The Israeli raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza, which left at least nine dead, was a disaster. It was poorly conceived, incompetently executed and entirely counter-productive.

Israel has a right to defend its borders, but also a responsibility towards its citizens and friends to remain a beacon of civilised conduct in the Middle East. When it fails in this responsibility, the problem is not its alone. Israel’s friends believe in Israel because they believe in the ideals that it represents. On Monday morning, Israel fell short of these ideals.

Such a betrayal invites a roar of disapproval, all the more damaging to Israel’s interests because of that which it drowns out. Just as the intransigence of the blockade around Gaza has allowed the vile regime of Hamas to escape the scrutiny that it deserves, so has Israel’s blundering savagery on the high seas allowed those on board the flotilla to appear unimpeachable. This is inaccurate and also dangerous.

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Differences remain between Israel and the US, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the White House has said.

President Obama urged the Israeli PM to take steps to build confidence in the peace process, during “honest” talks on Tuesday, said spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Mr Gibbs also said the US was seeking “clarification” of the latest plans to build homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu’s trip came amid the worst crisis in US-Israeli ties for decades.

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Israel signaled it won’t halt its building plans in the disputed territory of east Jerusalem, deepening a rift with the U.S. that threatens efforts to contain Iran and other American security goals in the Middle East.

Officials on both sides fear relations between the two allies are at their worst point in decades, after Israel scuttled hope for a new round of peace talks by announcing new settlement plans last week during a visit by Vice President Joseph Biden. That led to an extraordinary public rebuke of Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Netanyahu apologized for the timing, but he has declined to retract the plans for the settlements and others that have become among the biggest obstacles to peace talks. On Monday, a leading member of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party said the prime minister told members in a closed-door session that Israel wouldn’t bow to pressure and reverse course on its planned 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem.

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Israel signaled it won’t halt its building plans in the disputed territory of east Jerusalem, deepening a rift with the U.S. that threatens efforts to contain Iran and other American security goals in the Middle East.

Officials on both sides fear relations between the two allies are at their worst point in decades, after Israel scuttled hope for a new round of peace talks by announcing new settlement plans last week during a visit by Vice President Joseph Biden. That led to an extraordinary public rebuke of Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Netanyahu apologized for the timing, but he has declined to retract the plans for the settlements and others that have become among the biggest obstacles to peace talks. On Monday, a leading member of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party said the prime minister told members in a closed-door session that Israel wouldn’t bow to pressure and reverse course on its planned 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem.

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WE may scoff at the idea that the Olympic Games have anything to do with the “endeavor to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace,” as the Olympic charter enshrines as its ideal. But at least nations across the world were able to put aside differences for two weeks of friendly competition in Vancouver.

A mundane achievement, perhaps, but it’s one that’s beyond the grasp of the Islamic world. The Islamic Solidarity Games, the Olympics of the Muslim world, which were to be held in Iran in April, have been called off by the Arab states because Tehran inscribed “Persian Gulf” on the tournament’s official logo and medals.

It’s a small but telling controversy. It puts the lie to the idea of the Islamic world as a bloc united by religious values that are hostile to the West. It also gives clues as to how the United States and its allies should handle two of their most urgent foreign policy matters: the Iranian nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Benedict XVI says peace in the Holy Land is possible, and that it hinges on Israelis and Palestinians recognizing their mutual right to a homeland.

The Pope took up this theme today when he delivered his traditional New Year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.

The Holy Father’s address for 2010 centered on the issue of respect for creation and the environment, the same theme he highlighted in his Jan. 1 message for the World Day of Peace.

The Pontiff recalled how during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land last May, he “urgently appealed to the Israelis and the Palestinians to dialogue and to respect each others’ rights.”

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A new U.S.-led initiative to revive Middle East peace talks faces steep hurdles even before it’s launched, with Israelis and Palestinians resisting new concessions despite a fresh application of American diplomacy.

President Barack Obama’s first efforts at brokering Middle East peace bore no fruit last year, and the White House now has crafted a two-year plan under which Israelis and Palestinians would hold regular, intense meetings to reach a final peace agreement.

Obama is sending his Mideast envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, on a series of trips to the region and to Europe starting next week. He’s also enlisting the help of Arab allies, whose representatives are filing through Washington.

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Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.”

The fact is, the only time America has been able to advance peace ”” post-Yom Kippur War, Camp David, post-Lebanon war, Madrid and Oslo ”” has been when the parties felt enough pain for different reasons that they invited our diplomacy, and we had statesmen ”” Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, George Shultz, James Baker and Bill Clinton ”” savvy enough to seize those moments.

Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other ”” a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”

It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.

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The Obama administration’s Arab-Israeli peace process is in more trouble than even the White House realizes. To be sure, the Israelis and Palestinians are both dug in, and when the president sought baby steps from the Arabs toward normalizing relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait rebuffed the administration. But now even Cairo, where Obama hit his reset button with the Muslim world, has made its stand, albeit much less publicly. The campaign against Egyptian editor and analyst Hala Mustafa for meeting with Israel’s ambassador to Cairo is sufficient evidence that the first country to have a peace treaty with Jerusalem is no closer to normalization than it was when Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords 30 years ago.

Recently, Israel’s envoy to Egypt, Shalom Cohen, visited Mustafa at her office in the Al-Ahram newspaper building, home to the semi-official daily to which Mustafa often contributes, and where she edits the quarterly Arabic-language journal, Democracy.

“The ambassador had a proposal to convene a symposium and asked me to participate,” Mustafa told me by phone. “Egyptians, Israelis and Palestinians were to discuss Obama’s initiatives and the peace process. Since we would need authorization from Al-Ahram and other state institutions, I didn’t give him any final decision.”

Nonetheless, chairman of the Egyptian press syndicate Makram Muhammad Ahmed claimed that Mustafa’s brief interview with Cohen violated the boycott of the Zionist enemy that the syndicate adopted in 1983.

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Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem: They have never lived there, the Temple never existed, and Israeli archaeologists have admitted as much. Those who deny this are simply liars. Or so says Sheik Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority.

His claims, made last month, would be laughable if they weren’t so common among Palestinians. Sheik Tamimi is only the latest to insist that, in his words, Jerusalem is solely “an Arab and Islamic city and it has always been so.” His comments come on the heels of those by Shamekh Alawneh, a lecturer in modern history at Al Quds University. On an Aug. 11 PA television program, “Jerusalem””History and Culture,” Mr. Alawneh argued that the Jews invented their connection to Jerusalem. “It has no historical roots,” he said, adding that the Jews are engaging in “an attack on history, theft of culture, falsification of facts, erasure of the truth, and Judaization of the place.”

As President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy team gear up to propose yet another plan for Israeli-Arab peace, they would do well to focus less on important but secondary issues like settlement growth, and instead notice that top Palestinian intellectual and political leaders deny basic truths about the region’s most important city.

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It was supposed to be the week President Barack Obama saved the world. More than 100 heads of state are preparing to descend on New York for talks on halting climate change, promoting nuclear disarmament, defeating terrorism in Pakistan and tackling poverty in sub-Saharan Africa ”” all before a G20 meeting in Pittsburgh on Friday aimed at reaching agreements on global financial regulation and curbing bankers’ bonuses.

The headline-grabber was expected to be the relaunch of the stalled Middle East peace process, to be followed a week later by America’s first direct talks with Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

Instead, attempts to revive talks between Israelis and Palestinians, the cornerstone of the administration’s foreign policy, have failed so far. Western diplomats say it will take all the president’s considerable charisma to revive them.

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Q: What was the most important aspect of your visit?

A: The learning for me was to see how the church witnesses to the Gospel in a situation that’s highly politicized, in a situation that always has the potential to be volatile and in a situation where Christians are clearly in the minority. The number of Christians in the Holy Land is diminishing year by year. As Bishop Suheil said, “We, Episcopalians and Anglicans are a minority within a minority.”

You learn pretty quickly there that a first principle in the diocese is faith in action. (It is) a diocese that has a huge commitment to education, healthcare, hospitality, housing and peace and reconciliation. Because of a diminishing number of Christians in the Holy Land, the bishop and the diocese have a huge focus on education and so they have several schools that they oversee and operate. The idea is to enable Palestinians, especially, to get an education”¦and to encourage them to stay in the Holy Land. The diocese is very committed to healthcare ”“ ”˜irrespective of one’s religion, one’s ability to pay whatever, we’re here to provide healthcare for you.’ Most of the people who visit the hospital doors are not Christians”¦.People who aren’t Christians recognize in the church a real commitment to their well-being, their health. Likewise with housing, Bishop Suheil and the diocese have been involved in housing projects, not just for elderly people but for young couples ”“ helping them to get established so that they can remain there.

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Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech on the future of the Middle East peace process may have been the first time the Israeli Prime Minister publicly acknowledged a Palestinian state, but its lack of specific details prompted a bewildering array of responses, locally and internationally.

The United States and the European Union found themselves agreeing with the Yesha council, which represents Jewish settlements in the West Bank, in welcoming the Prime Minister’s address at a Tel Aviv university, while Hamas joined with the Israeli far-right in condemning it.

Most Israeli commentators poured scorn on the talk ”“ short on detail, and placing strict limits on any future Palestinian sovereignty ”“ but agreed its main audience had been President Obama, who has bluntly told the right-wing Israeli Government to accept a two-state solution and stop settlement building.

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Binyamin Netanyahu tonight endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state after weeks of pressure from Washington, but defied President Obama’s demand for a halt to all settlements.

In a high-profile speech that the Palestinian administration of Mahmoud Abbas said “hobbles all efforts to save the peace process”, the Israeli Prime Minister said that the Palestinians must recognise Israel as a “Jewish state” and that any future Palestinian state had to be demilitarised.

“If we have the guarantees on demilitarisation and if the Palestinians recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people, then we arrive at a solution based on a demilitarised Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Mr Netanyahu said.

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Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to endorse a “two-state solution” in a much-heralded speech this weekend, but he may stall on American demands to freeze Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Feeling the squeeze between the US Administration, which wants a moratorium on settlement growth and a commitment to a Palestinian state, and his national-religious coalition, which favours neither, the Israeli Prime Minister appears likely to try to steer a middle course.

Israeli newspapers were full of speculation about what Mr Netanyahu ”” who has so far refused openly to back a Palestinian state alongside Israel ”” might offer to deflect pressure from Washington. Ehud Barak, his Defence Minister, urged him this week to recognise a Palestinian state, but members of Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party have cautioned him against the move.

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The Arabs may have wished for more – for a tougher line on Gaza, a new peace “initiative” and an apology for past US policies. He was right to offer none of these. He did not repudiate his presidential predecessor. Nor did he denounce the two interventions that have inflamed much of the Muslim world – in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Instead, he insisted that America had no wish to stay a moment longer in Afghanistan than the threat dictated. His Administration knew that “the less we use our power, the greater it will be”. But that did not mean that America would not confront extremists.

Like his earlier address to Iran, Mr Obama’s appeal struck a chord that infuriated those peddling hatred of America. Both Iran and Osama bin Laden were swift to belittle his words. He did not, sadly, address the issue of democracy. That must remain part of the agenda. What he did was to demolish the myth of a clash of civilisations. That is the first step to bridging the chasm.

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When it comes to dealing with the Middle East, the president noted, “there is a Kabuki dance going on constantly. That is what I would like to see broken down. I am going to be holding up a mirror and saying: ”˜Here is the situation, and the U.S. is prepared to work with all of you to deal with these problems. But we can’t impose a solution. You are all going to have to make some tough decisions.’ Leaders have to lead, and, hopefully, they will get supported by their people.”

It was clear from the 20-minute conversation that the president has no illusions that one speech will make lambs lie down with lions. Rather, he sees it as part of his broader diplomatic approach that says: If you go right into peoples’ living rooms, don’t be afraid to hold up a mirror to everything they are doing, but also engage them in a way that says ”˜I know and respect who you are.’ You end up ”” if nothing else ”” creating a little more space for U.S. diplomacy. And you never know when that can help.

“As somebody who ordered an additional 17,000 troops into Afghanistan,” said Mr. Obama, “you would be hard pressed to suggest that what we are doing is not backed up by hard power. I discount a lot of that criticism. What I do believe is that if we are engaged in speaking directly to the Arab street, and they are persuaded that we are operating in a straightforward manner, then, at the margins, both they and their leadership are more inclined and able to work with us.”

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[James Baker said in 1989]: “Israeli interests in the West Bank and Gaza, security and otherwise, can be accommodated in a settlement based on Resolution 242. Forswear annexation; stop settlement activity.”

Those words make startling but depressing reading: Little has changed in 20 years. After Bush 41 and Baker, we got Clinton’s love affair with Yitzhak Rabin (“I had come to love him as I had rarely loved another man”); the disintegration of Oslo after Rabin’s tragic assassination; and the Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy of Bush 43.

Balance ”” the credential no honest broker can forsake ”” vanished from American diplomacy.

I don’t believe that’s been good for Israel. The Jewish state needs to be challenged by its inseparable ally if it is to achieve the security it craves.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be prepared to endorse a peace process leading to an independent Palestinian state, his defence minister has said.

Ehud Barak, a long-time rival now part of Israel’s governing coalition, spoke ahead of Mr Netanyahu’s first meeting with US President Obama in Washington.

He told Israeli TV a regional deal could be struck within three years.

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So you might expect the mood in the Middle East to be awful, bordering on desperate. Although it is sombre, those who know the region feel that there is all to play for. There are two reasons for this.

The first is the complex personality of Mr Netanyahu. I have met him several times and had informal conversations with him. He is usually reticent on strategy but a master at tactics. I have no doubt that he deeply dislikes the concept of a Palestinian state but that is not the same as saying that he could never endorse one….

That brings me to the second and, perhaps, decisive reason why the situation is more fluid than might first be apparent. Unlike George W. Bush, Barack Obama is engaging himself in the Israel-Palestine issue from the very outset of his presidency. He is doing so with more goodwill from the Arab world than any recent president.

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Pope Benedict XVI called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian homeland immediately after he arrived in Israel Monday, a stance that could put him at odds with his hosts on a trip aimed at improving ties between the Vatican and Jews.

The pope also took on the delicate issue of the Holocaust, pledging to “honor the memory” of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide at the start of his five-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Benedict touched down in Israel on the second leg of a weeklong pilgrimage to the Holy Land, after spending three days in neighboring Jordan. He is using the tour to reach out to both Muslims and Jews.

In his first public comments upon arriving, Benedict urged Israelis and Palestinians to “explore every possible avenue” to resolve their differences.

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…when Pope Benedict XVI visits Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories starting on Friday, the world may be excused for holding its breath. In his four years on the job, this pope has not always demonstrated a deft symbolic touch. If he simply manages to get back to Rome without starting a war, some might declare the trip a success.

Yet Benedict can, and should, do much more. Granted, the pope is not a politician, and this trip is more a pilgrimage than a diplomatic mission. Nonetheless, Benedict can make a unique contribution to the peace process at a moment when it obviously needs the help.

The reason for this is that popes enjoy a tremendous advantage over Western politicians in engaging the Middle East. This is the realm of “theopolitics,” where religious convictions always shape policy choices. A pope can engage those convictions in a way that secular trouble-shooters like former Senator George Mitchell, President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East, never could.

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Jordan’s king urged President Barack Obama Sunday to take a more forceful role in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, warning of a new Mideast war if there is no significant progress in the next 18 months.

Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” King Abdullah described the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as the core problem of the region and solving it would help the U.S. in dealing with Iran and combatting the appeal of radical Islamic groups like Al-Qaida.

“In the next 18 months, if we don’t move the process forward, and bring people to the negotiation table, there will be another conflict between Israel and another protagonist,” he said in the interview recorded in Washington on Friday.

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As Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist, has written, Israel was supposed not only to take the Jewish people out of exile but ensure that exile was “taken out of the Jewish people.” In this, 61 years after its creation, Israel has fallen short.

Uncertainty does not so much hang over the country as inhabit its very fiber. Existential threats ”” from Iran, from Hamas and Hezbollah, from demography ”” are forever invoked. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses ”” for now ”” to support even the notion of Palestinian statehood.

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The publication late last week of eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers alleging acute mistreatment of Palestinian civilians in the recent Gaza fighting highlights a debate here about the rules of war. But it also exposes something else: the clash between secular liberals and religious nationalists for control over the army and society.

Several of the testimonies, published by an institute that runs a premilitary course and is affiliated with the left-leaning secular kibbutz movement, showed a distinct impatience with religious soldiers, portraying them as self-appointed holy warriors.

A soldier, identified by the pseudonym Ram, is quoted as saying that in Gaza, “the rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles and their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war.”

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In the two months since Israel ended its military assault on Gaza, Palestinians and international rights groups have accused it of excessive force and wanton killing in that operation, but the Israeli military has said it followed high ethical standards and took great care to avoid civilian casualties.

Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and wanton destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army’s conduct in Gaza. On Thursday, the military’s chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier’s account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.

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Bishop John Gladwin, a former chairman of Christian Aid, used a debate on the Gaza situation in the House of Lords to call for a political process involving all parties.

He told peers: “Those of us who have been to the Holy Land will know the experience of passing through checkpoints on the West Bank that are staffed by young Israeli men and women who are barely out of school and controlling people old enough to be their grandparents.

“It makes you wonder what we are doing to the next generation of people and what people are thinking who have been involved in firing from tanks into Gaza, which has left young children and women dead or injured for life. There is a brutalising effect in all this.

“Then I think of the 1.5 million people on the Gaza Strip, half of whom are under the age of 21, I guess. What has happened to them now that thousands of their children have been traumatised by violence and brutality?”

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Our admiration for Obama is grounded in what he represents: fairness. He is the product of a just, democratic system that respects equal opportunity for education and work. This system allowed a black man, after centuries of racial discrimination, to become president. This fairness is precisely what we are missing in Egypt.

That is why the image of Obama meeting with his predecessors in the White House was so touching. Here in Egypt, we don’t have previous or future presidents, only the present head of state who seized power through sham elections and keeps it by force, and who will probably remain in power until the end of his days.

Accordingly, Egypt lacks a fair system that bases advancement on qualifications. Young people often get good jobs because they have connections. Ministers are not elected, but appointed by the president. Not surprisingly, this inequitable system often leads young people to frustration or religious extremism. Others flee the country at any cost, hoping to find justice elsewhere.

We saw Obama as a symbol of this justice. We welcomed him with almost total enthusiasm until he underwent his first real test: Gaza.

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How did this conflict get so fragmented? For starters, it’s gone on way too long. The West Bank is so chopped up and divided now by roads, checkpoints and fences to separate Israel’s crazy settlements from Palestinian villages that a Palestinian could fly from Jerusalem to Paris quicker than he or she could drive from Jenin, here in the northern West Bank, to Hebron in the south.

Another reason is that every idea has been tried and has failed. For the Palestinians, Pan-Arabism, Communism, Islamism have all come and gone, with none having delivered statehood or prosperity. As a result, more and more Palestinians have fallen back on family, clan, town and tribal loyalties. In Israel, Peace Now’s two-state solution was blown up with the crash of the Oslo peace accords, the rising Palestinian birthrate made any plans to annex the West Bank a mortal threat to Israel’s Jewish character, and the rockets that followed Israel’s withdrawals from both Lebanon and Gaza made a mockery of those who said unilateral pullouts were the solution.

All of this has led to a resurgence of religiosity. According to Haaretz, the following questions were posed by a well-known rabbi in one of the pamphlets distributed by the Israeli Army’s Office of Chief Rabbi before the latest Gaza fighting: “Is it possible to compare today’s Palestinians to the Philistines of the past? And if so, is it possible to apply lessons today from the military tactics of Samson and David? A comparison is possible because the Philistines of the past were not natives and had invaded from a foreign land.”

Who in the world would want to try to repair this? I’d rather herd cats….

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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened on Sunday a “disproportionate response” to the continued firing of rockets into Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

There have been sporadic rocket attacks by militants on southern Israeli communities and several Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip since a truce came into effect on Jan. 18 following a 22-day Israeli offensive in the territory.

At least two rockets struck southern Israel on Sunday, causing no damage or casualties. A wing of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group belonging to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, claimed responsibility.

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