Wednesday, July 6, the Palestinian Authority notified the Obama administration that early next week it would file a request with the UN Security Council for admission to the UN as a full member recognized as an independent state within the 1967 borders. But debkafile reports the US got in first, having agreed with European powers and Russia to have the request put on ice by the Security Council consenting to discuss it behind closed doors - without setting a date.

The organizers of Freedom Flotilla II against Israel's naval blockade on Gaza – among them Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal's son-in-law Hamoud Tareq - never dreamed the stalling of their expedition would be served up as the founding step of the nascent pro-US Israel-Greek-Turkish alliance. If Mahmoud wants to jump aboard this grouping, he must drop his UN move for Palestinian recognition, so pre-empting the storm Binyamin Netanyahu's ill-wishers are counting on for ending his rule.

President Barack Obama has shelved any serious effort to generate Israel-Palestinian negotiations for at least two years, debkafile's exclusive sources report from Washington. "It's a second term issue," he is quoted as telling his advisers. Only in November 2012 will he know if he is returned for another term as president and then too is unlikely to get back to the Israeli-Palestinian issue for several more months – "depending largely how the Arab Revolt" goes.

Obama and Erdogan had divided up Arab Revolt missions between them, targeting another two Arab rulers, Muammar Qaddafi and Bashar Assad, for eventual eviction – first by diplomacy, then by force - when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi jumped in with a demand for NATO to halt hostilities in ...

The Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian military junta were hand in glove in framing the Mossad Spy trap for the US and Israel. They are also in cahoots to build up the Hamas as the Brotherhood's instrument for seizing control of the Palestinian movement and displacing US influence including its ...

The final touches on US President Barack Obama's push to revive Israel-Palestinian negotiations are being put in place by his Middle East advisers David Hale and Dennis Ross and the legal adviser to the National Security Council Jonathan Schwartz who arrived in Israel Tuesday, June 14. After tying up arrangements in Jerusalem, the group is to meet Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas Thursday.
debkafile reports the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have dropped pre-conditions and agreed to sit down and talk.

The White House is going full steam ahead with preparations for an early summit between US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to restart the peace process, debkafile's Washington sources report exclusively. While Obama is satisfied with extracting from Netanyahu three major concessions, Israeli sources call on the US president to shift ground on "land swaps" and security provisions or the peace talks will end amid an Israel-US crisis as soon as they begin.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has run into major hurdles in his ploy for using a unity pact between his Fatah and the extremist Hamas as the fulcrum for a diplomatic offensive against Israel to climax in UN recognition of a Palestinian state in September. This is reported by debkafile's exclusive Middle East sources. The US and Russia have nixed Abbas' international moves until his unity partner Hamas recognizes Israel and Jordan's Abdullah accuses him of two-timing him with that same partner.

 

By rejecting US President Barack Obama's proposal for Israel and its troops to pull back from the West Bank to behind the indefensible 1967 lines, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lands in the company of eleven Middle East and North African rulers who spurned Washington's Middle East policy in the six months of the unfolding Arab uprising.
In his speech Thursday, May 19, Obama strengthened those Arab rulers' determination to oppose his policy and increased the prospects of an Israel-Arab war.

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.

While raising Cain about Israeli settlement construction, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is seriously weighing a secret plan for bringing a fresh influx of Hamas fighting and intelligence forces into the West Bank at points opposite Israel in a bid to patch up their feud, debkafile's sources report. Israel warns that this plan would bring IDF troops back into the West Bank towns turned over to the Palestinians and restore the dozens of dismantled roadblocks.

Chinese president Hu Jintao was taken by surprise by the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas's plea to support tough sanctions against Iran's nuclear program when they met in Shanghai Saturday, May 1, debkafile's Middle East sources reveal. A Middle East war, a real peril in the absence of sanctions, would cost the lives of many Palestinians who would be caught in the middle.
Abbas said he spoke for most Arab rulers.

Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas stated Monday, April 26 that he is willing to go back to negotiations with Israel, without pre-conditions, if the Arab League's monitoring committee session on May 1 approves. "Try me," he said in an exclusive interview with Israel Channel 2 TV's Ehud Yaari.
debkafile notes that Abbas appears to have radically changed direction after 15 months of stalling against US efforts to restart the talks on one pretext or another.

The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas made US presidential envoy George Mitchell go and find him in Amman, only to lay down a fresh prohibitive condition for indirect peace talks to begin: Israel must first open its prison doors to free 2,000 Palestinian terrorists, twice the number demanded by Hamas for handing over kidnapped soldier Gilead Shalilt. And so another Mitchell mission runs aground.

 

The "sprained ankle" Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas suffered from slipping over at home was very much diplomatically motivated, debkafile's Middle East sources report. It was his pretext to stay out of the way of the US president's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, when he arrived in the region March 20 fired up to restart Palestinian-Israeli proximity peace talks before he is ready. Abbas may also duck the Arab summit opening this week.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas complained to the UN about Israel's enforcement of order on Temple Mount Friday, March 5, even though the disturbances were staged by radical Hamas and Islamist elements to destroy the US-mediate peace track which he has agreed to join.

By renouncing the principle of direct negotiations for peace, Binyamin Netanyahu has opened the door for the Arab League and other unsympathetic international bodies to crash the process and bulldoze Israel into steps contrary to its interests. George Mitchell and Joe Biden to keep him on track.
 

The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, inventor and refiner of the Islamic suicide terror weapon, left a time bomb ticking away six years after his mysterious death in Paris, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources revealed exclusively last week. Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has grabbed the secret Arafat archive of world leaders' secrets and is refusing to hand it over to the Palestinian Authority. Arafat's widow Suha also has a claim to the prize.