News stories by Mitchell Plitnick, page 3

WASHINGTON, Oct 23 (IPS) - Jewish groups have reacted furiously to a letter to Congress by 15 leaders of Christian denominations asking for a review of whether some of the three billion dollars in annual United States aid to Israel is being used in violation of U.S. law and policies.

WASHINGTON, Sep 07 (IPS) - The Democratic National Convention erupted in controversy this week over the removal of a clause in the party platform stating that Jerusalem should remain Israel’s undivided capital and only grew worse when the wording was hastily re-inserted.

WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (IPS) - The ambitions of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran, as harboured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, have been defeated by internal opposition, a growing number of observers have come to believe in the wake of dramatic opposing statements by prominent Israeli leaders, including President Shimon Peres.

WASHINGTON, Aug 10 (IPS) - Tensions rose Thursday between the Barack Obama administration and the Israeli government when a leading Israeli official claimed to have knowledge of U.S. intelligence that portrays Iran as a more immediate threat than Washington has been saying.

WASHINGTON, Jul 06 (IPS) - A resolution at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from three corporations which provide equipment used to maintain Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands failed by a mere two votes on Thursday.

At the third annual conference of J Street, the 'pro-Israel, pro-peace' lobby group that is widely seen as a counterweight to the more right-wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israel-Palestine conflict took the focus back from the ongoing tension with Iran.

In his first public address since departing from the White House, Dennis Ross, former top Middle East aide to U.S. President Barack Obama, called for increased sanctions on Iran, a careful approach to new Arab regimes and a low-key approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

A clear majority of Israeli Jews would support a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, even if it meant that Israel too would have to give up its stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Veteran U.S. diplomats and scholars who have worked for decades on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have grown increasingly pessimistic about the continued viability of the U.S.- sponsored 'peace process' and the two-state solution that was presumed to be its goal.

With a vote on the Palestinians' status at the United Nations scheduled for next week, the Barack Obama administration has made its opposition to any upgrade of Palestinian status in the world body quite clear.