of whether Israel is a Jewish state or a democracy unnecessarily invites challenge, said the critics. In 1947 the UN enshrined the Jews' right to self-determination. Coupling it with the settlement issue is counter-productive.

After the two-day Israeli-Palestinian face-to-face supervised by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell prepared for a major breakthrough during his visit to Damascus Thursday: The possible revival of Syrian-Israeli peace talks. He carries with him for Syrian president Bashar Assad a detailed withdrawal map drawn up by Binyamin Netanyahu covering much of the Golan. This map is a DEBKA-Net-Weekly Exclusive.

How did US President Barack Obama come to misjudge the cost of assenting to the start-up of Iran's first nuclear reactor? In its latest issue out Friday, DEBKA-Net-Weekly  disclosed how Iran swiftly cashed this blank check in terms of boosting its nuclear bomb program and regional standing whereas Binyamin Netanyahu was left watching his policies vis-à-vis Iran and the Arab go into the red.
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