News stories by Pierre Klochendler, page 18

In this city of fraternal faiths and conflicting political aspirations, dreams need to be made of sterner stuff.

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'.

The three-storey, 36-room Cliff Hotel used to be a favourite with Western pilgrims in quest of the ‘authentic Holy Land flavour’, as also with Jerusalem Palestinians for wedding parties.

Along a wall not about to come down - a hotel no longer a hotel, but an outpost.

Other than to movie aficionados, the refurbishing of an old cinema hall is no cause for great excitement.

'Make sure your father gets this,' the municipal inspector tells a ten-year-old boy at the gate of the concrete house in an alleyway in the Al-Bustan quarter of Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood right under the shadow of the walled Old City.

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.

'Migrant workers bring with them a profusion of diseases - hepatitis, measles, tuberculosis, AIDS and drug addiction: Our critics can be as sanctimonious as they like, but unless we stop the wave of migrant workers, the whole character of the State of Israel, its Jewish character, will be under threat.'

'We knew something bad was about to happen when we saw the roadblocks being thrown up, and police everywhere. It soon came down the grapevine - the Israelis were demolishing more houses.'

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.