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DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
November 21, 2009
DEBKAfile wonders if a new peace initiative - or two, are in the works between Paris, Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem, as Washington looks on. This month, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu signaled Presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy that he is ready to take a second look at reviving the Ankara-brokered negotiating channel with Damascus, notwithstanding Turkish prime minister Tayyep Recep Erdogan's offensive attitude toward Israel and the close ties he is building with radical Iran. This change of heart shows that Netanyahu may be cracking under the relentless pressure of Palestinians and some Arab governments blacklisting him as a negotiating partner for peace. To change his image, he may be knocking on doors to open lines to Syria and/or the Palestinians. Two Jerusalem envoys will be heading out next week to test the ground. Sunday, Nov. 22, President Shimon Peres is scheduled to sit down with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and toss around ideas for...
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
October 17, 2009
With friends like these...
The Netanyahu government's slow-moving, lackadaisical handling of the Goldstone commission mandated for accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, played into the hands of a coalition formed to strip the Israeli military of legitimacy as a defensive strike force against Iran's fast-moving nuclear weapons program and its Middle East allies' missile arsenals. Those missiles are poised to strike Israel's population centers if Iran is attacked. Israel had - and still has - plenty of moral, diplomatic and strategic tools for defending itself. They were not applied and so this hostile coalition was allowed to strike Israel on three fronts in the last fortnight: Turkish prime minister Tayyep Recip Erdogan's unleashed an unbridled assault on the Jewish state; Muslim riots suddenly flared on Temple Mount; and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas changed his mind and pushed for a special UN Human Rights Commission session Friday, Oct. 16, to endorse the Goldstone report, after first accepting its...
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
October 17, 2009
Pulling the wool over international eyes
After the hype evaporates from the Geneva encounter between the six powers and Iran and the raw emotions fade from the videotaped sight of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit, Israel is left to take stock of where it stands in relation to its enemies, Iran and the Hamas. The score is Israel - nil; Iran and its ally Hamas - two up. In the first place, Iran has gained substantially from the Obama administration's decision to abandon the US demand for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment as the precondition for talks. This US surrender has awarded Tehran the legitimacy for retaining its "nuclear right." Then, too, the Geneva conference became the platform for the world powers to agree to hold up sanctions if Iran transferred three-quarters of its low-enriched uranium (1,179,4 tons out of 1,451,4) to a Russian plant for further enrichment to 20 percent grade. The product would then be referred to France for "further technical modifications" - meaning probably a process which would...
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
November 14, 2009
Bill Clinton heads from Kosovo to Ramallah
After US Secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned Mahmoud Abbas on Oct. 31 that he was going against the wishes of president Barack Obama, the White House hauled out a heavy contingent of big American guns to make him see reason. They visit Ramallah Sunday, Nov. 15, to lean hard on him to back off his plan for a unilateral declaration of the Islamic Republic of Palestinian within 1967 or 1949 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, following the Kosovo example of 2008, according DEBKAfile's Washington and Jerusalem sources. Obama took advantage of the Sadan Forum's sixth session taking place in Jerusalem Saturday to assign key participants to this mission, including former president Bill Clinton, governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, five US congressmen and several presidential advisers including Dennis Ross. It now transpires that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas' dramatic resignation and his obstruction of peace talks by demanding that Israel first halt...
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DEBKAfile Special Analysis
September 26, 2009
Sound and fury signifying what?
Maestro Barack Obama's histrionics in New York and Pittsburgh Thursday and Friday, Sept. 24-25 - and his threat of "confrontation" for Iran's concealment of its nuclear capabilities - were water off a duck's back for Tehran, whose nuclear weapons program has gone too far to stop by words or even sanctions. The Islamic regime only responded with more defiance, announcing that its second uranium enrichment plant near Qom would become operational soon. The US president's tough words and willingness to step out of his axiomatic insistence on dialogue and turn to economic warfare against Iran may be impressive but it is no longer effective. Tehran is too close to its goal of a nuclear weapons capability to be deterred by offers of engagement or economic penalties. Obama certainly knows this. He also understands that Iran is now unstoppable except by force. His performance was therefore directed at another target: Israel, whom he is determined to dissuade from resorting to military...
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 24, 2009
US diplomat Fred Hoff spent year cultivating Syrian connections
Syrian president Bashar Assad like the leopard has not changed his spots. After Washington opened the door wide to reconciliation, lavishing goodwill gestures and a procession of emissaries over several months, Assad has abruptly slammed it shut. Wednesday, Aug. 12, he announced he was off to Tehran next week to congratulate his good friend Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his reelection as president and further cement their ties. He left behind him a trail of dashed hopes in Washington. The Obama administration had made a serious bid to detach Assad from his strategic bonds with Iran and make him the keystone for the president's comprehensive Middle East program. Assad first knocked this plan on the head on July 26 in a long conversation he had with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell in Damascus, DEBKAfile's Middle East sources disclose. It was then that the Syrian ruler turned round and rejected an American role in the next stage of his peace talks with Israel in favor of Turkey. He...
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