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Tell it like it is, Even if it offends the Vast Majority!

March 29, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Of all the writers I read after in

Israeli press releases, I admire none more than Caroline Glick. She has the heart of a patriot!

She denounces the way that the U.S., EU, and UN have pressured Israel into accepting their way of dealing with the peace process, rather that letting Israel follow its own policies, which were better than those promoted by the leadership of the West in the past.

However, I am very much afraid the current Israeli government is so fragmented it may well end up accepting a seven to ten year Hudna (truce) with the Hamas controlled Palestinian government, in order to get a breather from the horrendous loss of popularity it has suffered in the last year. As soon has the many terrorist groups, and the terrorist nations that sponsor them, have used the Hudna to build their military might to the proper levels, they will break such a truce, probably at some point in time between 2008 and 2012.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article

Our World: Condi’s embrace of Jihadist ‘Peace’

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST

March 26, 2007

In an open act of war, Iran Friday kidnapped 15 British soldiers in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s act of aggression occurred just as the British voted in favor of a UN Security Council resolution imposing increased sanctions against Teheran for its illicit nuclear weapons program.

Several theories have been raised to explain Iran’s behavior. Some say that the Iranians acted against the British in the hope that Britain would respond by abandoning its alliance with the US and swiftly pulling its forces out of Iraq.

Another theory is that in kidnapping the sailors the Iranians are seeking to reenact their ploy from last summer.

Then, Iran ordered its Lebanese proxy Hizbullah to kidnap IDF soldiers in order to divert the international community’s attention away from Iran’s nuclear program.

As is the case with the British servicemen, so last summer’s attack on the IDF took place as the Security Council was expected to convene and discuss sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Yet another theory has it that Iran kidnapped the sailors to use as a bargaining chip to force the US military to release Iranian operatives who the US has arrested in Iraq in recent months. Whatever the case may be, it is absolutely clear that the Iranians intentionally fomented this international crisis with the expectation that their aggression would in some way be rewarded.

AGAINST THIS backdrop, and given the stakes involved, it could have been expected that the US and its allies would be concentrating their attention on how to weaken Iran and its terror proxies and curtail Iran’s ability to acquire a nuclear arsenal.

But, alas, the US is doing just the opposite.

The Iranians acted as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was en route to the region. Since Friday, Rice has shuttled between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, and is on her way to Saudi Arabia. She is not working to coordinate moves to check Iran’s increasing bellicosity. Rather, Rice is laboring to empower Teheran’s terrorist allies in Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Fatah. This she does by promoting the so-called Arab peace plan, which demands that Israel agree to dangerous and strategically catastrophic concessions to the Palestinian terrorist government.

In behaving thus, Rice is walking in the well-worn footsteps of her predecessors. Indeed, it seems almost axiomatic that when the going gets tough for US administrations, administration officials get tough on Israel.

AFTER THE Republicans won control of the Congress in 1994, then president Bill Clinton was hard-pressed to advance his domestic agenda. And so Clinton – who had almost no interest in foreign policy in his opening years of office – turned his attention to Israel and the so-called peace process, in which Israel was expected to give land, arms and legitimacy to the PLO in exchange for terrorism.

Clinton’s penchant for forcing Israeli concessions to the PLO in the name of peace became more pronounced as things became more difficult for him during his impeachment hearings in 1998. As the House of Representatives poised to vote on articles of impeachment, Clinton twisted then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s arm until he signed the Wye Plantation memorandum, in which Israel pledged to transfer wide swathes of Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat’s terrorist government.

Clinton forced Netanyahu’s hand in spite of the fact that, by 1998, it was clear that Arafat was actively enabling Hamas and Islamic Jihad to carry out terror attacks against Israel and indoctrinating Palestinian society to wage jihad for Israel’s destruction.

But negotiating with Netanyahu was inconvenient. Netanyahu refused to implement the Wye agreement in light of Arafat’s support for terrorism and forced Clinton to acknowledge that Arafat was doing nothing to combat terror. Unhappy with this state of affairs, Clinton set out to overthrow Netanyahu’s government.

IN AN ACT of unmitigated contempt for Israeli democracy and electoral laws, Clinton sent his own election advisers James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and Robert Schrum to Israel to run Labor party leader Ehud Barak’s campaign in the 1999 elections.

The culmination of Clinton’s campaign was the failed Camp David summit in July 2000. There, and in subsequent desperate discussions with Arafat at Taba, Barak agreed to hand over the Temple Mount to Arafat in addition to Gaza, Judea, Samaria and a pile of money.

Israel paid dearly for Barak and Clinton’s behavior. In the Palestinian jihad that followed Arafat’s rejection of Barak and Clinton’s plaintive offers, more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered – more than 70 percent of whom were civilians. Israel’s international standing fell to all-time lows as global anti-Semitism rose to levels unseen since the Holocaust.

America too, paid dearly for Clinton’s behavior. Rather than pay attention to the burgeoning terror nexus which had placed the US directly in its crosshairs – in 1993 at the World Trade Center; in 1996 at the Khobar Towers; in 1998 at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and in 2000 at the USS Cole – Clinton remained scope-locked on the so-called peace process.

Rather than acknowledge the existence and threat of the global jihad to US national security, Clinton pressured the global jihad’s primary victim – Israel

– into transferring its heartland and capital to the godfather of modern terrorism.

But while Israel and America bled, Clinton himself paid no price for his behavior.

Rather than be blamed for the war he contributed so richly to enabling, Clinton is upheld as a hero at best, or at worst a tragic figure who devoted his presidency to the cause of peace.

Today, Rice’s newfound mania for peacemaking comes when local conditions negate any possibility of peace. Just last month the Saudis promised

the Palestinians a billion dollars and so paved the way for the Mecca accord, where the Iranian-sponsored Fatah terror group surrendered to the Iranian-sponsored Hamas terror group. In so acting, the Saudis brought about the formation of a Palestinian government openly committed to the use of terrorism as a tool to ensure Israel’s destruction.

International conditions also ensure that Rice’s peacemaking will fail to make peace.

Regionally, Iran ups the ante daily against the US-led coalition in Iraq.

Domestically, the Democratic-controlled Congress works daily to prevent the US from fighting its enemies. Globally, states as far-flung as Russia, China and Venezuela make deals with terror governments to check US power.

The program that Rice has come to the region to advance does not even have the benefit of a peaceful facade. The Palestinians make clear every single day that they do not and will not accept Israel’s right to exist in any borders, and that they will not work to combat terrorism against Israel. The Arab League, and its member states, for their part, have repeatedly announced that they will brook no change in their “peace” plan which, if implemented will bring about Israel’s rapid destruction.

In behaving as she does, Rice, like Clinton before her, is aided by a politically weak and strategically incompetent Israeli government that is willing to sacrifice Israel’s long-term security for the benefit of prime-time photo opportunities with bigwig American leaders and Arab potentates.

Sunday, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has announced that it is open to negotiating on the basis of the Arab plan. As one government official told The Jerusalem Post, Israel will “not dismiss” the plan.

THIS IS Israel’s position in spite of the fact that the Arab plan calls for Israel to surrender east, north and south Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights to Hamas and Syria and for Israel to permit four to five million hostile, foreign-born Arabs posing as Palestinian “refugees” to immigrate

to its truncated territory. As the “peace” plan makes clear, all these suicidal Israeli moves must come before the Arab states will be willing to have “regular” (whatever that means) relations with the indefensible, overrun Jewish state.

Commenting on the government’s position, the official explained, “We would not reject this out of hand.”

It is not surprising that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are behaving in this manner. After all, these are the same leaders who brought about Israel’s defeat in Lebanon in last summer’s war at the hands of Iran’s Hizbullah proxy army. Last summer, Olmert followed Livni’s lead in rejecting military victory as an option. Heeding Livni’s unwise, defeatist counsel, Olmert postponed the essential ground offensive in south Lebanon until it was too late to make a difference and instead opted for a negotiated cease-fire.

As is the case with the Arab “peace” plan, the cease-fire Israel enthusiastically acceded to last summer was strategically disastrous for the country.

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 placed Israel on the same plane as the illegal Hizbullah terrorist organization; prevents Israel from taking steps to defend itself; does not require the safe return of IDF hostages Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser; enables Hizbullah to rearm and reassert its control over south Lebanon; and lets Hizbullah’s state sponsors Syria and Iran completely off the hook for their central role in Hizbullah’s illegal war against the Jewish state.

Recent history shows that the US and Israel will both pay heavily for the opportunism of our weak political leaders.

It can only be hoped that the Israeli and American people have learned enough from our experiences to demand that our leaders stop their reckless behavior before the price of their cowardice and perfidy become unbearable.

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The Straight Skinny on Gentile Shuttle Diplomacy!

March 28, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Shuttle Diplomacy by Gentiles, in negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians since 1973, has proven at times to be a prickly thorn in the flesh for Israel. I have wr itt

en on this subject in previous Blogs.

I do not believe I have ever reviewed an article on American, European, and United Nations shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, with which I have agreed more, than the one which follows. Shuttle Diplomacy by non-citizens of Israel has repeatedly held Israel back from dealing with the Islamic nations with the only kind of diplomacy they understand, which is an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

To the Persians and Arabs, compromises and truces are looked upon as a sign of weakness. A basic, simple Islamic principle has long been employed in the Middle East – Only negotiate to gain time to build up your ability to destroy the enemies of Allah, or to be able to negotiate from a position of strength.

You may not agree with what Jonathan Ariel has written in the Jerusalem Post article, which follows, but I most certainly urge you to read it.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article!

Not a good time for Shuttle Diplomacy

JONATHAN ARIEL, THE JERUSALEM POST

March 26, 2007

Condoleezza Rice’s current round of intensive Middle East shuttle diplomacy is an exercise in futility, a waste of the US taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

The reason is the weakness of the current Israeli government, and the prime minister. No democratic government can negotiate any kind of meaningful diplomatic agreement from a position of domestic weakness. Israeli governments are no exception to this rule.

Three Israeli premiers have succeeded in achieving diplomatic breakthroughs.

In 1949 David Ben-Gurion negotiated an armistice that ended the War of Independence.

In 1956 he succeeded in negotiating a settlement that kept Sinai demilitarized and Israel safe for a decade.

The next premier to achieve a similar feat was Menachem Begin, who successfully negotiated Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt at Camp David in 1979. It took over a dozen years before a similar feat was achieved, when Yitzhak Rabin negotiated the successful peace treaty with Jordan and the defunct Oslo Accords with PLO chief Yasser Arafat.

All these governments were strong and stable, with solid parliamentary majorities and strong, decisive leaders at their helms. Ben-Gurion, Begin and Rabin (in his second term) were all regarded as worthy leaders, men of courage, sagacity and integrity. All were able to command respect from their opponents as well as

their supporters because of their leadership qualities. They led by virtue of their convictions, not their pollsters.

THE ONE attempt by a weak leader to reach a diplomatic breakthrough was a fiasco. In 2000, a little over a year in office, Ehud Barak went to Camp David to try and reach a final agreement with Arafat.

Prior to his departure his government had already lost an effective parliamentary majority. Barak’s political ineptitude and astounding (for a politician) lack of understanding of human nature had lost him almost all his political

allies. No Israeli leader – nor, for that matter, any other democratically elected leader in the 20th century – had ever attempted to embark upon major diplomatic negotiations from such a position of weakness. Barak was, in effect, hoping to salvage a dying administration by a foreign policy breakthrough.

Needless to say, this was doomed to failure. The late (and little-missed) Arafat was guilty of many things, but being a fool wasn’t one of them.

He saw no reason whatsoever why he should go out on a limb and sign an agreement that he knew could precipitate a Palestinian civil war and possibly lead to his assassination with a man he knew could not deliver.

Barak went to Camp David like a man offering a check from an account bereft of any political credit. No Arab leader in his right mind would accept what he knew was likely to turn out to be a rubber check drawn on a bank of dubious solvency.

THE CURRENT government is even weaker than Barak’s was when he set out on his ill-fated trip to Camp David and seven years of subsequent political oblivion. Although it has, in theory, a parliamentary major

ity, it is totally paralyzed and has lost its legitimacy.

Almost all its major political players (with the notable exception of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni) are currently neutralized. Olmert is under investigation on several cases of suspected bribery and corruption.

In addition, his perceived bungling of the Second Lebanon War has left him bereft of any public support, with polling figures equal to those of low-fat cottage cheese.

His longtime personal confidante and chef de bureau, Shula Zaken, is under house arrest on serious corruption charges.

His most important political ally, Finance Minister Avraham Hirschson, is also under criminal investigation, suspected of having embezzled million of shekels of public funds. The most astute political mind in the cabinet, former justice minister Haim Ramon, has been sent off the playing field following a red card in the form of his recent sexual assault conviction.

The bottom line is that snowdrops have a better chance of blooming in the Sahara Desert than Rice, or anyone else, has of achieving any kind of diplomatic breakthrough at this time.

By the most optimistic calculations there cannot be an Israeli government capable of doing anything before the end of the summer. By that time Olmert will either have vacated the PM’s office (most likely), or been miraculously resuscitated by having both escaped censure from the Winograd committee (investigating the management of the war), and having been cleared of all the corruption cases currently under investigation. Either way Israel will not have a government before the end of summer.

This being the case, Rice should put everything on hold. Attempting to jump-start serious negotiations just now is a pointless squandering of time, energy and the limited supply of US diplomatic assets and clout on a fruitless diplomatic wild-goose chase.

Better to wait until political developments in Jerusalem take their course, at which time there might be a reasonable chance of success.

The writer is a veteran Israeli journalist.

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Guerilla Warfare is much more difficult in Air and at Sea than on Land!

March 28, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

The raw unpopular truth in the Middle East is that Arabs and Persians dominate its terra firma by guerilla warfare, while we control the water around it, and the air above it. Naturally, they have no desire to give us a legitimate international excuse to completely unleash our two major advantages on the military installations in their sponsoring countries.

The natural intrinsic advantage of guerilla warfare is topography and

natural botanical cover and, since these two elements of the creation are in short supply on the open sea, the Persians and Arabs are at a great disadvantage against the huge naval forces of the West. Our ability to pick apart specific targets by ship launched missiles, and smart bombs from aircraft, is also well documented in the Middle East by numerous past performances.

What we need to hit the Iranian missile and nuclear sites in Iran is an international justification, sufficient in magnitude to justify it to the extent China and Russia would not retaliate against us.

Iran is more than familiar with these premises, and will be very careful to not create a situation where we would immediately attack her from the air

and sea, and be justified internationally in so doing.

I suspect we are hoping against hope that Iran will make such a boo-boo!

If Iran makes a big enough boo-boo in the Persian Gulf to justify strikes against her, it would be catastrophic for her military installations, and she is well aware of it.

The massive naval operation described in the DEBKAfile article, which follows, is to remind Iran of the West’s control of the air and sea.

Begin DEBKAfile Report

DEBKAfile reports: More than 10,000 US personnel, two aircraft carriers and 100 warplanes begin biggest simulated demonstration of force in Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq

March 27, 2007, 3:50 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that the exercise was launched March 27 the day before the Arab League summit opens in Riyadh, to demonstrate the Bush administration’s determination not to let Iran block the Strait of Hormuz to oil exports from the Persian Gulf, or continue its nuclear program.

Taking part are the USS Stennis and USS Eisenhower strike forces.

With Iran’s Revolutionary Guards one week into their marine maneuvers, military tensions in the Gulf region are skyrocketing and boosting world oil prices.

Intelligence sources in Moscow claim to have information that a US strike against Iranian nuclear installations has been scheduled for April 6 at 0040 hours. The Russian sources say the US operation, code-named “Bite,” will last no more than 12 hours and consist of missile and aerial strikes devastating enough to set Tehran’s nuclear program several years back.

The maneuver also occurs four days after 14 British seamen and one crew-woman were seized by an Iranian Revolutionary Guards warship, with no sign that their release is imminent.

London insists its marines were on routine patrol on the Iraqi side of the Shatt al Arb on behalf of the Iraqi government.

Tony Blair has threatened “a new phase” in the crisis if

the captured personnel are not speedily released.

The warplanes are flying simulated attack maneuvers on enemy shipping with aircraft and ships, hunting enemy submarines and seeking mines, off the coast of Iran.

US Navy Cmdr Kevin Aandahl declined to say when the maneuver was planned or how long it would last. He said US warships would stay out of Iranian territorial waters up to 12 miles from the Iranian coast. Tehran does not recognize this limit and claims a deeper stretch of water.

Our military sources explain the presence of the French naval strike group led by the nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle which joined the two US carriers last Friday: The group will carry out security missions in the Arabian Sea and its warplanes fly in support of NATO in Afghanistan.

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Ruthless, Truthless, Toothless, and Useless – The New Arab Quartet Peace Plan

March 27, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

I believe the following scenario is going to occur, no matter how many new peace plans, or modifications of old ones, are introduced in

to the swirling maze of Middle East quicksand.

My guesstimate is that it may BEGIN at some point as early as 2008, or as late as 2012.

Matthew 24:21,22 – For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the

beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall

be. [22] And except those days should be shortened,

there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.

Daniel 12:1 – And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.

I have been watching shuttle diplomacy escapades by a long list of both living, dead, and nearly dead distinguished statespersons since 1948. It has not, and it will not work! To be perfectly honest, a solution does not exist within the ability of mankind, which can ever end the hatred and wars in the Middle East. It is true we are supposed to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but that is a prayer for God to bring it in the person of his Son, the Messiah. If the Israelis follow the “new game plan” of Secretary of State Rice they will end up on the short end of the final score.

Psalm 122:6 – Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.

Revelation 22:20 – He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Luke 21:27 – And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

Micah 5:4-6 – And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth.

[5] And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.

[6] And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders. (See Prophecy Archive Update Numbers 62 to 69)

Zechariah 14:8,9 – And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be.

[9] And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one. (See Prophecy Archive Update Number 183B.

Begin New York Sun Article

America’s New Plan for Middle East Peace

Youssef Ibrahim

Jerusalem Center for Public Information Daily Alert (New York Sun)

Several news reports quoted senior American officials speaking of a “new game plan” as Secretary of State Rice embarks on her fourth Middle East trip in four months.

A quaint new “Arab Quartet” – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – is described by TV news as “all important” in Middle East peace efforts.

Yet the Arab Quartet is about as useless and toothless as the Arab League itself, none of whose members are prepared to recognize Israel’s right to exist unconditionally.

It seems the new plan is that “Ms. Rice may be able to get some sort of formal or informal mechanism going that could give Israelis hope of eventually normalizing relations with the Arab world,” American officials told the New York Times.

(New York Sun)

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Islam will fall, Christians and Jews will win, and True Peace will come to both Jew and Gentile, but only after great Chaos and Anxiety, which will be followed by the Return of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

March 27, 2007

http://www.tribulationperiod.com/

Like Barry Rub in, the writer of this excellent article

in the Jerusalem Post, which follows our heading, I remember when Fatah took over the Palestinian movement. I was still a few years away from retirement in the NSA-USAF Branch. I have watched the Middle East maze of weird actions and events for many years. Most of the world seems destined to always elect the eternal optimists, who promise them a rosy situation, and make such promises as: “I can bring peace to the Middle East!”

If I have learned nothing else in the last forty years, I have learned that only the Son of God can bring a genuine peace to the Middle East. If one simply reads the five articles which follow, the contradictions and complexity, entailed in the multiple numbers of fingers in the peace pie, do create the same pattern I have observed in the Middle East for some 60 years. There is no sustainable human solution to the continuing Middle East peace problem. There can only be a supernatural solution by God that follows the Second Advent of His Son.

Begin Jerusalem Post Article 1

The Fall of Fatah – Barry Rubin (Jerusalem Post)

Almost 40 years ago, the nationalist group Fatah took over the Palestinian movement, a reign that ended last week when Fatah accepted a junior partnership to Hamas in the Palestinian Authority. Fatah has accepted the partnership with its Islamist rival on terms which reflect much of Fatah’s worldview but are very different from the moderate image the group wants to build in the West.

Even though there are Fatah members who prefer a compromise solution, they are in a minority and do not battle for the real acceptance of their views in that group. Fatah has never articulated among its own people – and does not articulate today – an alternative vision of peaceful coexistence.

Fatah’s deliberate use of terrorism to mobilize Palestinians emotionally has always been a central strategy, and it has had a corrupting role in both moral and political terms.

Arafat’s replacement, Mahmoud Abbas, has some moderate sentiments but is weak, ineffective, and an advocate of most of Fatah’s traditional program. The actual head of Fatah is Farouk Kaddoumi, a man who rejected even the peace process of the 1990s. His popularity reflects the basic politics of Fatah.

The mistakes made under the decades-long leadership of Fatah are continuing, and even intensifying, in the new Hamas era. The result is that any possibility of peace is being pushed decades further away.

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center at IDC Herzliya.

Begin DEBKAfile Report 1

DEBKAfile reports: Condoleezza Rice sells Israeli PM Ehud Olmert her Middle East initiative for Israel-Arab talks based on Arab summit resolutions

March 26, 2007, 11:27 PM (GMT+02:00)

Earlier Monday, the US secretary of state called off the Monday night press conference to launch her initiative. Instead, she held a second round of talks with Olmert to overcome his objections. He finally succumbed to the creation of a US-Arab-Israeli mechanism forace talks based on the resolutions reached at the Arab League summit convening in Riyadh March 28-29.

The summit will approve the Saudi peace plan without any of the modifications requested by Israel.

Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni, whom Rice met earlier in the day, spent hours hammering the phrasing for presenting their concession to the US secretary, without being seen to have abandoned the Middle East roadmap, which is the central plank of this Israeli government’s foreign and peace policy.

They decided that Rice would term the Israel-Arab diplomatic track a preface to the roadmap’s implementation. The US secretary argued that Israel has nothing to lose by engaging Arab representatives and would only improve its image. Olmert asked for the encounters to take place at the senior level of foreign ministers, in order to convince the public that his government had not been browbeaten into a concession contrary to national interests. But Rice could not make this promise. US-Israeli discussion on the framework for Israeli and Arab delegates to meet will continue.

But in Riyadh, meanwhile, the preliminary conference of Arab foreign ministers has already determined the mechanism and forum for the talks with Israel. They have opted for the UN Security Council and Middle East Quartet as sponsors, convinced that both bodies are powerful enough to impose a settlement on Israel. The US Secretary informed Olmert that she does not support this demand.

Regarding the Saudi peace plan, Israeli opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu rejected the clause calling for the return of Palestinian refugees as a threat to Israel’s existence.

Arab foreign ministers drafting summit resolutions demanded the refugees’ return to their pre-1948 homes and rejected any prospect of settling Palestinian refugees in any Arab state.

They also demanded the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Begin DEBKAfile Report 2

DEBKAfile Reports: Rice launches shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Palestinians, promotes Saudi peace plan. Special statement due Monday evening

March 26, 2007, 10:32 AM (GMT+02:00)

After her talks in Ramallah with Mahmoud Abbas and in Jerusalem with PM Ehud Olmert, the US secretary of state spoke vaguely of an “Arab mechanism” that would move the peace process forward at the end of the Arab summit which opens in Riyadh in two days. For Israel, this means that Rice has undertaken to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians while promoting an inter-Arab dialogue via Saudi Arabia which brings the Palestinian Hamas aboard through the Arab summit opening in Riyadh in two days.

This dialogue leaves Israel and the anti-Hamas boycott promoted by prime minister Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni, trailing far behind the momentum Rice and the Saudis have kicked off. When she dined with Olmert in Jerusalem Sunday night, March 25, Rice urged the Israeli government to accept the joint US-Saudi plan. In the bustle surrounding the bid, Livni has not been seen or heard.

The “Arab mechanism” device opens up a US-Arab channel that bypasses direct Israel-Palestinian negotiations and circles round the impasse posed by Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence. The Palestinian delegation at the March 28-29 Arab summit will be led by Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the

Palestinian Authority, and Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh. The delegation will be asked to vote for the re-launched Saudi peace plan on behalf of the Palestinian government.

Legalistic quibbling aside, the Mecca reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah may not end up in their reconciliation, but led up to this point: it established the momentum for bringing Hamas through the back door onto the Arab side of the negotiating table – first with the US, then Israel.

Syria is being wooed to make Arab summit endorsement of the Saudi plan unanimous. The Damascus-sponsored Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal was summoned to Riyadh Friday, March 23, in a bid to secure his support for the US-Arab track promoted by Rice and the Saudis.

Rice, who holds talks with Jordan’s King Abdull ah in Amm

an Monday, is shuttling busily to push the Saudi peace plan as a basis for peace negotiations, even though Riyadh and the Arab League adamantly reject any modifications.

There are big differences between the Rice shuttle today and the Kissinger shuttles of the 1970s. Henry Kissinger, then US secretary of state, took advantage of Israel’s setback in the 1973 Yom Kippur war to secure a partial Israel-Egyptian settlement. But before leaning on Egypt and Syria, he gave Israel time and the chance to recover and turn the tide of war in its favor by a surprise military crossing of the Suez into Egypt.

Rice, too, seeks to exploit Israel’s debacle in Lebanon, but her way differs from that of her predecessor in two crucial respects:

1. The Bush administration is not offering Israel time or a chance to restore its bargaining leverage by means of a second military action against Hizballah and Syria. The Olmert government is being hustled into a negotiating process in which Israel will stand alone against adversaries without choices or diplomatic leeway.

2. By throwing all its diplomatic and military clout behind the Saudi peace plan, Washington places Jerusalem in a take-it-or-leave it vice: Taking it means shrinking Israel back to the pre-1967 lines and giving up the long-promised “secure and recognizable boundaries;” losing historic Jerusalem and settling millions of Palestinian refugees in its attenuated territory.

Rejecting the Saudi plan would entail a showdown with Washington.

To talk Israel round, the US secretary is presenting the US-Saudi initiative as a component of her government’s master plan for Iran. This takes the wind out of the sails of prime minister Olmert and foreign minister Livni, who have consistently relegated the Iranian nuclear issue to the care of the US and international community.

There is no progress on the release of the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit or even access to him after nine months.

Begin DEBKAfile Article 3

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Rice counts on Israeli “glimmerings of a Palestinian state” to ward off anti-US moves on Iraq and Iran at coming Arab summit

March 25, 2007, 5:43 PM (GMT+02:00)

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice holds talks in the Palestinian Authority and Israel Sunday and Monday, March 25-26, after kicking off her latest Middle East tour at a conference with the foreign ministers of the “Arab Quartet” – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE – in Aswan, Egypt, Sat. March 24.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also visited the Palestinian Authority Sunday after meeting defense minister Amir Peretz when he arrived in Israel Sat. night aboard a special Qatari flight.

She meets the visiting UN secretary and Israel leaders in Jerusalem Monday.

American correspondents in the Rice party reports her “new political horizon” will call on Israel to give the Palestinians “the glimmerings of a Palestinian state” and the Arabs to offer what DEBKAfile’s sources call “glimpses of recognition.” This semantic diplomacy is designed to elicit from the Olmert government far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians.

According to DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources, the US secretary’s plan faces half a dozen obstacles:

1. The nebulous concept of political horizon was espoused by President Bill Clinton and two US secretaries of state, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, for seven years without even slightly denting the Israel-Palestinian dispute.

2. This failure of US and European diplomats to contrive an end to the dispute – or even to Palestinian violence in the form of suicidal terrorism – looms larger than ever, considering the conflict is two years older than the Iraq war.

The plan to skip the first provisions of the Middle East road map, which call for an end to Palestinian violence, and jump straight to the final status talks, while leaving the Palestinians committed to “resistance in all forms”, is interesting but not workable.

As always happened in the past, some Palestinian act of terror will be sure to torpedo any peace moves,

3. A “new political horizon” plan might have stood a chance if Israel had won the Lebanon war against Hizballah last summer – in other words, beaten Iran on the Lebanese and Gaza Strip battlefields.

Since this did not happen, Iran, its Lebanese and radical Palestinian proxies – Jihad Islami, Hamas and factions of the Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades – are left with enough leverage to veto any progress achieved in US-Arab led diplomacy.

4. The Palestinian and Israeli leaders on whom Washington is banking to lead the way to the “new political horizons” are both short of the domestic clout for carrying through real motion.

5. The Palestinian unity government has not bridged the deep Hamas-Fatah dispute or ended the violence between them. It is expected to survive on paper up until the Arab summit conference opening in Riyadh on March 28. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas will exploit the “successful” unity formula for all his worth to extract a maximum of international recognition and the loosening of purse-strings for the Hamas-led government, hoping to deflect Hamas from beating his Fatah by force of arms.

At the same time, the hard-line Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and prime minister Ismail Haniyeh will make their first appearance as Palestinian representatives at the Arab summit.

6. Behind the “new political horizon” is a strenuous Saudi diplomatic drive based on the concept that wide-ranging Israeli concessions to the Palestinians will wean Syrian president Bashar Assad, Hizballah and Hamas away from their alliance with Tehran. There is not the slightest sign of this happening. Just the reverse: Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh are making hay from the double boost of solid Iranian support and the blandishments of US-backed Arab rulers.

Condoleezza Rice cannot look forward to much progress on the Israel-Palestinian diplomatic front, but her current Middle East tour may prevent the Arab summit in Riyadh carrying resolutions that contradict outright Washington’s Iraq and Iranian policies.

Begin DEBKAfile Article 4

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is flown by Israeli military helicopter over central Israel and the Israel-West Bank defense barrier

March 26, 2007, 9:26 PM (GMT+02:00)

He said on landing that he now has a better understanding of Israel’s security problems. Ban’s program Monday started with talks with prime minister Ehud Olmert and a meeting with the families of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers: Gideon Shalit, seized nine months ago by Hamas-led raiders, and the two men snatched by Hizballah, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

The UN secretary promised to his utmost efforts to secure their release and asked for patience.

He was later escorted around Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust memorial. The abducted soldiers’ families sent a message of support and hope to the relatives of the 15 British seamen captured at gunpoint by an Iranian warship last Friday.

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