News stories by Pierre Klochendler, page 19

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.

Three Israeli soldiers, automatic rifles slung across their shoulders, are questioning a group of Palestinian builders. The top floors being added to the concrete house that lies right alongside Israel's security wall which divides off occupied East Jerusalem from Palestinian territory on the eastern side of the wall have evidently aroused some concern.

The U.S. consulate on Agron Street is something alien in the carefully calibrated diplomatic world of Arab-Israeli politics.

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?

Almost a year ago a barely noticed event took place in Sawarha, a Palestinian neighbourhood in the Israeli-occupied part of the city.

'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.