News stories by Analysis by Jerrold Kessel

As President Obama on Wednesday initiates the ninth U.S. attempt in the last 30 years to bring about a final Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement, expectations are low and pessimism is high.

Rightwing Israeli groups financially supported by Jewish and fundamentalist Christian groups from abroad are on a campaign to undermine free thought in Israeli universities. Collaterally, a move is under way by right-wing parties in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to limit the freedom of action of civil and human rights-minded NGOs.

'If you come to a fork in the road, take it.' Sometimes, the nonsensical quote of the legendary New York Yankees baseball catcher Yogi Berra has a real message. It can pointedly be applied to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on peace with the Palestinians.

Beyond the pernicious well-documented aspects of the Israeli Occupation, all sorts of niggling fragments of Israeli control over Palestinian life, and individual petty cases of nastiness leave new Israeli talk of 'gestures' towards peace hollow.

What led the Middle East hit parade this week was less the chords struck harmoniously at the White House Tuesday by two deft diplomatic dancers than the slick dance routine performed by a squad of Israeli soldiers patrolling the streets of the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron.

The sound of stun grenades and gunfire resounded through this embattled Palestinian neighbourhood. Amidst increased tension over plans to tighten Israel's grip over the occupied eastern part of the city, Israeli border police and Palestinian youths confronted each other all through Sunday night. Dozens of Palestinians were wounded, mostly from tear gas inhalation; six policemen were hurt by stones.

Israel has given guarded approval to the new round of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council in the international community's bid to haul back Iran's nuclear programme.

The elemental reason for the outbreak of the seminal June 1967 Arab-Israel war was Israel's self-inflicted doom prophecy that 'the Arabs just want to throw us in the sea'.

What exactly happened on the high seas off the Gaza-Israel coast remains in murky waters.

'What kind of celebration is this,' said Bat-El, 22, engulfed in a sea of blue- and-white Israeli flags in a huge procession marking Israel's self-celebrated Jerusalem Day, the anniversary by the Hebrew calendar of Israel's conquest of East Jerusalem 43 years ago during the 1967 Arab-Israel war.