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By Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan
Guardian
November 30 2011
 William Hague says diplomats must leave UK within 48 hours, saying storming of British embassy in Iran had backing of regime
The foreign secretary, William Hague, has ordered the expulsion of Iranian diplomats from the UK and announced that the UK is closing its embassy in Tehran, saying that the storming of the mission on Tuesday had the backing of the regime.
Hague said Iranian diplomats would have to leave Britain within 48 hours, and that all British embassy staff in Tehran had now left Iran.
He said that the move would not mean the severance of all ties, as the two countries could continue to have a dialogue at international meetings, as the US has done since the seizure and closure of its embassy in 1979, but the move marks a new low in relations, which have been growing increasingly strained.
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By Anne Bayefsky
Big Peace
November 30 2011
Notwithstanding alleged U.N. support for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, at New York Headquarters Tuesday, only the flag of the non-state of Palestine was flown alongside the U.N.’s own flag. The flag of the member state of Israel was barred.
This is how the U.N. General Assembly marked the anniversary of November 29, 1947, when it adopted the partition resolution that sanctioned a Jewish and another Arab state in the former Mandate for Palestine. “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” as it is called, is the U.N.’s annual attempt to turn the clock back.
This year Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour tried to gather momentum for propelling the unilateral Palestinian statehood bid forward. A controversial statement of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, delivered by his Deputy, appeared intended to do just that.
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By Jack Shenker
Guardian.co.uk
November 26, 2011
 They were a key part of the Arab spring but the country's secular forces are failing to make political headway
What now for Egypt's beleaguered liberals? Ahead of disputed parliamentary elections, the secular forces that featured so prominently during the first months of the revolution are struggling.
With one foot in the sphere of formal politics and the other in the politics of the street, they are failing to make headway in either direction. The liberals are being derided in Tahrir Square as having sold out to the supreme council of the armed forces (Scaf) by agreeing to participate in a flawed "transition" proceeding at a snail's pace; and outgunned by the organisational firepower of the Islamist parties and remnants of Hosni Mubarak's old ruling NDP, both of which look set to sweep the board when voting stations open their doors on Monday.
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By JPost Editorial
The Jerusalem Post
November 26, 2011
The international community cannot credibly feign ignorance of the incontestable evidence of turbulence brewing in Lebanon.
Anyone familiar with the Arabian Nights tales knows they depict a reality comprised of layer upon shadowy layer, one concealed behind another. Nothing is what it seems. Life is an interminable complex of nefarious conspiracies in which truth isn’t only immaterial; it’s frequently downright undesirable.
The latest flip-flops concern the reported explosion in a Hezbollah munitions depot at one of its South Lebanon strongholds. The incident is now being denied outrightly by the terrorist organization. This despite reliable independent reports of a massive blast.
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By Dore Gold
Israel Hayom
November 25, 2011
Whoever thinks that U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 – the famous Partition Plan – from Nov. 29, 1947, is for historians of the Middle East alone, is not aware of the role that the 64-year-old resolution still plays to this very day. As Israel's ambassador to the U.N. in 1999, I had to deal with an effort by the PLO observer to revive the territorial map of Resolution 181 as a substitute for U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967, which had served as the agreed basis of the peace process until then.
This Palestinian initiative began on March 1, 1999, when the German ambassador to Israel, who represented the European Union when Berlin held the EU's rotating presidency, sent a surprising message in a “non-paper” to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. He confirmed that the EU still was of the view that Jerusalem – both east and west – should be a Corpus Separatum (an internationalized separate entity).
This term comes right out of Resolution 181, and apparently still influenced the diplomatic doctrines of some European countries, who believe that at the end of the day Jerusalem should become an internationalized city.
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By Tally Helfont
Middle East Media Monitor
November 25, 2011
Middle East Media Monitor is an FPRI E-Note series, designed to review once a month a current topic from the perspective of the foreign language press. These articles will focus on providing FPRI’s readership with an inside view on how some of the most important countries in the Middle East are covering issues of importance to the American foreign policy community.
Tally Helfont is a Research Fellow and the Coordinator of FPRI's Program on the Middle East. Her research focuses on Jordan, strategic issues in the region, and radical Islamic movements. She has also instructed training courses in Civil Information Management to U.S. Military Civil Affairs Units and Human Terrain Teams assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan.
In recent weeks, a contentious debate has arisen in Jordan over what should be done about the country’s troublesome northern neighbor, Syria. Though the Jordanians, like many others in the region, were mostly preoccupied with their own internal troubles over the past eight months, there has been a palpable change in the discourse on Syria in the kingdom. Indeed, the recent slew of activities by the Arab League has brought the Syrian troubles to the fore. However, it was two other major events that sparked the intensification of this debate in Jordan—namely, King Abdullah II’s recent BBC interview in which he conceded that Bashar al-Assad had lost the legitimacy to rule and the subsequent attack on the Jordanian embassy in Damascus by pro-Assad, Syrian protesters.
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By Caroline B. Glick
November 25, 2011
 There is a price to be paid for calling an enemy an enemy. But there is an even greater price to be paid for failing to do so.
Next month, the US's long campaign in Iraq will come to an end with the departure of the last US forces from the country. Amazingly, the approaching withdrawal date has fomented little discussion in the US. Few have weighed in on the likely consequences of US President Barack Obama's decision to withdraw on the US's hard won gains in that country. After some six thousand Americans gave their lives in the struggle for Iraq and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the war, it is quite amazing that its conclusion is being met with disinterested yawns.
The general stupor was broken last week with The Weekly Standard's publication of an article entitled, "Defeat in Iraq: President Obama's decision to withdraw US troops is the mother of all disasters." The article was written by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan and Marisa Cochrane Sullivan. The Kagans contributed to conceptualizing the successful US-counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, popularly known as "the surge," that former president George W. Bush implemented in 2007.
In their article, the Kagans and Sullivan explain the strategic implications of next month's withdrawal. First they note that with the US withdrawal, the sectarian violence that the surge effectively ended will in all likelihood return in force. Iraq's Iranian-allied Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is purging the Iraqi military and security services and the Iraqi civil service of pro-Western, anti-Iranian commanders and senior officials. With American acquiescence, Maliki and his Shiite allies already managed to effectively overturn the March 2010 election results. Those elections gave the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya party led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi the right to form the next government.
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By Jerusalem Post Staff
November 23, 2011
 "Deep Junior" beat teams from around the world without losing a single game at championships in the Netherlands.
Israeli chess computer program Deep Junior, programmed by software engineers Amir Ban and Shay Bushinsky and assisted by Grandmaster Alon Greenfeld, won the 2011 world computer chess championship held in Tilburg in The Netherlands this week.
Deep Junior beat teams from around the world without losing a single game.
It was the seventh world title that the Israeli team has won.
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By Eytan Gilboa
BESA Center Perspectives
Paper No. 149, September 13, 2011
November 22, 2011
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The cornerstones of US President Barack Obama's Middle East strategy have collapsed. Turkey, once an exemplar moderate Islamic democracy, and Egypt, once an exemplar stable and moderate Arab power, have become increasingly unreliable allies. The lack of leadership and clear policy principles evinced by the Obama White House have severely weakened America's position in the Middle East, leaving a void to be filled by hostile regional powers such as Iran.
In April 2009, during his first official visit overseas, US President Barak Obama delivered a historical speech before the Turkish parliament in Ankara. Two months later, he delivered a similar speech at Cairo University. These visits and speeches marked a sharp turn-about in America's Middle East strategy. Obama vowed to replace military might with soft power and diplomacy; to reconcile with the Arab and Muslim world; to conduct effective negotiations with enemies; and thus to bolster America's position in the Middle East.
The Cornerstones of Obama's Doctrine: Turkey and Egypt
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By Caroline B. Glick
The Jerusalem Post
November 19, 2011
Ten years ago, in the shadow of the crater at Ground Zero, the smoldering Pentagon and a field of honor in Pennsylvania, America found itself at war.
Today, a decade on, America is still at war.
Ten years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the time has come to assess the progress of America’s war. But to assess its progress, we must first understand the war.
What war has the US been fighting since September 11? President George W. Bush called the war the War on Terror. The War on Terror is a broad tactical campaign to prevent Islamic terrorists from targeting America.
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By Elliott Abrams
Council on Foreign Relations
November 18, 2011
“Palestinians ponder next step in their statehood bid,” said the Los Angeles Times. “Palestinians will keep knocking on U.N.’s door,” said Reuters.
They will go to the Security Council; or they’ll go to the Security Council only if they’ll win; even if they don’t win; now, or maybe later; then to the General Assembly, or maybe not, after all. Palestinian “diplomacy” is now a series of contradictions that display little more than confusion. In this context it is not at all surprising to see renewed negotiations between Fatah and Hamas.
PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has refused to negotiate with Israel for nearly three years now. He thought he had an ace up his sleeve going to the UN instead, but that option has not panned out. American opposition and the lack of enthusiasm elsewhere (Europe, for example) doomed the effort in the Security Council because the PLO could not round up the nine votes needed. Initially, going to the General Assembly to raise the PLO’s status to “non-member state” observer could have been claimed as a real victory, but the Palestinian diplomatic mismanagement ruined that. They talked it down instead of up, devaluing the only success available to them and finally (for now, anyway) abandoning this path. The taste of victory at UNESCO was also bitter, for the Palestinians were quickly told–by friendly countries and by the UN system as well, which wants American dollars to keep flowing–not to try that again in any other UN agency.
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By Amos Harel
Haaretz
November 18, 2011
A gray metallic strip, 70-kilometers long, winds across the desert in the southern part of the border between Israel and Egypt. Far from the public eye, yet visible from afar, a vast project to put a high-tech fence between Egypt and Israel is being carried out with surprising speed.
The fence being built in the south is five meters high – twice the height of the separation fence in the territories and of the fences on Israel's other borders – and is changing the reality along the border. This year it consumed some 15 percent of the country's annual steel consumption.
By the end of next January, the first 100 kilometers of the fence will be in place. Barring unexpected delays, the whole project (apart from a 13-kilometer enclave near Eilat ) will be completed by the end of next year.
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By Barry Rubin
PJ Media
November 18, 2011
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech justifying Obama Administration Middle East policy changes everything. True, it isn’t surprising. I’ve been writing for almost three years about how the current U.S. government thinks this way.
Do not underestimate this speech’s importance. It isn’t a reluctant acceptance that Islamists might win elections and take over coutries. It is an enthusiastic endorsement of that idea.
But now there can be no doubt that Obama’s Middle East policy is engaged in what might be the biggest blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Millions of people will bemoan it as delivering their countries into the grip of repressive dictatorships.
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By Raymond Ibrahim
Hudson New York
November 17, 2011
Egypt's Maspero massacre—where the military killed dozens of Christians protesting the destruction of their churches—dominates October's persecution headlines. Facts and details concerning the military's “crimes against humanity” are documented in this report, and include videos of armored-vehicles running over civilians, a catalog of lies and deceitful tactics employed by Egypt's rulers and state media, and other matters overlooked by the West.
More damning evidence continues to emerge: not only did Egypt's military plan to massacre Christians to teach them a “lesson” never to protest again, but “death squads” were deployed up buildings the night before to snipe at protesters. Instead of trying the soldiers who intentionally ran-over demonstrators, the military has been randomly arresting Copts simply “for being Christian.” Finally, the fact-finding commission of Egypt's National Council for Human Rights just submitted its report which, as expected, “white washes” the military's role, “asserting that no live ammunition was fired on the protesters by the military, as the army only fired blanks in the air to disperse the protesters,” a claim eyewitnesses reject out of hand.
Meanwhile, not only are Western governments apathetic, but it was revealed that “Obama's top Muslim advisor blocks Middle Eastern Christians' access to White House.” Newt Gingrich asserted that Obama's “strategy in the Middle East is such a total grotesque failure” and likened the “Arab spring” to an “anti-Christian spring.” Ann Widdecombe accused the British government of “double standards in its threats to cut aid to countries which persecute gay people while turning a blind eye to persecution against Christians.” Even Christian pastors in the West, apparently more concerned about promoting interfaith dialogue with Muslims, are reluctant to mention persecution to their flock.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
November 14, 2011
According to the briefing given to a closed meeting of Jewish leaders in New York on Sunday, Nov. 13, the window of opportunity for stopping Iran attaining a nuclear weapon is closing fast, debkafile's sources report. It will shut down altogether after late March 2012. The intelligence reaching US President Barak Obama is that by April, Iran will already have five nuclear bombs or warheads and military action then would generate a dangerous level of radioactive contamination across the Gulf region, the main source of the world's energy.
Sunday, too, President Barack Obama said the sanctions against Iran had taken an “enormous bite” out of its economy. He also said that the “US is united with Russian and Chinese leaders in ensuring Iran does not develop an atomic weapon and unleash an arms race across the Middle East.”
He spoke after talking to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii about the new evidence submitted by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran was engaged in clandestine efforts to build a bomb.
He said both shared the goal of keeping a bomb out of Iran's hands.
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By Verena Dobnik
Associated Press
November 13, 2011
NEW YORK (AP) -- Peaceful marchers sent a clear message Sunday to vandals who torched cars and scrawled Nazi swastikas in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Brooklyn where Woody Allen was raised: Don't repeat the kind of attacks that once led to the Holocaust.
About 100 Midwood residents joined elected officials for the walk past four public benches from which 16 swastikas had been removed after the pre-dawn attack Friday.
"It was horrible," said Ascher Scheiner, 17, a student at a local yeshiva - a Jewish religious high school. "My friend woke me up and said he heard a loud explosion."
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By Jeff Dunetz
November 12, 2011
 Some of my friends criticize me because they believe I am too hard on President Obama. They say they can’t believe that there is not one of his policies which I supported wholeheartedly. Even a broken clock is right two times a day they say, isn’t there one policy you can say, “lets help Obama on this one?” And I would reach down to the bottom of my soul and really try to come up with something, but I always failed-until today. I have finally found something we should all help Obama implement, he doesn’t like talking to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu every day, all of America should be behind our President insuring that he doesn’t have to talk to Bibi every day.
During the G20 meetings, President Barack Obama and French President Sarkozy got caught talking in front of a microphone that was accidentally left on.
The conversation began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move. But then the two got personal:
“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama. The POTUS replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”
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