Obama is persuaded by veteran presidential advisers of yore to impose an American solution on the parties to the Middle East conflict, curtail Israeli influence in Washington and "liberate" Arab support for the US. The Mitchell-Ross "incremental" approach is shelved.

Even if Israel were willing, it could not perform a massive shake-up of its defensive posture in the time allotted for handing 96 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, while Abbas, Fayyad and Co. bide their time for the US sledgehammer to work on Israel.

The US president advocates a Middle East peace plan whereby Palestinian state borders would enclose 96 percent of the West Bank and 133,000 Israelis evacuated. The 4 percent left with Israel would include Jerusalem.

A Hamas cross-border attack on Israeli forces outside Kissufim Friday, March 26, killed an officer, Maj. Eliraz Peretz, Dep. Commander of Golani 12 battalion, 31, from Eili, and 1st Sgt. Ilan Seviatsovsky, 21 from Rishon Lezion.
Two Israeli soldiers were also injured in the heavy fighting which followed when an Israeli tank and artillery force which crossed in to shell the attackers was ambushed by a second Hamas unit firing anti-tank weapons and bombs. Israel says Hamas is accountable for the attack.

While Mahmoud Abbas sulks over peace talks, prime minister Salam Fayad wants his US military advisers out of Palestinian territory by 2013.

The Palestinian and Israeli Arab masses failed to show up in Jerusalem for the Day of Rage, called for Tuesday, March 15 in a bid to stir up a third uprising (intifada) against Israel. No more than 500 teenagers were out on the streets. Around 14 policemen and three dozen Palestinians were injured in clashes - none seriously, and 60 arrested. In case of more trouble, a high police alert will be maintained until the weekend.
 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is unmoved by Western media inattention to his hate campaign against Jews and Israel. He is campaigning hard to plant the poison in the Muslim mainstream. Its malevolence recalls Nazi "final solution" propaganda. DEBKA-Net-Weekly first disclosed the existence of this manifesto on March 5, 2010. debkafile now makes it available ...

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has summoned allied Islamist and terrorist chiefs to Tehran Saturday, Feb. 27, to finalize their roles in military operations against Israel in the event of a Middle East conflagration. It will be the sequel to the preliminary discussions Ahmadinejad held in Damascus with Syrian president Bashar Assad and Hizballah and Hamas chiefs Thursday, Feb. 25.

 

In a new audio message aired by Al Jazeera TV Sunday, Jan. 24, Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the Dec. 25 attempt to blow up an airliner bound for Detroit and vowed there would be more attacks. In a message addressed from "Osama to Obama," he said America would have no peace unless there was "security for Palestinians."  
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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.

debkafile's military sources report that a bitter feud within the Popular Committees, climaxing in a failed attempt to murder the group's leader Zakaria Doghmush, triggered the mortar volleys against the Kerem Shalom goods crossing and missile attack on Ashkelon Thursday, Jan. 8.  It also marks weakened Hamas control.

At the core of the new peace proposal would be a letter signed by the US presidential underwriting an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord based on pre-1967 borders with adjustments to accommodate demographic changes, limited territorial swaps and support for East Jerusalem as capital of a future Palestinian state.
 

The year 2010 will see a new Israeli military operation in Gaza - not against the Palestinian Hamas, but the al Qaeda bastions spreading across the southern Gaza Strip, say intelligence circles close to the Obama administration and the CIA. They say the strengthened al Qaeda networks in the Gaza Strip would be as menacing as their strongholds in Yemen.