Last week: Sunday - clashes in the Old City of Jerusalem which to some resemble the events that led to the outbreak of the Second Intifada nine years ago; Tuesday - shooting by Palestinians wounds an Israeli motorist in the West Bank; Wednesday - an Israeli Army jeep hitting and killing a 17-year-old Palestinian. (Read more about the September 27th, 2009 clashes here.)

This week: Sunday again - hundreds of Arabs clash again with police in the Old City of Jerusalem. Police briefly block all access to the  al-Aqsa mosque compound.

At the rate things have been going, expecting another act of violence to follow might be the next logical step.

But, looking largely at last week’s Jerusalem clashes, a commentary in the Jerusalem Post, posed an interesting question: Do recent acts of violence portend worse violence? The Jerusalem Post answered No.

Our analysis of the recent violence also shows that talk of a Third Intifada seems premature to most Palestinians. But don’t be too optimistic though, says Zakaria al-Qaq of al-Quds University, as there exists Palestinian discontent with the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and policies that include settlement growth.

Do you think worse violence is possible in Israel and the Palestinian territories?

Read our FACTBOX on five risks to watch out for in the Middle East.

Click below for a video of last week’s clashes at the Jerusalem holy site:

Click below for a video of arrests after last week’s clashes:

(PHOTO: A Palestinian woman holds the Koran during a demonstration in solidarity with al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, organized by the Hamas movement in Gaza City September 28, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem.)

It seems last week’s focus, settlement expansion, has given way to this week’s prime focus: Might Israel attack Iran?

Last week the Arab media found Israel’s refusal to cease settlement expansion unsurprising and affirmative of what they said was Israel’s unwillingness to pursue a peace settlement with the Palestinians. An op-ed in Al Ahram Weekly, an English-language newspaper in Egypt, questioned the Arabs’ ability to challenge Israel: “Will they have the courage to shift the focus back from the Israeli-instigated ‘Iranian threat’ to the clear and present Israeli danger to the region?”

Lebanon’s Daily Star echoed the argument that Israel was using a perceived Iranian threat as a diversion to its greater “Machiavellian design”.

“The strategy that they employ is simple: Draw attention away from the issue of Israeli occupation and toward Iran, which they portray as a far greater threat to regional security,” the paper wrote in an editorial. “Campaigns that rely on this method tend to downplay the destabilizing impact that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory has on the region, and argue that the Islamic Republic is the main – or indeed the only – source of regional violence.”

Former Israeli deputy defence minister Ephraim Sneh said Israel might be compelled to attack Iran’s nuclear sites if international powers had not agreed to impose sanctions by the end of this year, while the current Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said a nuclear Iran would not constitute a threat to Israel’s existence - since Israel would act first to pre-empt such a threat.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that Israeli President Shimon Peres promised not to launch an attack on Iran, which would mean “the worst thing that can be imaged.” (Read more here.)

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon countered the Russian president saying that “all options are still on the table.” The chief-of-staff of Israel’s armed forces, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, later echoed Ayalon by saying: “Israel has the right to defend itself and all options are on the table.”

Says Ayalon: “I don’t think that, with all due respect, the Russian president is authorized to speak for Israel and certainly we have not taken any option off the table.”

Click below to watch our full interview with Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon on September 22, 2009, the day before the trilateral meeting in New York. (Jump to 17:48 for Ayalon’s answer to the Iran question.)

We’ve prepared some questions and answers on the possibilities of military action. Read it here.

(PHOTO: Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev gestures during an interview with CNN at his residence in Barvikha outside Moscow, September 15, 2009. REUTERS/Ria Novosti/Kremlin/Dmitry Astakhov)

Yesterday Reuters reported US President Barack Obama emphatically stating that Joe Biden’s comments this week on ABC were not a “green light” to Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Yet he did reiterrate Biden’s argument that Washington cannot “dictate to other countries what their security interests are.”

If Israel were to decide to try to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, how might it do that? It sounds almost like something from a spy novel, but Reuters’ Dan Williams reports that Israel may use “cyber warfare” to accomplish that goal.

“… malware — a commonly used abbreviation for “malicious software” — could be inserted to corrupt, commandeer or crash the controls of sensitive sites like uranium enrichment plants.

Such attacks could be immediate, [Scott Borg, director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit] said. Or they might be latent, with the malware loitering unseen and awaiting an external trigger, or pre-set to strike automatically when the infected facility reaches a more critical level of activity.

As Iran’s nuclear assets would probably be isolated from outside computers, hackers would be unable to access them directly, Borg said. Israeli agents would have to conceal the malware in software used by the Iranians or discreetly plant it on portable hardware brought in, unknowingly, by technicians. “A contaminated USB key would be enough,” he said.”

(To get the whole story, click here.)

Mind you, click here and here for a reminder, again from Dan, that Israel also possesses, it is assumed, more traditional weapons of mass destruction. Dan told us Israel has just sent one of its nuclear-armed submarines through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea in what officials called a deliberate signal to Iran.

Meanwhile, as Obama calls for engagement and diplomacy, top US military advisers argue he needs to hurry up.

“There’s a great deal that certainly depends on the dialogue and the engagement,” [said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff] . “I’m hopeful that that dialogue is productive. I worry about it a great deal if it’s not.” Mullen noted that some forecasters believe Iran could be as little as a year away from developing a nuclear bomb, adding: “The clock has continued to tick.”

(See the entire story here).

The protests in Tehran have resonated deeply among Palestinian and Israeli bloggers, who are not only looking outward at the events, but inward as well. The protests are seen not only as a wild card in their potential impact in the wider region, but also by some as a touchstone for reassessing how Palestinians and Israelis understand their own conflict.

Some Israeli peace activists see themselves in the Iranian struggle. Blogger and anti-occupation activist Joseph Dana writes on the blog Mondoweiss that despite the many differences between the Iranian and Israeli governments, “both countries’ national characters stress the bond between religion and state and are ideologically driven”, which leads to “oppressive” forms of governance: “The struggle that many young people are taking up against the current Iranian government regarding the election has never taken place in Israel.”

Similarly, the liberal Israeli-American blog Magnes Zionist critiques widespread public sympathy for Iranian protesters, which isn’t seen toward to anti-occupation protesters who demonstrate against Israeli military activity in the West Bank. To make his point, the blog’s author, who calls himself Jerry Haber, cites the similarities he sees between the Israeli and Iranian government actions: abuse of non-violent protesters, news blackouts, and disregard for election results. See his evaluation here.

Other Israeli bloggers, such as Daled Amos have been calling for Israelis to aid Iranian protesters as a way to rebuild ties with the Iranian public. He cites a column by the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick, who argues that Israel should be using all means of communication to break the news blackout for Iranian citizens: “by acting as the loudest and first democratic champion of the protesters, Israel would catapult itself to the forefront of the campaign for democracy in the Muslim world. Doing so would make it far easier for Israel’s representatives throughout the world to defend against false accusations by self-described human rights organizations that Israel is a human rights abuser.”

 Among Palestinians, there seems to be a divide in the public’s interpretation of events. Some are predicting Palestinians will see the protests as a kind of Western conspiracy against Iran’s Islamist rulers, while others hope it can be a wake up call for Palestinians to also take to the streets in protest - specifically, against the blockade of Gaza and the political stalemate between their rival political parties.

In the Israeli-Palestinian e-zine Bitter Lemons, Palestinian contributor Ghassan Khatib argues that the Iranian government’s treatment of protesters and division in Tehran’s political and clerical leadership may hurt those Palestinians who have held Iran up as the model for an anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist, Islamic state. This may be bad news for Palestinian Islamist groups like Hamas: ‘As far as this issue is concerned, the damage is irreversible regardless of the outcome of the ongoing protests in Iran.’

Khatib’s Israeli counterpart, Yossi Alpher, says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aims may also be hurt in the wake of Iranian protests. It may be hard, Alpher argues, for Netanyahu to call for an ‘Iran first’ policy and cite anxieties about a possible Iranian nuclear threat as justification for putting off Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, now that Iran’s government has its hands full with its own internal political eruption.

In a contrasting take on Iran’s impact on Palestinian and Israeli politics, Middle East analyst Martin Kramer’s entry on his blog this week takes issue with Obama’s silence on Iran compared to his advocacy of a Palestinian state: “A smarter president would deploy the word “intolerable” not for the situation of the Palestinians … but for the repression in Iran, whose courageous young people genuinely crave support. A smarter president would tell the Palestinians that the United States can uphold its Middle East interests forever and a day without a ‘Palestine’, but that it’s willing to try if Palestinians show the grit and unity that statehood requires.”

Whatever the results are in Iran itself, the effect of the protests has reached far beyond the streets of Tehran.

PHOTOS: Damir Sagolj, Ahmed Jadallah. Reuters, Tehran, June 13, 2009.

Not the best day at the office yesterday for Benjamin Netanyahu. For a man with one finger on the button of Israel’s presumed nuclear deterrent and the other wagging warningly at Iran, there are better ways to inspire confidence than getting your buttons mixed up in public.

That’s what happened to the prime minister, though, prompting this awkward explanation in the Knesset of why he had cast the only electronic vote against a parliamentary bill proposed by his own government.

On a day when his main ally, President Obama, was lecturing him again about West Bank settlements, local media said Netanyahu, just two months into the job, “may have been tired”.

Buttons that could be used to launch rockets from Gaza, southern Lebanon and Iran are a central security concern to Israel’s government and its allies.

The Israeli public lives with constant reminders of the buttons all around- not least with a full-scale nationwide civil emergency drill underway this week.

And inevitably the concern has seeped into Israeli culture. A few years back Israel’s Eurovision Song Contest entry was this lively number ‘Push the Button’ from Sderot-based rockers Tipex. Sderot is the southern Israeli town that has borne the brunt of rocket attacks from Gaza. Take it away Tipex.

You can read more about Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal here. And here. Just make sure you press the right button…

Gone were the track suit, the back-slapping and the wise-cracking, all part of Ehud Olmert’s casual demeanor when he used to fly to the United States for White House talks and stand in the back of a chartered El Al plane, fielding questions from the travelling press.

His successor as Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, managed the media very differently this week during his first visit to the White House since taking office on March 31.

It began with a meet-and-greet on the flight to Washington and an admonishment from Netanyahu’s spokesmen that the prime minister would not be answering any questions. ”Bibi”, in a dark business suit, and his wife Sara walked down the aisle and shook hands with each and every reporter. Testing the “no-question” rule drew a “no comment” along with a firm handshake.

With Netanyahu at odds with U.S. President Barack Obama over Palestinian statehood, a cornerstone of Washington’s Middle East policy,  shifting the media focus to common ground appeared to be part of a game plan for message management. For Netanyahu, that meant getting the point across back home that, in his words, he and Obama saw “eye-to-eye” on the need to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

Just hours after landing in Washington, Netanyahu sent his national security adviser, Uzi Arad, to speak to the travelling press in time for the evening TV news in Israel. The prime minister, he said, would stress in his talks with Obama the next day the need for urgency in dealing with Iran.

Score one for Netanyahu when at their meeting on Monday – preceded by preparatory talks between the prime minister’s top advisers and Obama’s team on finding points of agreement — the president for the first time set a rough timetable, of about a year, for his diplomatic outreach to Iran.

After the Oval Office talks, Israeli and foreign media reporters who accompanied Netanyahu to Washington gathered at Blair House, the official U.S. guest house where he was staying, for a briefing by the prime minister.

Again, Bibi was all business.

“Let’s have each reporter sitting around the table here introduce himself to the prime minister before we start the briefing,” his spokesman suggested affably.

“No need,” Netanyahu shot back, unsmiling and shuffling a stack of index cards that apparently contained talking points. “We all know each other.”

No recordings are allowed at the briefings. To ensure Netanyahu’s message of agreement with Obama on Iran got through in his own voice to radio and television audiences in Israel, his aides reserved a room in the Capitol where he could speak in Hebrew to microphones after his meetings on Tuesday with Congressional leaders.

“The prime minister will make a brief statement. There will be no questions,” his spokesman said.

And again addressing Israelis directly, without interruption from reporters eager to ask him about differences with Obama on Middle East peacemaking, Netanyahu stood in front of microphones on the tarmac at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport after arriving home. Israel Radio carried his words live.

Netanyahu made his statement, this time focusing on what he described as another area of agreement with Obama, on widening the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to include Arab countries. When he was done, a reporter called out a question. Netanyahu just walked away.

One of the most closely watched meetings for decades between an Israeli Prime Minister and a US President took place yesterday when Messrs. Obama and Netanyahu sat together at the White House.

The two men met for two hours - during which time Obama pressed the ‘two state solution’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on a reluctant Netanyahu, while Netanyahu underlined his belief that Iran was a more pressing concern than Palestinian statehood.

White House watchers pointed out that 2 hours is a long meeting by Preisdential standards and also that the body language of the two men as they sat together suggested none of the fireworks that some had predicted went off in the private encounter.

Here’s a video report on the public comments made by the two leaders as they finished up their marathon chinwag.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper has a full transcript of the Q&A here.

For many Israelis the sight of European delegates walking out during a speech by Iran’s president at last week’s U.N. conference on racism was a rare moment of solidarity by countries often critical of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.

“Defeated” read a front-page banner headline in one Israeli newspaper next to a picture of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had to face the mass walkout by Western diplomats at the forum in Geneva when he called Israel a “racist state” in his speech.

In a bid to improve its image, Israel, which has always worried greatly about its international standing in public opinion, has launched a campaign called “Brand Israel”.  You can read about it and the obstacles that the Jewish state faces by clicking this link  .

Ahmadinejad’s speech was seen in Israel as doubly insulting as it came on the eve of the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day when the country remembered the six million Jews killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

As Israelis prepare for their annual Holocaust commemorations on Monday, one scholar has taken a different tack on the tragedy by estimating how many Jews might have been alive today were it not for the Nazi genocide.

According to demographer Sergio DellaPergola, the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War Two more than halved the potential global Jewish community in the long-run. Rather than numbering some 13 million now, there might have between 26 million and 32 million Jews, he says in an article to be published in the journal of the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

“The Holocaust struck a deep blow to the demographic, cultural and social fabric of the Jewish people in many ways,” DellaPergola said in a statement issued by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is professor of Israel-Diaspora relations.

DellaPergola speculated not only on the number of offspring that those who perished by the Nazis never had, but also how many Jews might have been “lost”, nominally, to low birthrates and intermarriage in Eastern Europe — the Ground Zero of the Holocaust.

Unmentioned in the Hebrew University statement is the possibility that the State of Israel might not have been set up were it not for the Holocaust, which mobilised world opinion behind the Jews’ quest for a sovereign haven. Israel is now home to 6 million Jews and a million Arab Muslims and Christians. Many demographers believe the country will soon have the majority of world Jewry given rates of assimilation in the diaspora.

Israelis mark Holocaust Remembrance Day by standing silently as sirens sound nationwide. Broadcasters air educational programmes and news media report on the conditions of Holocaust survivors in Israel.

This year’s events coincide with a United Nations conference on racism in Geneva, which Israel and a slew of Western powers are boycotting out of concern it could serve as an anti-Zionist platform.

Israelis are especially incensed by the attendance at the Geneva parley of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has questioned whether the Holocaust happened and called for the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map”.

The diplomatic tensions underscore the possibility of real conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme, which Israel — assumed to have to Middle East’s only atomic arsenal — describes as a threat to its existence. Iran denies having hostile designs.

“Sixty-five years after the end of the war, we have still not seen the last of the tyrants nor the last of those who think it is possible to liquidate the State of Israel,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak said in a speech to Israeli veterans of anti-Nazi partisan groups.

“Let us look to what has to be done, just as you did,” he said. “You went to the front to fight, and this is what we will continue to do.”

As Benjamin Netanyahu’s top pick for national security adviser, Uzi Arad will be key to crafting the foreign and defence policies of the incoming Israeli government.

Arad is a retired official of the Mossad intelligence agency who served under the hawkish Netanyahu during his first term as prime minister in 1996-1999. That period saw Israel pursuing U.S.-sponsored interim peace negotiations with the Palestinians, as well as tentative rapprochement with Syria.

A decade on, Israelis are focused on the threat they see from Iran’s nuclear programme and support for armed Islamist factions on their borders. Peace talks are not popular. Many Arabs, for their part, perceive Israel’s rightward tack as a sign of poor faith on the core issue of establishing a Palestinian state.

In a wide-ranging interview, Arad made clear that, while the new government’s policies have yet to be set, Netanyahu is almost certain to insist on “blunting” Iran as a prerequisite for any progress in Israeli-Arab peacemaking. Pending that, the prime minister will focus on building up the Palestinian economic and security infrastructure in the occupied West Bank. There appears to be no plan to stop shunning Hamas, the Islamist faction locked in a power-struggle with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and in control of the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu opposed Israel’s 2005 Gaza withdrawal and has vowed not to evacuate Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Arad further stressed that Israel, under Netanyahu’s Likud party, would not part with the Golan Heights. Syria lost the Golan in the 1967 Middle East war and insists on its full return for peace.

In fuller remarks to Reuters, which can be viewed above, Arad rebuffs accounts that Netanyahu signalled flexibility on the Golan issue during the 1990s. Any such overtures were made by Israeli prime ministers from the centre-left Labour party, not Likud, he says. But Arad does discuss possible stop-gap proposals such as a partial ceding, or long-term leasing, of the strategic plateau.