As you probably know, a trifecta is when you correctly select the win, place, and show horses in a race.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell only got place and show.

He did speak with the Speaker of the Lebanese legislature. And he did get to talk with President Suleiman today. But he left Lebanon without seeing the top man of the Lebanese government, Prime Minister Hariri.
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I’m impressed. The Obama administration is going for a hat trick… Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.

The last two days have seen Secretary of State Clinton and Middle East envoy George Mitchell proposing peace plans to both the Syrians and Lebanese while the Israelis and Palestinians continue peace talks.

“As President Obama said, comprehensive peace in this region includes a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Lebanon and the full normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors,” quoth Mitchell.

It is a bold venture.

Possibly it is more likely to work than hoping for peace between just Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But it requires a series of extremely sensitive and complex moves on the chessboard of the Middle East, and it remains to be seen if the Obama administration possesses the crafty finesse of a chess Grand Master.
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The British group Jews for Justice for Palestinians, in association with the group German Jewish Voice and 10-country group European Jews for a Just Peace, plan to break the Gaza Blockade soon.

They have a ship ready to sail, and they say their activists and the crew are now on board.

But they will not say is exactly when the ship will sail, nor from which port.

That is understandable, because the last several blockade buster ships were prevented from sailing when too much publicity unraveled their relationships with host countries under pressure from Israel and the US.

German Jewish Voice stated, “The boat now has a full inventory of safety equipment, including global systems of communication, and thus has the capacity to trigger pre-prepared safety bulletins from London at a moment’s notice, for both the crew’s safety and the success of the mission.”

Captain of the mystery ship may be British sailor Glyn Secker, though because of the secrecy of the mission, that is not certain. In any event, he encapsulated the tenor of the group’s feelings about the Gaza blockade when he said the attempt  would show “not all Jews support Israel and say emphatically: not in our name.”

No official word from Israel regarding the new attempt to break the blockade, but surely it will be consistent with their prior statements that they will let no ship through the naval cordon around Gaza, using force if necessary.

After the ship sails, or at latest when it is detected approaching the interdiction zone around Gaza, it is sure to garner world attention. With all the critical negotiations going on in the Middle East, the importance of the voyage may be magnified.

About now, Special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is handing Syrian President Assad an offer from Israeli President Netanyahu to return much of the Golan to Syria.

So says an Israeli source that is often correct about avant guard news in the Middle East.

Most mainstream news is still speculating about the details of Mitchell’s trip to Syria today.

The supposed quid pro quo for the return of the Golan is for Syria to fully recognize the state of Israel, and to abandon Hizballah in Lebanon and Iraq, Hamas in Gaza, and pretty much every other militant force arrayed against Israel in the Middle East.

Will Assad accept? Big question.

What is the Golan worth to Syria? Can they live with the censure from the Arab world that would surely follow? Egypt accepted such an offer for the return of the Sinai in 1979.

What will the Israeli people do when they find out about the offer? It is said Netanyahu has not even shared his proposal with members of his own government, with the exception of Defense Minister Barak. Israeli settlers on the West Bank threatened internecine political war with Netanyahu for even considering extending the building freeze. Could this bring down the Netanyahu administration?

If Assad accepts, what will happen with the military network between Iran, Syria and Lebanon? Will the other parties in the network agree to fade quietly into the night without a whimper? Or will they decide the window of opportunity for a strike against Israel is very tiny and decide to make a quick move through it?

If Assad does not accept, will that signal to the forces in Israel that have been restrained from a preemptive strike against Iran that there is no possibility of safety without war? Would Netanyahu finally agree with them?

Bonus tension: Japan has warned its nationals in China that they ’should take care of their safety’. Japan seized a Chinese fishing boat in disputed territory, and is still holding the captain. The incident is billowing into a major issue, and no one knows how far it will go.

Even the United States is tacitly admitting that the fourth round of sanctions against Iran passed by the UN in June, and subsequently muscled up by individual countries, is failing to prevent Iran’s nuclear program from progressing at lightspeed.
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Tuesday the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have their first business meeting in the pleasant seaside resort of Sharm El Sheik, Egypt… sometimes called ‘The City of Peace’ because of all the peace conference that have been held there… not far from where a half dozen sophisticated Grad missiles fired from Egyptian Sinai landed last month. Wednesday, the talks move to Jerusalem.

If no one walks out by the end of Wednesday, the talks have a chance of continuing on… and on and on and on. At the end of a year, the goal is to have a framework for negotiations.

That is a tall order.

The Palestinian Authority is saying settlements in Israel must continue to be frozen indefinitely, or they will be done with peace talks.

Israel President Netanyahu cannot do that. One of the important members of the political coalition which keeps his government in power is the Israeli settlers. As the head of the Samarian Regional Council said yesterday, “If Netanyahu continues the freeze, we would see it as a declaration of war,” against the settlers, and they would do everything in their power to bring Netanyahu’s government down and call for new elections.

So Netanyahu is going to be a politician tomorrow at the talks, not a statesman. Which is his usual modus operandi. Witness his most recent mindbending statement: “Its all or nothing, but there are also intermediate options to consider”
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What would you call it, if not a low-level war?

A variety of Israeli and Lebanese sources report that Gaza militants have fired at least three Quassam missiles into Israel since the beginning of Rosh Hashanah Thursday evening. A mortar shell landed near an Israeli school the day before. No injuries or damage from the three missiles, but one building was damaged by the mortar round.

Late Thursday, Israel retaliated with airstrikes into Gaza at two different sites, if you prefer the Israeli military’s version, or four different sites, if you prefer the Hamas version. News media in Israel do not know which way to go on this one, which is a bit odd. My guess is three or four. Buildings and smuggling tunnels were damaged or destroyed, and Hamas claims five wounded. Iranian official news reported at least one killed in the tunnel raids.

Israeli mainstream news media cite ‘witnesses’ seeing Israeli Defense Forces tanks along the Gaza border, but no comment from the IDF or Army radio.
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I feel soiled even talking about this. But I suppose I must.

First let me say that the one comment I saw on line that puts my feelings as a Christian into perspective was the sweet and simple and true, “Jesus is love.” You might also want to reference Luke 9:51-55.

In the Middle East, this tiny event by a tiny person is being enlarged to a cause celebre. On official Iranian media yesterday, almost 40 percent of the lead headlines were about the proposed Quran burning and the huge effect it would have in the Muslim world. Right or wrong, the event plays into the hands of those who hate us.

General Petraeus, who took an extremely unusual step outside the military box to comment on the situation, is probably right. (more…)

The next few days have special meaning in the Middle East. They are iconic days that have seen the beginning of war in years past. And people have acute memories in the Middle East, especially when they are tragic memories.

It is the eve of Rosh Hashanah in Israel, Jewish New Years Eve, the first of the high holy days of Judaism. Those days end on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, September 17-18.

Tomorrow, is Eid Al-Fitr, which is the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, this year landing on the same day that the second intifada of the Palestinians, the second formal uprising against Israel, began in 2000.

As Muslims end their month of fasting, Eid Al-Fitr is a day for family, gifts, and cleansing. It has elements in common with Rosh Hashanah, as Yom Kippur has elements similar with Ramadan.

On Yom Kippur 1973, Syria and Egypt attacked Israel. The October 6 (all these holidays fall on different days of different people’s calendars each year) surprise caught Israel completely off guard. Yom Kippur was in the month of Ramadan in 1973.

No one in the Middle East forgets these things.

Israel has officially proclaimed a general lockdown of the West Bank, trying to prevent incidents of violence that could bloom into much more. 100 percent of Israeli police, border police, and police volunteers are on duty now, directing the gridlocked holiday traffic, and attempting to provide security for the large gatherings of this season.

You must be as tired hearing about the possibility of war in the Middle East as I’m tired of saying, once again, ‘this may be it.’

But that possibility was greatly manifest by the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, and it has only increased each day since then. All factors toward war keep deepening, becoming wider, yet with an increasing focus that is so painfully intense now. So I must keep pointing out critical times and events that could trigger The Event.

It is not foolishness to be watchful at this point in history. No more than being prepared for it is foolishness.

Today our Secretary of Defense Hillary Clinton spoke about the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in a very bold and direct way. She told the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. that, “Both sides and both leaders recognize that there may not ever be another chance.”

Not ever?

Strong words, coming from an honest broker of the peace talks… and I accede that she has risen to that stature in recent days.

What is the alternative to peace?

Gasoline

If the Iranian official news is telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth… and what official source does… Iran is now self sufficient in the production of gasoline. They say Iran has increased production from 11.6 million gallons to 17.4 million gallons per day.
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