TOP STORIES April 6, 2009, 12:14 PM (GMT+02:00) Addressing the Turkish parliament, Monday, April 6, US president Barack Obama said the world should not give in to pessimism in the pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians despite the challenges. "Let me be clear," he said: "The United states strongly supports the goal of two states..." He asserted that the United States is not and will never be at war with Islam. DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 7, 2009, 10:15 AM (GMT+02:00) A chilly encounter President Barack Obama's declaration in the Turkish parliament Monday, April 6, that the US is not at war with Islam provided cold comfort in Riyadh and Cairo, where his drastic policy shift of détente with Tehran, first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly last month, is causing jitters. According to DEBKAfile's Middle East sources, Abdullah took the US president sternly to task over his emerging policy on Iran, Syria and Iraq, when they met at the G20 summit in London. DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 6, 2009, 10:22 AM (GMT+02:00) Gilead Shalit, victim of new Hamas hard line DEBKAfile's Middle East sources disclose that Hamas has just driven the Egyptian-brokered Hamas-Fatah unity talks into the ground. The radical group was freshly-empowered to raise the ante by the Obama administration's active courtship of its Syrian sponsor, without president Bashar Assad giving an inch on his strategic alliance with Tehran. This breakdown has dashed hopes of securing the release of Gilead Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by Hamas for nearly three years. DEBKAfile Special Report April 5, 2009, 7:44 PM (GMT+02:00) North Korean ballistic missile takes off unimpeded A North Korean long-range rocket lifted off from its coastal Musudan-ri launch pad early Sunday, March 5. Flying over Japan it appears to have splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. When it came to the crunch, no one tried to intercept the North Korean rocket. This was a serious setback for US president Barack Obama. And North Korea showed Israel that it was dangerous to rely on Washington and the rest of the international community to put a stop to Iran's drive for a nuclear weapon. DEBKAfile Special Report April 3, 2009, 10:42 AM (GMT+02:00) Amid the ping-pong between Washington and Jerusalem over the validity of a Palestinian state established alongside Israel as the end-product of peace negotiations, the Norwegian Fafo institute which sponsored the 1993 Oslo Framework accords decided to find out how the Palestinians felt about this solution. Its main discovery was that a majority, 53 percent, of Palestinians (like Israelis), is against two states. This figure breaks down into 33 percent, who opt for the annihilation of the state of Israel. DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 2, 2009, 5:11 PM (GMT+02:00) Binyamin Netanyahu launches diplomatic whirl DEBKAfile's political sources reveal Binyamin Netanyahu's planned launch of his second term as prime minister with a flurry of diplomacy. Thursday, April 2, trips to Cairo and Jordan had already been scheduled for talks with president Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II, followed by a visit to Washington to meet President Barack Obama and to Moscow for talks with prime minister Vladimir Putin. Netanyahu is considering becoming the first Israeli prime minister to visit the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. 
Obama: US backs Israel, Palestinian states, is not at war with Islam
Saudis also dismayed by Obama's seeming tolerance of nuclear Iran
More...Hamas aborts Palestinian unity talks, empowered by US courtship of its Syrian sponsor
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US, Japan, S. Korea, Russia fail to intercept North Korean ballistic rocket launch
More...Independent Norwegian poll: Palestinian majority opposes two states
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Tuesday, 7 April 2009
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