ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.

"We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories," Olmert said. "We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace."

Dozens of left-wing activists arrived in Akko on Tuesday to express their solidarity with the city’s inhabitants. Elad Shaul Zamir from the “Hitchabrut” movement told Ynet, “We heard from all the people we spoke with, Arabs and Jews, that they want to live in coexistence. Those sparking the riots are a handful of people from extreme right-wing movements.”

The leftists toured Akko’s streets, ate in the city’ restaurants and said they would return for additional solidarity visits.

Kadima leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Monday that in the upcoming general elections the public would need to make a clear decision about whether or not to continue the Middle East peace processes.

"We are actually in a situation in which the Right wants to put a stop to everything and the Left may want to give up everything," she said. "However, our way is to continue the peace process in an intelligent and responsible manner that preserves Israel's interests."

Speaking during a Kadima faction meeting, Livni said that Likud had turned into a party that "says no to everything."

Livni said election slogans might be "very nice," but insisted that they "will not convince the public," Army Radio reported.
Meanwhile, Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said that other figures would soon be join the party and would compete for a Knesset seat.

"The people are returning to Likud and Likud is returning to the people," Netanyahu told his faction. "The people are returning to Likud's positions and the people are returning to Likud's ways."

Also Monday, Labor leader and Defense Minister Ehud Barak slammed former IDF spokeswomen Miri Regev and former science minister Benny Begin for joining Likud. Referring to the Middle East peace processes, Barak said their decision made the Likud's stance clear and demonstrated that "the Likud way is likely to bring us again to a dead end."

Aiming to bolster the Labor ranks, Barak said that the party would embark on an election campaign in order to "restore us to our rightful position at the country's leadership."

With Sen. Barack Obama's victory in the US presidential race, the stakes have been raised for Israel's February 10 general elections.

Whatever the Obama administration's position on Israel may be, it will not be more supportive of the country than the Bush administration has been. And over the past year, the supportive Bush administration has decided not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and not to support an Israeli effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
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Reacting to Obama's electoral victory on Wednesday, Livni made clear that from her perspective, the best way to deal with an unfriendly White House is to preemptively surrender Israel's national interests.

In her words, Israel's election results "must reflect the country's interest in advancing the peace process, otherwise the international community, headed by the US, will try and push us in this direction.
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Documents linking Iran to nuclear weapons push may have been fabricatedGareth Porter
Published: Monday November 10, 2008

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.

The documents in question were acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from a still unknown source -- most of them in the form of electronic files allegedly stolen from a laptop computer belonging to an Iranian researcher. The US has based much of its push for sanctions against Iran on these documents.

The new evidence of possible fraud has increased pressure within the IAEA secretariat to distance the agency from the laptop documents, according to a Vienna-based diplomatic source close to the IAEA, who spoke to RAW STORY on condition of anonymity.

Israeli police have evicted a disabled Palestinian man and his wife from the home where they had lived for 52 years, in a Palestinian district of east Jerusalem which is now surrounded by hardline Jewish settlers. The eviction came after years of litigation which culminated in an Israeli supreme court ruling in July ordering them out of the house.
[...]
Although Israel's absentee property laws were applied against the Kurd family, they are rarely, if ever, applied on properties in Israel that were owned by Palestinians before the 1948 war.