News stories by Analysis by Jerrold Kessel, page 3

After Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank torched a mosque and desecrated copies of the Quran in the Palestinian village of Yasuf, last Friday morning, they ran into a wall of condemnation.

'Get your hands off the Land of Israel and the people of the Land of Israel - that's what we need to tell Mr. Obama - get on the phone to the White House each and every one of you!'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Palestinian counterpart Salam Fayyad have both been scrambling earnestly to win the backing of European leaders in advance of what could be a major EU policy shift that aims at creating new impetus for Palestinian-Israeli peace prospects.

The fate of one prisoner locked in an Israeli jail could release the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process from its own jail - provided the timing is right.

Israelis were perturbed when new recruits at a recent passing-out parade at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the remains of Judaism's holiest site, suddenly unfurled banners reading, 'Our Sons Do Not Evacuate Jews'.

U.S. President Obama's Middle East engagement policy reverses the unsuccessful policy of his predecessor, but the U.S. is again committing faux pas aplenty.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself embattled on several fronts as he tries - hitherto unsuccessfully - to ward off the enormous international pressure on Israel unleashed by the Goldstone report for its conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza earlier this year.

Déjà vu on one of the world's most volatile religious sites, a site deeply revered by both Muslims and Jews.

It's long been among the most durable, strategic relationships in the Near East - perhaps because it was the most unlikely.

In the week of Nobel Prize announcements, the most intriguing comment from the Middle East came not, as one might have expected, as a straight reaction to the shock of U.S. President Barack Obama being awarded this year's Peace Prize.