News stories by Analysis by Jerrold Kessel, page 4

Most analysts agree that the past week of Middle East diplomacy has actually set back the cause of peacemaking. If they are right that the intensive U.S.-led effort has actually diminished prospects for a breakthrough towards Palestinian-Israel peace, who is to blame?

'Nobody can usurp the right to determine the fate of the nation on their own - not the Palestine Liberation Organisation, nor anyone else. It is the will of the Palestinian people that must determine our future,' declares Hamas political leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh.

The Goldstone Commission has delivered an unremittingly scathing report on Israel's 22-day war against Hamas in Gaza last December and January.

Questions about Iran's nuclear thrust are tumbling out, echoing around the world in several directions.

The State of Israel against the former leader of the State of Israel - for the first time, a former prime minister will soon be in the defendant's chair in a criminal court.

It isn't formal yet, but it's bound to be soon - within the coming six weeks, Palestinians and Israelis will again be sitting down around the peace table.

Has the just-ended Fatah party convention, concluded in a cavalcade of personnel change, affected the prospects for a two-state solution that might finally resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

'We have no partner,' has been the mantra of successive Israeli governments, both right-wing and centre, ever since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifadah in September 2000 in wake of the failed Camp David summit. That was the last time Palestinians and Israelis saw each other as potential peace partners.

Much of the world is side-tracked into the summer holiday mood, but the Obama Administration consistently stresses it won't allow its Middle East peacemaking effort to be side-tracked: We'll soon be hitting full stride, is the constant White House message.

'Reckless', 'cavalier', 'unscrupulous', 'petty politician, not statesman' these and such epithets applied to Benjamin Netanyahu by friends and foes alike - not that he ended up with many friends - when he was first Israel's Prime Minister back in the late 1990s.