News stories by Pierre Klochendler, page 23

A ballistic missile, an anti-missile defence system and the transfer of nuclear technology - three inter-related issues addressed on the same day this week highlight the radical re-adjustment in U.S. priorities as the Obama Administration demarcates a fresh strategic outlook for the Middle East.

June 5 is a date that resonates powerfully in the troubled modern history of the Middle East. On that fateful day, 42 years ago, the seminal 1967 Arab-Israel war erupted. Six days later, Israel was in control of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, Syria's Golan Heights and all of the Palestinian territories.

A day before he enters what some Middle East analysts are calling not the Oval office but the lion's den, Benjamin Netanyahu, re-incarnated as Israel's leader, is determined not to be easy meat but also, on the other hand, not to become a bone in the throat of his host, President Barack Obama.

Even as Pope Benedict XVI tries his best during his current Holy Land visit to pay reverence to the attachment of all three monotheistic faiths to Jerusalem, on the ground a less lofty imprint is already furthering Israeli control over the Holy City in a way that could threaten the claims of all but Jews to Jerusalem.

Before stepping into Jerusalem's interfaith and inter-political Middle East minefields, Pope Benedict XVI had posited himself as a 'pilgrim of peace'. But, only hours into his spiritual mission, the Pope found himself crashing up against the walls erected by pain - Jewish pain and Muslim pain, the memory of the Holocaust, and Palestinian pain of the continued Israeli occupation.

Almost a full fortnight before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is received at the White House, and already political nerves here are all a-jangle. Is a showdown with Israel's staunch ally about to materialise?

Pope Benedict XVI says his visit to the Holy Land will be as a 'pilgrim of peace': the pontiff's pilgrimage starts in Jordan Friday (May 8) and continues on from there to Palestine and Israel.

Delegations from the rival Fatah and Hamas organisations have again failed in Cairo to bridge their differences meant to usher in a Palestinian unity government, but this has in no way slowed inroads which the Islamist movement has been making to increase its international legitimacy - much to Israel's concern.

The parties to the Middle East conflict are coming to understand the U.S. President means business - that, unlike his predecessor in the White House, Barack Obama means to tackle the world's most intractable problem head on. And, soon.

Just when it seemed that the international community was gearing itself up to put pressure on the new Israel government to engage the Arab world and the Palestinian Authority seriously on peace, Iran's president hijacked the moment. But, in again lashing out against Israel, he handed the Israeli prime minister a whip of his own with which to question the merit of dialogue with Iran which the Obama Administration has been promoting.