News stories by Pierre Klochendler, page 15

As the world grapples with controlling the spread of nuclear weapons, it's a time of complex choices in a Middle East edging between possible confrontation with Iran and possible movement towards Israeli-Palestinian peace.

President Barack Obama has made plain he means to deconstruct Israel’s 43-year-old grip on East Jerusalem. But, for all Washington’s pressure, Israel seeks to tighten its hold on the occupied part of the city.

Against all expectations, it's becoming the forerunner of a peace plan. Indeed, it might in the end even surprise the world as Israelis and Palestinians are forced into a peace. Even if, for now, it's shaping up as anything but peaceful.

There was a time when Israel was held in contempt by its neighbours for its over-liberal ways. They felt it did not 'belong' in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current visit to Washington is not just about trying to smooth over the crisis which has rocked U.S.-Israeli relations over the past fortnight.

Less than a hundred days to go, and the world looks on, often more with scepticism than anticipation.

In the middle of last week, it seemed that the old cliché about the light at the end of the dark Middle East tunnel was being confirmed: the U.S. had successfully cajoled both Israel and the Palestinian Authority into beginning to talk again.

'The best laid-schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley' (Scottish for 'going wrong').

Was it Yasser Arafat's biggest political error? A decade ago, the deadline for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel as envisaged in the 1993 Oslo peace accords thrust itself into the fruitless Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

Outside the Bedouin-style protest tent in the heart of this Palestinian neighbourhood, the anger is palpable, but controlled.