John Kerry faces more obstacles than realistic prospects for his many small steps toward reviving the Middle East peace process and bring Hamas as well as Abu Mazen to the negotiating table. For this he is counting on help from the Turkish prime minister and Qatari emir.

The furious Palestinian protesters of Hebron, Nablus and other West Bank towns and villages are in no mood to hear Israel’s side of any dispute. Their violent protests will continue regardless of whether or not Arafat Jaradat died in jail from Israel mistreatment, as the Palestinian Authority claims, or of heart failure, as Israel replies. Mahmoud Abbas appears to count on reining in the violence whenever he decides it has exhausted its political usefulness. But most intelligence watchers think he is playing with fire.

Qatar and Egypt are playing a double game with Washington, easing Iran’s path to reconnect with Hamas in Gaza after the connection was snapped by the Israeli operation in November.

President Obama took some tough steps to weaken the Iranian front ahead of the direct US-Iranian nuclear talks beginning December 1. The latest is a March deadline for results. But US military strength is also lined up just in case  face-to-face with Iran leads nowhere. Most significantly, in September, the Pentagon and the US Army completed the deployment of US military strength in strike position and intensified military pressure on the Assad regime.
 

Thursday night, Nov. 29, the UN General Assembly grants Palestine non-member observer status within the 1967 borders by majority vote. But to which Palestinian rule does it apply?  Abbas’s Fatah is fading, whereas the extremist Hamas in the Gaza Strip is a rising force. If it qualifies for a place in the Sunni Middle East grouping Egypt, Turkey and Qatar are building with US backing and Israeli approval, Hamas may become the beneficiary of the upgraded Palestinian status won by Abbas.

Israel’s operation was an intel coup to shut Iran’s gateway to Cairo via Hamas.

“Israel will do all it can to prevent Iran from re-arming Hamas after its losses in our Gaza operation,” said Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz Sunday, Nov. 25.
But debkafile intelligence sources learn that Saturday, Nov. 24, just three days after the Gaza ceasefire, three Iranian missile engineers managed to steal into the Gaza Strip. They reached Gaza from their Lebanese base on false passports through Sinai and one of the smuggling tunnels blasted in the Israeli operation and repaired by Hamas.

The Hamas brought the Israeli offensive down on the Gaza Strip by pushing out the military envelope too far against Israel while it was still the weakest cog in Iran’s radical terror machine. When Obama learned of Khamenei’s design to convert the Gaza Strip into Iran’s southern front, he ...

The Gaza operation was an exercise in deception, designed by six intelligence chiefs to trigger two coups – one to restore Mohamed Morsi’s powers as Egyptian president and the other to purge Hamas of its pro-Iranian elements.

For Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to obtain Hamas’s consent to a ceasefire Wednesday, Nov. 21, Israel made certain concessions. The most damaging was acceding to Egypt’s role as truce monitor and arbitrator between itself and Hamas and the address for complaints of violations, misunderstandings and brokering future negotiations for regulating future relations. By this step, Israel accepted Egypt’s superior authority and demoted itself to an equal footing with a terrorist group, Hamas.

The trio conducting Israel’s Gaza operation are reexamining their plan to launch a ground offensive now in view of strong pressure from US President Barack Obama to desist - although he solidly supported the Israeli operation until now. Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman are weighing three options: Sending troops into Gaza regardless; delaying ground action until Wednesday or: launching immediate ground sorties  to test the ground. An Israeli delegation flew to Cairo when Obama insisted on giving failed truce talks another chance.

Missile alert sirens sounded across Greater Tel Aviv Saturday, Nov. 17, before an explosion caused by Iron Dome’s interception of one of the two rockets incoming from the Gaza Strip against Israel’s largest conurbation for the third day in a row. The second rocket landed harmlessly on open ground.
Hamas claimed to have launched Iran-made Fajr-5 long-range missile against Tel Aviv. The Iron Dome anti-missile battery was deployed for the first time in Greater Tel Aviv that morning,

Knowing that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt had egged Hamas on to launch a major missile offensive against Israel, the Netanyahu government took the precaution of getting US backing before launching Israel’s counter-offensive to degrade the terrorist group’s rocket capabilities.

The first three Palestinian missiles reached the Tel Aviv conurbation, Gush Dan, Thursday night, Nov. 15. shortly after a long-range missile exploded in Rishon Lezion southeast of Tel Aviv and sirens sounded in outlying towns of Holon, Ness Ziona, Gan Raveh and Beer Yacov. None report casualties or damage. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered 30,000 army reservists drafted. The IDF spokesmen earlier reported units of the elite paratroop and Givati Brigades were mustering outside the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians fired 50 rockets from Gaza Wednesday night, Nov. 14 - of which Iron Dome intercepted 17 - after an Israeli air assault killed the Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabari and destroyed dozens of missile sites. The rockets were fired at Beersheba, Ashdod and Eshkol, causing no casualties. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi did not issue a statement on the Israeli operation, but recalled his ambassador from Tel Aviv and said Cairo would ask the UN Security Council to stop “Israeli aggression.”

Ahmed Jabari, commander of Hamas’s military arm, Ezz e-din al-Qassam, was killed in a targeted Israeli air attack in Gaza City Wednesday. Jabari, 52, a key figure in the radical Palestinian Hamas movement, was caught driving in a black Mercedes in Gaza City. Israel’s counter-terror operation Pillar of Cloud continues after Hamas declared: We are at war. debkafile’s military sources report that southern Israeli was placed on high alert. First rockets hit Ashkelon and Eshkol.

The Gulf emirs are competing for the favors of Gaza’s Hamas rulers while ready to drop Mahmoud Abbas of Ramallah.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar will not just be visiting the Gaza Strip as a benefactor but with a plan to extend the regional ambitions he launched by intervening in the Libyan revolt and the Syrian conflict. He hopes to shore Hamas up as a force for reining in Salafi and al Qaeda lawlessness in Sinai before it cuts into Qatari influence in Libya. Israel may be up against more than Islamist terrorists, but their Qatari sponsor  too. 

Israeli intelligence and air force waged a cyber battle Saturday, Oct. 6 with unidentified parties, most likely Hizballah or Iran, which sent a satellite-guided unmanned helicopter into Israeli air space through the Mediterranean.  debkafile reports exclusively: For 30 minutes, control of the helicopter swung back and forth between Israeli cyber operators and unknown agents over southern Israel. Finally, four Israeli F-16 fighters shot the trespasser down, the while Israeli cyber experts tried to identify its satellite controller.

Gone are the days when Mahmoud A-Zahar, Gaza’s Hamas strongman, received a royal welcome in Tehran. When he arrived in the Iranian capital Sunday, Sept. 9 he found a chilly reception, although he brought with him in secret a large Hamas military delegation to persuade Iran’s leaders that Hamas could be trusted to pull its weight in reprisals for a potential Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program.  Tehran is nonetheless diverting support, arms and funding away from Hamas to the Jihad Islami.