The key officials, responsible for the talks, hoped that the direct dialogue could be concluded in one year time frame.

“The United States will play an active and sustained role in the process. That does not mean that the U.S. must be physically represented in every single meeting.

“We recognize the value of direct, bilateral discussion between the parties and, in fact, will encourage that between the two leaders on a regular basis,” said George Mitchell, the Special U.S. Envoy for the Middle East Peace.

“On the other hand, it does not mean that the U.S. will simply stand aside and not participate actively. We will operate in a manner that is reasonable and sensible in the circumstances which exist, but the guiding principle will be an active and sustained United States presence,” Mr. Mitchell told reporters at a special White House briefing as the leaders started arriving for the direct talks, which is considered to be crucial to bring peace in the region.

Last week Ms. Clinton invited President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington on September 2 to resume direct negotiations to resolve all final status issues.

“We believe these negotiations can be completed within one year,” he said.

Today they will have bilateral meetings with the U.S. President Barack Obama as will President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan.

The four leaders then will join Mr. Obama for dinner at the White House to help launch these discussions.

“Egypt and Jordan have a critical role to play, and their continued leadership and commitment to peace will be essential to success,” Mr. Mitchell said.

On Wednesday Ms. Clinton will convene a meeting at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas and their delegations.

“Since the beginning of this administration, we have worked with the Israelis, the Palestinians and our international partners to advance the cause of comprehensive peace in the Middle East, including two-state solution, which ensures security and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The Special U.S. Envoy hoped to proceed promptly on an intensive basis with the parties.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated privately and publicly that he hopes to meet with President Abbas about every two weeks. We think that’s a sensible approach, which we hope is undertaken and that, in addition to that, there will be meetings at other levels on a consistent basis,” Mr. Mitchell said.

Responding to questions, he said he does not expects Hamas to play any role in the direct talks.

“But as Secretary of State Clinton and I have said publicly many times, while in the Middle East and in the U.S., we welcome the full participation by Hamas and all relevant parties once they comply with the basic requirements of democracy and nonviolence that are, of course, a prerequisite to engage in these serious types of discussions,” he said.

Mr. Mitchell said the one year time frame is “achievable“.

“We recognize that there are many — indeed, many very knowledgeable and experienced people who hold a different view. There are also many who aggressively advocate the view that this can’t be done and shouldn’t be done — on both sides — in public statements and public advocacy,” he said.

“But in my judgment, what it really comes down to in the end is what is best for the people of Israel and what is best for the Palestinian people,” he said.

“I believe that a strong and persuasive and convincing argument can be made and must be made by us and others that a peaceful resolution, which ends this conflict, which ends all claim, which creates a viable, democratic, contiguous Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel is in their best interest,” Mr. Mitchell said, adding that the alternative to that, of the possibility of continuing conflict into the indefinite future, is far more problematic.

When we walked into the small establishment in the oil-rich Gulf city, the air was heavy with fruit-flavoured shisha smoke. Like most cities, the patrons automatically assumed we were American.

With the assumptions made, the chatter automatically turned to Middle East politics. Though barely audible over the blasting Arabic music, everyone had an opinion on the U.S. involvement in the region.

On this day, things were oddly back to normal. For a brief moment about a year ago, a flash of our Canadian passports was met with disappointment. Barack Obama had just given his “new beginning” speech at Cairo University. While sipping Turkish coffee, people were suddenly eager to talk about his middle name, his childhood in Indonesia, the country with the largest population of Muslims, and what this could mean for U.S.-Arab relations.

A year ago, everyone was hopeful. But, as the 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll showed earlier this month, negative views for Obama went from 23 per cent last year to 62 per cent this year. Of course, this was more than apparent in Dhahran. The conversation quickly got heated over talk of Israel and disillusionment towards American policies.

Obama has done the near-impossible domestically by passing the stimulus and health care bills. But it was the international community that bought into his campaign slogan more than American voters. For them, change in the form of a peace process hasn’t come quick enough.

“Israel-Palestine – there is no question in my mind that the bulk of the shift in attitudes towards the Obama administration in the Arab world…is due to disappointment on this central issue,” says Dr. Shibley Telhami, who conducts the Arab Public Opinion Poll, at a Brookings Institute event. “This is the prism through which Arabs view the U.S. and I think that remains to be the case.”

That’s why we’re eager to travel back to that Dhahran coffee shop as Obama lobs his third Hail Mary pass.

It’s no coincidence that the U.S. announced this week’s round of peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas just days after the United States withdrew the last of its combat troops from Iraq.

Forces in Iraq still conjure up images of Abu Ghraib in people’s minds, discrediting the Americans as negotiators. With this latest move, Obama positioned himself as close as an American president could to being a neutral third party.

If he can ease tensions, everyone will feel it, from Jerusalem to Jakarta.

Israel-Palestine is often cited as a “regional” conflict. In reality it affects the world. It’s one of the key reasons behind Iran’s quest for nuclear weaponry. It was cited by the suicide bombers in the London tube. In Canada, it even led to a riot at Concordia University in Montreal.

In our travels to more than 50 countries, our presumed identity constantly draws the conflict into conversation over Turkish coffee in the Middle East or fruit juices in Indonesia. Even in Kenyan markets, where people cite Obama’s middle name with pride, the Middle East peace process is always underlying the issues.

The Israel-Palestine conflict draws interest everywhere because ultimately it means greater security for the world. Greater stability in this region would extend goodwill to the roughly 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. It would undermine Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorist groups that act in the name of the cause.

Obama has already done the seemingly impossible by tackling two of the most controversial domestic policies in America. By tackling this issue, maybe he can deliver the change people are looking for the world over.

The Mamilla cemetery had its peace disturbed this month by Israeli bulldozers demolishing gravestones in the middle of the night and by Muslim protests. The once sleepy plot of Muslim gravestones in Jewish west Jerusalem has become a flash point for rival claims to the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since early this year, activists from Israel’s Islamic Movement have been cleaning and restoring graves at the cemetery, where tradition says famous Islamic scholars are buried beside warriors who fought the Crusaders alongside Saladin.

But Israeli authorities say the activists went beyond restoration and manufactured hundreds of graves in a political attempt to cement their hold on the site.

In August, municipal crews arrived at night with power shovels and erased around 300 low, coffin-shaped tomb markers that Israeli officials and archaeologists say were fake and contained no human remains.

The Islamic Movement protested. “The graves are not empty and the graveyard is not fake as they claim,” said Nuha al-Qutob, 35, who attended a mid-August demonstration. She said her grandfather was buried nearby.

The cemetery first drew attention in 2004 with the beginning of work on the Museum of Tolerance. Undertaken with the stated goal of promoting coexistence, the museum is a project of the U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization named for a famous Nazi hunter.

A century ago, the cemetery was a rural plot sprawling outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Today it is hemmed in by luxury hotels, a high-end shopping mall and a cluster of clubs and bars. Some of the unused cemetery’s land was rezoned by Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, with part becoming a park and one corner a municipal parking lot.

In a reflection of how even the best intentions can go awry in the holy city, the tolerance museum turned into a public relations debacle when it became clear that the plot of land slated for its construction — the parking lot — contained human remains.

The cemetery has not shrunk since the 1960s and Israel denies that any more land will be rezoned. But Muslim activists fear parts of the plot, which is already a fraction of its original size and includes swaths of land with no visible graves, will be severed and consumed.

When the attempts to block the museum in Israeli courts failed in 2008, the Islamic Movement began concentrating its efforts on the rest of the cemetery, outside the security-camera-mounted aluminum walls of the museum construction site.

The movement began bringing in volunteers and contractors to clean up the land and restore the graves with the city’s permission, investing about $100,000, according to Mahmoud Abu Atta, a foundation spokesman.

A few months passed, Israeli officials said, before they noticed a dramatic increase in the number of graves. A pathway that city gardeners regularly used with their pickup truck was suddenly blocked by headstones, and a row of gravestones mysteriously appeared over an underground sewage line and on top of one manhole cover, according to Shlomo Chen, an inspector with the Israel Lands Authority in charge of the graveyard.

By August, city crews began arriving at night to demolish the gravestones. Restored graves that the city deemed genuine were left untouched.

“It is important to note that this is one of the biggest frauds perpetrated in recent years, and its sole goal was to illegally take over state land,” the Jerusalem municipality said.

The new gravestones, typically constructed with old stones set in fresh concrete, also scrambled the physical record at an important historical site, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which termed the graves “fictitious.”

The Islamic Movement’s Abu Atta said all of the markers were constructed atop genuine graves, though in some cases nearly nothing was left of the original. He also indicated that the precise location of the graves was beside the point.

“If you dig a few meters down anywhere here you’ll find bones,” he said. “We just want to guard the cemetery.”

The irony of a Jewish-sponsored Museum of Tolerance going up partly on a Muslim graveyard has made the project an irresistible target for critics. Legal action by the Islamic Movement and other groups snarled the project for years.

The 2008 Supreme Court ruling in the museum’s favor noted that in Israel, where there are more archaeological sites per square mile than in any other country in the world, buildings are often built on graves.

And when the British ruled the city before 1948, it emerged, the local Islamic leaders at the time granted a religious dispensation to move graves in the cemetery to clear the way for a business center, hotel and park.

suicide attack

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded army recruitment centre in Baghdad killing 61 people Tuesday, officials said, as violence coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan raged across Iraq.

The attack, blamed on al-Qaeda and the deadliest this year, wounded at least another 100 people and came a day after Iraq’s two main political parties suspended talks over the formation of a new government and as the US withdraws thousands of its soldiers from the country.

US, Britain and France led international condemnation of the attack, with Paris describing it as “cowardly” and London labelling it “unjustified and vicious.” US President Barack Obama condemned the bombing

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a high-level probe into the bombing, which Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta blamed on al-Qaeda.

“The fingerprints of al-Qaeda are very clear in this attack,” Atta told AFP. “You can see it in the timing, the circumstances, the target and the style of the attack — all the information indicates it was al-Qaeda behind this.”

An official at Baghdad morgue put the death toll at 59, while a doctor at Medical City hospital, close to the scene of the attack, said they had received 125 wounded.

The bomber blew himself up around 7:30 am (0430 GMT) at the centre, a former ministry of defence building that now houses a local security command, in the Baab al-Muatham neighbourhood in the heart of the capital.

An interior ministry official said the majority of the victims were prospective soldiers seeking to enlist on the last day of a week-long recruitment drive but that some troops who were protecting the compound were also hurt and killed.

“After the explosion, everyone ran away, and the soldiers fired into the air,” said 19-year-old Ahmed Kadhim, one of the recruits at the centre who escaped unharmed from the attack.

“I saw dozens of people lying on the ground, some of them were on fire. Others were running with blood pouring out.”

Kadhim said the recruits, who had to pass two searches to enter the recruitment centre compound, had been divided into groups based on their educational qualifications, with the suicide bomber targeting the selection of high school graduates.

A doctor at Medical City hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several of the wounded remained in critical condition and added that most of the victims were “very young — less than 20 years old.”

Iraqi security forces cordoned off the area following the attack, and security was stepped up across the capital, leading to traffic gridlock during the morning rush hour.

A shop owner in the area, who did not want to be named, blamed negligence on the part of army officers for the attack.

“This is the fault of the officers responsible for securing the area — they let these recruits gather outside the centre without any protection,” he said.

Also on Tuesday, two separate bomb attacks against judges in Baghdad and the central city of Baquba left four of them wounded, security officials said.

The recruitment centre explosion was the bloodiest single attack here since December 8, when coordinated blasts in the capital killed 127 people, and recalls a spate of suicide bombings against army recruitment posts in 2006 and 2007, when Iraq’s insurgency was at its peak.

Violence has surged in the past two months in Iraq, with 200 people already killed in August alone and Iraqi government figures saying that 535 people died in July — the deadliest month in Iraq since 2008. The US military disputes the July figure, saying 222 people died violently.

The latest bloodletting, which also coincides with Ramadan which began in Iraq on August 11, has sparked concern that local forces are not yet prepared to handle the country’s security on their own.

American commanders, however, insist that Iraqi soldiers are up to the job as they pull out thousands of their forces ahead of a declaration to an end to combat operations at the end of August.

But Iraq’s top military officer has raised doubt about his soldiers’ readiness when the last US troops depart as scheduled at the end of 2011. American forces would need to stay until 2020, Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari said earlier this month.

Iraq is also mired in a political stalemate, with the winner of its March election breaking off talks with his main rival Monday evening, dampening already faint hopes that a government could be formed before Ramadan ends in the middle of September.

In Seattle, US President Barack Obama Tuesday condemned a suicide bombing in Iraq as the work of people hoping to “derail” democracy, his spokesman said.

“The president condemns those attacks,” said spokesman Bill Burton.

“There are obviously still people who want to derail the advances that the Iraqi people have made towards democracy, but they are firmly on track and we’re confident that we’re moving towards the end of our combat mission there.”

Japan condemned a suicide bomb attack at an army recruitment center in Baghdad on Tuesday, saying terrorism cannot be justified for any reason.

“Japan is greatly shocked and indignant at the attack, which caused many casualties,” Foreign Ministry’s Press Secretary Kazuo Kodama said in a statement.

“Japan reiterates its firm condemnation of these atrocious acts of terrorism that indiscriminately target innocent people,” Kodama said.

He also expressed Japan’s deepest condolences for those who have been killed by the attacks and to the families of the victims. Japan will keep its proactive support towards such efforts by the Iraqi people, he added.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa condemned on Tuesday the latest Baghdad bombings, attributing them to the lack of political stability in Iraq.

He affirmed that in order to save Iraq from such acts and allow stability to occur, a political consensus is required, which is the basis of security for all Iraqis.

Kuwait

Meanwhile, Iraq still owes Kuwait $22.3 billion in reparations from its invasion of the Gulf Arab state two decades ago and the Gulf War that liberated it, a Kuwaiti official said in remarks published on Tuesday.

Mansour Hayat, of the state committee that is coordinating the claims with a UN compensation commission, told al-Seyassah daily in an interview all of the outstanding payments were due to the government and the oil sector.

He said individuals and companies had received a total of $18.78 billion.

Iraq is seeking forgiveness of outstanding compensation, or a reduction in the amount of annual oil revenue it has been setting aside to pay war reparations to Kuwait and other countries affected by the 1990-1991 Gulf crisis.

Baghdad argues it needs the extra cash to help fund rebuilding after the 2003 US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. Kuwait resumed diplomatic ties with Iraq after the invasion but has so far opposed forgiving the reparations.

In another report, the United States is establishing consulates or branch embassies in four sensitive cities key to Iraq’s future as it ends its combat role and boosts diplomatic activity, US officials said on Monday.

US consulates are being established in Basra, near the key oil port of Umm Qasr, and Arbil, Kurdistan’s capital, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Corbin said.

“These consulates provide a recognized important diplomatic platform for all the types of programs that we want to do now and that we’ll want to do in the future,” he told a briefing.

“One is in the Kurdish region in the north and the other is in Basra, which has enormous economic importance being close to Umm Qasr, Iraq’s only port, and close to the new oil fields,” Corbin said.

The United States also plans to establish temporary embassy branch offices that would remain open for three to five years. One will be in the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which is claimed by both Kurds and Arabs, and the other will be in Mosul, which faces continuing insurgency-related violence.

“We chose the Kurd-Arab faultline,” Corbin said. “There are issues in Kirkuk and in Mosul that have not only to do with Arab-Kurd issues, but also Iraq’s minorities, the Yazidis and Christians, and we want to be able to address their issues.”

Violence is still a problem for Mosul, he said. “It is still the place with the greatest amount of insurgency, with the greatest amount of terrorist attacks.”

And although it’s better known for campaigns that focus on bikinis and beaches, the industry is now going out of their way to welcome Muslim travellers from the Middle East in the month of Ramadan.

At the forefront of these initiatives is a new Ramadan evening lounge, inaugurated yesterday at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Surfers Paradise, one of the most popular holiday spots on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Minister for Tourism Peter Lawlor said the lounge would be a free facility during Ramadan where visiting and local Muslims can gather after a day of traditional fasting. It is open every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and will offer light refreshments.

Other efforts include the launch of a dedicated Gold Coast Muslim Visitors Guide that lists all of the city’s Halal-certified restaurants, Gold Coast Tourism Director International Gordon Price told Emirates 24|7.

The Gold Coast is already a popular destination for Middle Eastern tourists, particularly in summer, when temperatures across Arabia can cross 50 degrees but the Gold Coast averages around 22 degrees during the day.

And with the Ramadan period, when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, coinciding with the peak summer travel period for at least another ten years, it makes sense to keep the high-spending visitors coming in.

Lawlor said while the Middle East was not Queensland’s largest international market, it was definitely a high priority for the state’s tourism industry because of its significant potential. Australia’s tourism numbers have dwindled after record highs in the 1990s, but Lawlor said Queensland welcomed 20,500 visitors from the Middle East and North Africa last year.

“Tourism data also shows that Middle Eastern visitors to Australia contributed $573 million (Dh2.1 billion) to the Australian economy over the past year.

“Additionally, Middle East arrivals to Australia were forecast to grow more than 12 per cent per year between 2008-2013. These figures demonstrate the opportunity to better market the Gold Coast to the Middle East, make visitors from that international region feel more welcome, and see this convert into higher bookings and an increase in expenditure for the region.”

Price said numerous Gold Coast tourism operators including theme parks, restaurants and hotels already catered to the Middle Eastern market by offering Halal-certified products, prayer rooms, copies of the Koran and prayer mats to Muslim visitors.

“Our visitors from the Middle East are well regarded by the local industry as they stay for extended periods and are very active around the city, they really like to experience all the things to see and do on the Gold Coast, and the Ramadan Lounge will certainly add to that,” added Gold Coast Tourism CEO Martin Winter.

A visitor information centre in the middle of town has Arabic-speaking staff, while local tour operators such as Lawand Tourism will create packages for Middle Eastern guests.

And the Islamic Society of the Gold Coast will help with specific requirements, says Price.

To further leverage business into the territory, Tourism Queensland appointed a Dubai-based representative for the first time last November, in response to the growing potential of the Middle East market, Lawlor said.

“Tourism Queensland’s current focus is on targeted marketing activity in the Middle East to promote the Sunshine State as a desirable holiday destination, strengthening travel industry relationships and developing airline partnerships,” he said.

However, there’s still some way to go. The new Ramadan lounge, for instance, is only open three days a week, but Muslims must fast every day.

So says journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the September issue of The Atlantic magazine in an article that is fueling debate and speculation among many Middle East experts.

Goldberg bases his conclusion mainly on three premises: In the Israeli view, Iran will be in a position to produce a bomb by next spring or very soon thereafter. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking persistent Iranian threats to wipe Israel off the map seriously and is resolved to prevent a second Holocaust. And Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak argue that even if Iran doesn’t use the bomb, a nuclear threat hanging over Israel could destroy the Zionist enterprise, with Israelis leaving the country and prospective immigrants staying away.

Goldberg makes much of the prime minister’s reverence for his 100-year-old historian father, Benzion Netanyahu, who sees history in terms of successive threats to the existence of the Jewish people. And it is true that Netanyahu at times depicts himself as a latter day Churchill, whose life’s mission is to save his people.

Nevertheless, Goldberg gives many reasons why Israel would think twice before launching an attack on Iran.

On the tactical level, a strike against Iran’s well-protected and far-flung nuclear facilities might have limited effect. Also, the operational complexity of having to fly great distances, over American lines or Arab territory, is a military planner’s nightmare.

Far worse, though, on the strategic level, is the fact that attacking Iran without an American green light could lead to a major rupture between Jerusalem and Washington. And if distanced from or even abandoned by America, Israel could quickly become a pariah state isolated on the international stage.

The widespread international condemnation of Israel’s action against a Turkish “peace” vessel last May is an indication of where things could go.

Moreover, any Israeli strike against Iran would almost certainly trigger a major regional war, with Israel under missile and rocket attack from Iran, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and also possibly from Syria and Hamas in Gaza. That, in turn, could lead to spiraling oil prices for which Israel would be blamed. And Iran and its proxies almost certainly would unleash terror attacks against Jewish targets worldwide.

For reasons like these, outgoing Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is said to be unenthusiastic about launching an Israeli strike. Although the Israel Defense Forces reportedly has conducted simulation exercises as far afield as Greece, and is continually fine-tuning its operational plans, Ashkenazi would prefer not to have to carry them out.

Ashkenazi is not the only senior military man with doubts.

Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser and one of Israel’s sharpest military analysts, argued in a much-touted position paper late last year that there is no way Israel would risk harming its key strategic relationship with the United States for the lesser gain of putting Iran’s nuclear program back by a few years. Moreover, he said, if there is to be a military strike, the chances are that the Americans would prefer to carry it out themselves.

According to Eiland, some U.S. Army chiefs maintain that since America would be affected by the fallout of any strike, it should bring its greater military prowess to bear to ensure success.

In Eiland’s view, for Israel to have a realistic strike option, the following conditions would have to pertain: a clear failure of the current sanctions against Iran; American unwillingness to take military action despite what some of the generals have been saying; and American understanding for Israel’s need to act. Then Netanyahu would have to make his own personal calculus — bearing in mind that failure could leave the Gulf unstable, Western interests undermined, Israel blamed and isolated on the world stage, and worst of all, Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons accorded a degree of legitimacy.

Zeev Maoz, a political scientist at the University of California, Davis, and at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, adds another concern. In a mid-August article in Haaretz, he suggested that an attack on Iran could lead to international pressure on Israel to dismantle its presumed nuclear arsenal and to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Israel refuses to buckle, it could be ostracized, Maoz wrote, and if it does buckle under pressure, it would be losing a key bargaining chip for the creation of a new regional security order.

So given the risks an attack on Iran would entail, would Israel consider a nuclear balance of fear with Iran?

According to Maj. Gen (Res.) Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, former head of military research and development in the IDF and the Defense Ministry, in such a balance the advantage would tilt hugely in Israel’s favor. He told JTA that the Iranians are trying to build a fission bomb that at around 20 kilotons would be about the size of the American bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Foreign experts assert that Israel possesses fusion bombs that can be from 50 to 250 times more destructive than the 1945 atomic bomb.

In late 2007, Anthony Cordesman, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, published “Iran, Israel and Nuclear War: An Illustrative Scenario Analysis,” in which he tried to gauge the outcome of a nuclear showdown sometime in the next decade. His bottom line: Israel would be able to survive and rebuild, while Iran would not.

According to Ben Yisrael, the Iranians are very well aware of this disparity and therefore would be unlikely to start a nuclear war against Israel.

“Maybe the Iranian man in the street doesn’t know these facts, but the engineers working on the Iranian bomb certainly do. And so does [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad,” Ben Yisrael told JTA.

Nevertheless, Ben Yisrael, like most Israeli analysts, is adamantly opposed to Iran acquiring the bomb for two reasons: The Middle East almost certainly would go multinuclear in its wake, exponentially increasing the chances of someone mistakenly pressing a nuclear button, and terrorists might get their hands on a nuclear device with no balance of fear possible.

Indeed, most Israeli analysts see compelling American reasons for action. They argue that the Obama administration would be loath to see a Middle East nuclear arms race undercutting the president’s vision of a nuclear-free world. It also is crucial for America to prevent Iran from using a nuclear umbrella to promote terror and extortion against the West, or terrorists from getting their hands on a dirty bomb, or Iran from using its nuclear posture to gain control of Middle East oil supplies in the Gulf.

In addition, the failure to stop Iran from going nuclear could lead to a loss of American prestige and influence in the region, with wavering Gulf states moving from the American to the Iranian orbit.

So if sanctions don’t work, and if a popular uprising in Iran led by the opposition Green Movement fails to materialize, the Israeli leadership’s hope is that America will see the necessity of taking military action, despite the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Israelis are careful not to spell this out, since they don’t want to be seen as pushing for an American attack.

Israeli analysts point out that what would be very difficult for Israel to achieve, militarily and diplomatically, the United States could achieve much more easily. According to Goldberg, Netanyahu himself often tells visitors “the secret” that the U.S. Army is much bigger than Israel’s.

Netanyahu in his meeting with Obama in early July was heartened, according to aides, by what he heard from the president on Iran. Indeed, it appears that U.S. policy is to prevent Israel from going it alone, with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen urging Israel to bite the bullet, while Obama reassures Israeli leaders that he will not allow Iran to get the bomb.

But what if Israel and the United States differ in their estimates of the Iranian nuclear timetable? Or if the United States proves reluctant to attack when Israel feels that time is running out?

Will Israel, because of the threat posed by a nuclear Iran, then take the risk of acting alone? And, crucially, will the United States then give Israel a green light to attack?

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev should announce that they will co-sponsor a conference to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East with the participation of the 189 nations that attended the review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May at the United Nations.

All states in the Middle East, including Israel and Iran, support the idea of establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction. But the details of what exactly would be prohibited under such a regime, as well as the verification measures needed to maintain confidence in it, have never been worked out. The conference would provide the space for hammering out differences.

Initially, the process of discussing “hypotheticals” would not involve taking serious risks and could offer substantial political and psychological benefits.  Hypothetical or not, such talks would be highly sensitive, and the process could quickly become bogged down. The linkages between issues are complex. The existence of a regional diplomatic process will not immediately convince Iran to reverse course and abandon its uranium enrichment activities or other programs of concern. Nor can we expect that Israel will soon declare and dismantle its nuclear weapons.

This raises the question of whether U.S. and Russian interests coincide enough today to work together.

In the mid-1990s, the United States and Russia sponsored a similar process. It collapsed when the parties reached an impasse over how to approach the discussion of a nuclear-free Middle East. The United States and Russia were not sufficiently engaged to keep the parties at the table.

The stakes are higher today and sufficient to command the necessary attention.

Skeptics dismiss the notion of cooperation between Washington and Moscow on the Middle East because Russia has little interest in helping the United States solve its Middle East problems. But they forget that Chechnya is located less than 900 kilometers from Tehran. One-seventh of Russia’s citizens are Muslim — a population with ties to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and other parts of the Arab world.

Radicalism and political turbulence in the Middle East inevitably reverberate in Russia. For both Russia and the United States, the ongoing battle against terrorism is the top national security priority. Russian leaders view Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as training grounds for anti-Russian terrorists.

Russia also shares the U.S. interest in nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and has supported successive rounds of UN sanctions against Iran. For its part, the Obama administration has consented to Russia’s role in supplying low-

enriched uranium to fuel the Bushehr nuclear power plant and transferring the spent fuel from Iran. At the same time, while the United States no longer sees Bushehr as a nuclear proliferation risk, there are still broader U.S. concerns about whether Iran’s nuclear fuel could eventually be used for military purposes.

Although Moscow and Washington have competitive energy interests in the Middle East, both benefit from placing regional stability and nonproliferation above short-term profits. Indeed, stability in the Middle East is a prerequisite for maintaining reliable energy markets in the region. Russia’s interest in energy cooperation with Iran — for example, in the development of Iran’s vast reserves of natural gas and oil refining — will be impossible to pursue at acceptable costs if nuclear concerns continue to grow.

The United States and Russia can turn today’s Middle East crises into tomorrow’s negotiating points, but only if they work together — and stay together for the long term.

Throughout her book, Berko, a criminologist and researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, totally ignores the context: She does not treat her interviewees, especially the women, as political animals. Rather, she insists on proving that the motives of all the women involved in terror attacks (including those who blew themselves up, although the ones whom she interviewed had obviously failed at their mission or served as assistants to the bombers ) were exclusively personal. In doing so, she restricts these women to the private sphere and prevents them from belonging to the public sphere, which is precisely what she claims Palestinian society does to its women.

Berko denies these women, who are presented with pseudonyms, the possibility of independent thought, national-ideological motivations and the ability to make personal decisions. She repeatedly emphasizes that her subjects have some kind of defect, such as a disgrace in their past, problematic relations within the family or a father who lacks authority; or, she tells us, they simply fell in love with the wrong man, who sent them off on a suicide mission after first exploiting them sexually.

Unconsciously Berko puts herself in a similar position: Throughout the book she presents herself primarily as a woman and a mother, even telling us about her daughters. She doesn’t mention her career as a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces or her work as a researcher and academic, as though all her encounters with her interviewees took place on a purely female-personal plane. She says, and there is no reason to doubt her veracity, that her subjects eagerly awaited the conversations with her and received her graciously, with a hug or a kiss, offered her coffee and opened their hearts to her. Some even drew pictures for her, gave her small handmade gifts or wrote her emotional personal notes.

Even the fact that Berko is Israeli is mentioned only in passing. She says more than once that the interviewees regarded her as a friend rather than an enemy. She writes almost nothing about her feelings when she sat with them. That, in turn, explains why the conversations did not transcend the personal and remained superficial and predictable, in spite of the fact that they were occasionally very frank.

Berko also repeats ad nauseam that she is the daughter of parents of Iraqi origin – as though that is what gives her the professional expertise to conduct her study, and although she acknowledges that she does not know Arabic well. She insists on presenting her Middle Eastern origin to her interviewees as a calling card, one that brings them together on a common cultural basis. Of course the importance of the emotional, personal and psychological dimension in analyzing terrorism should not be downplayed, but it seems to me that Berko is not equipped with the professional tools for psychological analysis, and so her diagnoses remain superficial.

Womb as demographic bomb

In her first book, “The Path to Paradise: The Inner World of Suicide Bombers and Their Dispatchers” (Praeger Books, 2007 ), which looked at male terrorists, she also concentrated on the personal rather than the ideological stories of the perpetrators. In the present book, this attitude has become even more heightened. In “Path to Paradise,” it was still possible to find a subversive sentence such as: “The terror attack is the strategic weapon of the Palestinians,” but here, we find nothing like that. According to Berko, the “shaheeda,” a female “martyr,” was meant first and foremost to fulfill her obligation to society through marriage and childbirth. In the act of suicide, then, she is deviating from basic social norms and will never be able to exploit her womb as a demographic bomb. In contrast to male suicide bombers her memory is not enveloped in an aura of heroism, despite her act of sacrifice. Not only that, but the women who are released from prison, after serving time for a failed suicide attack, have difficulty finding their place in society, getting married or returning to a normal life. They are, for all intents and purposes, considered defective.

Substantial parts of the conversations and of Berko’s analyses deal with the female body’s exposure during the attack. As the bomb explodes, the woman’s body breaks apart and momentarily is in the public domain, an act that goes against Islamic norms. Several Palestinian men whom Berko interviewed, including senior Hamas officials, expressed strong opposition to the use of women for suicide attacks for precisely that reason. But there is no satisfactory explanation in the book for the fact that it was actually becoming more popular for women to be suicide bombers, not only among Palestinians but also in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya, or for the fact that those same male leaders have not publicly condemned it.

Almost every interview begins for Berko with an external description of the prisoner, including details about her clothing, hairstyle and build, as though these were the important things about her. She writes: “Sabiha, a good-looking and smiling woman, wore a black jilabab and her face was covered with a white hijab, which was fastened around her neck with a matching pin. She smiled at me, revealing two dimples.” Fadwa, by contrast, “was wearing platform shoes on her shackled feet, which were partially covered by tight jeans. Her chest was covered with a greenish nylon windbreaker, her curly hair was gathered. … She drummed lightly on the bench with her long nails, which were bare of nail polish.” To my taste, these external descriptions only reinforce stereotypes, diminish the women’s status and downplay their personality.

Another problem is that Berko appears to be chained to the theory that all Arab women are oppressed, restricted and under the absolute control of their male relatives, to the point where “they experience more freedom in prison than at home.” That is an Orientalist, condescending and clearly unscientific viewpoint. Since this idea seems to be one of the author’s basic premises, it also dictates her conclusions. She makes no attempt to use critical or feminist theories to understand the complexity of the situation in which these women live. There is no attempt to understand Palestinian society under the ongoing Israeli occupation, or to examine what that does to its social structures. Nor does Berko adequately examine her own assumptions about the women’s credibility: Is everything the women tell her really what they think?

Genuine communication

One particularly instructive chapter, called “How to Talk to Terrorists,” reveals the method by which Berko claims to have acquired the trust of her interviewees: “Forming a relationship with a universal human basis, by finding out what people have in common …. That is how the path is paved to genuine communication, which for them is purifying and provides profound insights.” The secret, she writes, “is not to allow them to focus the conversation on religion and politics and on their opinion of the conflict, but to make them feel that I’m really interested in them as human beings.”

Does she honestly think that people who are in jail because of their ideologically motivated violent acts, which they committed against those they see as an enemy and an occupier, can talk openly and honestly about their lives without discussing those acts or what led them to carry them out? Isn’t she voiding the conversation of the main issues that dictated the course of their lives and put them behind bars in the first place?

Berko writes that she made sure to give the interviewees the feeling that she was not judging them, and explains repeatedly to her readers that she even felt empathy for them – but she hastens to express reservations, so we will not suspect her unjustly: “In that context, empathy does not mean to love or to agree with what is said, but to try to understand the emotion without necessarily identifying with it.”

In this way, Berko tells us, she arrives at profound insights about the inner world of terrorists that differ from the findings reached by security experts. And although she says that her point of view was universalistic and humanitarian, she is convinced that her insights have “dramatic implications for scientific research, as well for the operative behavior and the fight against terror, psychological warfare, understanding the way terrorists think, conducting negotiations with terrorists, methods of investigation, etc.” Does this mean that her research was ultimately meant to help the defense establishment?

I am full of admiration for Anat Berko for the many years she devoted to researching the phenomenon of suicide bombers, for the dozens of conversations that could not have been easy to conduct or digest. In spite of unnecessary repetitions and inarticulateness here and there, her book is readable and coherent and affords Israeli readers a look at the human faces beyond Palestinian terrorism. Nonetheless, much more could have been gleaned from these studies, and their conclusions could have been broadened had they not deliberately ignored the wider political context in which we all live. Dr. Sarah Ozacky-Lazar, a Middle East historian, is a research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

The problem is that Blackberry encrypts its messages, and governments want access to encrypted information. Christian Caryl is a Senior Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s Center for International Studies and a Contributing Editor to Foreign Policy magazine.

Caryl: Well, I think it’s that governments around the Gulf do actually keep a very close watch on their populations and on people coming in and out of their countries.  There are problems in the Gulf with terrorism, organized crime.   There are all sorts of security problems.

And then there are problems that we in the West would perhaps regard as a little less legitimate, like the simple desire of authoritarian governments to keep tabs on what their people are thinking and doing.  There have been these concerns about BlackBerries for some time.

It’s really been in the wake of the al-Mabhouh thing that the talk has really translated into concrete action and some of these governments have really started to get very tough on RIM, the company behind BlackBerry.

Hilleary: You’re talking about the Hamas Commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in a Dubai hotel last January.

Caryl: There’s been some talk that the people who killed Mahbouh were using Blackberries.   We’ve never been able to get that substantiated, but it does crop up in some of the commentaries.

Hilleary: There seems to have been somewhat of a tight lid on negotiations between RIM and the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. One reads that the governments would like access to codes that would help them read encrypted messages.  And there have been reports that RIM has actually given these codes to the United States and other governments.   What do you know about this?

Caryl: That’s certainly what a lot of people say. It’s very, very hard to get to the truth of that matter. RIM denies, of course, that they’ve given any privileged information to any governments. They deny completely having given any kind of cipher keys or whatever encryption keys you would need to “crack” their encryption.

But, you know, this version that RIM has done deals with some governments just persists.  There’s talk that they’ve knuckled under to the Chinese and a couple of other governments.

And I was very struck in my research for this piece to see that the loudest complaints are actually coming from the Indians, because the Indians say that the terrorists who attacked in Mumbai in 2008 used BlackBerries for their communications, and the Indian authorities could not listen in to what they were saying.  I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what we hear.

And the Indians are very, very worked up about this and say, “Well,  you know, the Chinese have had this capability to listen in on BlackBerry communications for years-there’s a double standard.”  That’s what they say, but again, RIM has been keeping its cards very close to its chest on this matter and has not been particularly eager to address any of these issues publically.

I don’t know-I’d be surprised if they didn’t find some sort of modus vivendi with the Saudis.  It’s very interesting to watch this from without because RIM is saying,  “Oh, we don’t make deals with people on encryption, and yet they’ve been negotiating with the Saudis about something.

And suddenly within the past few days, the Saudis said, “Oh, well, maybe we won’t ban BlackBerry use after all.”  And within just the past few days we’ve been hearing some slightly more conciliatory things from the UAE.  You kind of wonder.