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.

West Bank security has dropped sharply since the Gaza ceasefire brought in eased restrictions for Hamas and fellow terrorists and tight rules of engagement for Israeli soldiers. Palestinian mobs on the West Bank are free to hurl rocks and abuse at Israel soldiers who, like their comrades at the Gaza fence, are not allowed to shoot back. At the assembly the Palestinian Authority has permitted Hamas to stage in Nablus Thursday, West Bank Palestinians will be rallied to the united flag of “resistance.”

Hamas-Damascus, contrary to Western reports, is firmly maintaining its ties with the Assad regime and the Iranian officials posted to the Syrian capital and Beirut as well as Hizballah, debkafile's sources report. Neither is Hamas seeking to break its ties with Iran, its arms and cash supplier for years. Indeed, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is seizing on the coming Tehran visit by Hamas' Gazan Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as opening a back door for mending its fences with the Iranian leadership.

Without informing US or Israeli security coordinators, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday, Dec. 27 suddenly fired the West Bank's top security officer Maj. Gen. Diab el-Ali and replaced him with military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Nidal Dokhan. debkafile reveals this followed a deal with Khaled Meshaal to restore Hamas to the West Bank, retool the PNSF and mount a new anti-Israel "resistance" campaign: mass demonstrations are to smash through West Bank barriers, storm into Israel and break into Jewish settlements.

Mahmoud Abbas must suspend his bid for Palestinian membership of the UN and its institutions to get hold of frozen American and Israeli cash transfers. The Palestinian Authority is not only broke because of his missteps, but also made irrelevant by the upheavals in the rest of the Arab ...

To punish the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for submitting his application for UN membership in defiance of President Barack Obama's strong objections, Washington leaned on Jordan's King Abdullah II to allow a visit by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to discuss his political bureau's transfer from Damascus to Amman. Saudi Arabia helped persuade him. Obama was telling Abbas thereby that if Hamas should moderate its extremism, his role as sole Palestinian spokesman would face serious competition.

New Israeli concessions to Hamas for the release of the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit have not produced momentum because the kidnapped soldier has become a pawn in the power plays between Cairo, Hamas and Damascus. Khaled Meshaal's trip to Cairo came out of an Egyptian overture to Syria. Bashar Assad took the Palestinian card  to serve his crackdown on the opposition and counter-balance his massacre of Latakia's Palestinians.

Egypt's military rulers are letting Hamas' political leader Khaled Meshaal move his base out of troubled Damascus to the Gaza Strip. The pledge came as an inducement for his signing the Palestinian unity pact with Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah on May 4, as disclosed for the first time by debkafile's intelligence sources.  In Damascus, Bashar Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf threatened Syria would go to war against Israel if the US and Europe did not back off from supporting the anti-regime uprising. 

Senior Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 50, died in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 20 and his body reached Damascus on Jan. 28, according to Izzat Rishq speaking at Hamas headquarters in the Syrian capital early Friday, Jan. 29.  He accused Israel of his assassination without specifying its circumstances.  ...