One of the problems with countries like Syria - secretive and authoritarian - is that whenever a bomb goes off or someone is assassinated, the list of possible suspects is extensive.

One can draw up a long list of enemies who could have plotted and carried out Saturday’s rare car bomb attack on a major road near a Syrian state security complex and an intersection leading to a famous Shi’ite Muslim shrine. The blast, which killed 17 people including a brigadier general and his son, poses another test to Syria’s reputation for keeping a tight grip on dissent and maintaining stability in a troubled area. 

High on any list of possible perpetrators are Sunni Salafi jihadis active in Syria now, and who for years were able to cross through the Syrian borders into Iraq to fight U.S. troops. This stopped recently when Damascus tightened its borders following pressure from Iraq and the United States and opted for a policy of detente and moderation starting with indirect peace talks with Israel through Turkish mediation and a diplomatic drive to end its international isolation.

The jihadis, angry at Syria cutting off their routes, relaunching peace talks with the Jewish state and detaining their militants, could have turned their guns against Damascus. And this could have involved a mix of personnel — foreign expertise helping local Islamists.

Another motive for the latest attack could be Sunni-Alawite tensions in Lebanon. Sunni militant groups based in northern Lebanon have been fighting a sectarian war with Lebanon’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam which has close links to Syria, whose ruling elite has been dominated by minority Alawites for over four decades.

Syria said an Islamist suicide bomber was responsible for the attack and that the vehicle had entered Syria from a neighbouring Arab country on Sept 26. It did not name the country but Syria’s Arab neighbours are Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Assad, whose country has dominated Lebanon for three decades and was forced to withdraw its troops after the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, warned this month of a danger from what he called foreign-backed Sunni extremists in the predominantly Sunni city of Tripoli. He called for a solution to “the rising threat” of Islamist militants in the city.

The bombing was reminiscent to attacks that were carried out in the past by Syria’s Islamist opposition led by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood which has been locked in a bloody feud with the secular government since the 1980s when late President Hafez al-Assad launched a major crackdown against their followers and supporters in the northern city of Hama.

That left thousands of Muslim Brotherhood activists dead — some estimates are as high as 20,000 –  languishing in prisons or forced underground.

A riot by Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists at a military prison near Damascus in July suggests the bitter fight between the authorities and the Brotherhood is far from over. There were conflicting accounts of the incident but human rights groups said Syrian security forces killed dozens of prisoners during the riot at Sidnaya prison.

A Syrian official said the disturbances began when Islamist inmates took prison officers hostages and set conditions for their release. Special anti-riot units were brought in from Damascus to end the riot which was quashed violently, according to various accounts.

Syria, which has been ruled by the secular Baath Party since 1963, has sometimes used Islamist groups as proxies to pursue its interests in neighbouring countries, even though it showed no mercy domestically to the 1982 uprising at Hama by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It will likely pursue the hard line policy against militants but Saturday’s attack, which follows the assassination of the military commander of Lebanon’s Hezbollah in Damascus and a senior military aide to President Assad in northern Syria earlier this year, has dented Syria’s watertight security image.

The killing of Imad Moughniyah, in particular, who was on Washington’s most wanted list for two decades for hijackings and suicide bombings against U.S. Western and Israeli targets worldwide, raised serious questions about whether the Assad regime was master in its own house. 

More generally, the recent attacks suggest that Syria itself may become victim to its government’s dabbling in jihadism, like so many other sorcerers’ apprentices across the region who tried to harness Islamist militancy for their own ends only for it to blow back on them.

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, put some deep cracks in the macho Mediterranean country’s glass ceiling with her victory — albeit a narrow one — over former general Shaul Mofaz in Wednesday’s Kadima party leadership election.  But no sooner had she moved a step closer to becoming Israel’s first woman prime minister since the legendary Golda Meir in the 1970s, than two former members of the vaunted Sayeret Matkal commando unit got together for a strategy session.    

Ehud Barak, whose Labour Party is a key member of the Kadima-led coalition government, and Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the right-wing opposition Likud, met on Saturday to discuss their next moves in Israel’s political turmoil.

Livni is widely expected to get the nod from President Shimon Peres to try to form a government to replace the one currently led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is resigning in a corruption scandal.

Labour would be a natural partner for Livni: it belongs to the current governing coalition and supports the peace moves she and Olmert have been leading with the Palestinians.  But Barak, Israel’s defence minister, is playing hard to get and Netanyahu has no incentive to join up with Livni — opinion polls show Likud would win an early parliamentary election, a ballot likely to be held should she fail to form a government.    

Keeping Livni out of the prime minister’s post — Olmert stays on under Israeli law until a new administration is in place — could be their battle plan. Political commentators say both Barak and Netanyahu believe an early election is inevitable, and they don’t want a coalition deal now that would enable Livni to run in that race from a position of strength as prime minister.

Blocking Livni’s ascent to power at this stage could also give Labour and Likud a unique opportunity to try to weaken Kadima, already dealt a blow by the corruption allegations that forced Olmert out.  Labour and Likud — traditionally Israel’s two biggest parties — have a score to settle with the upstart Kadima. Formed in 2005 by former Likud leader Ariel Sharon, Kadima billed itself as a centrist party and attracted defectors from both Labour and Likud.  

Hundreds of supporters and reporters waited for hours overnight at a banner-festooned hangar-like building in
Tel Aviv for a victory speech that never materialised from the ruling Kadima party’s newly elected leader, Tzipi Livni.

There was a lot for the party faithful to celebrate, a new Israeli leader, and the first woman to potentially become the country’s prime minister since Golda Meir in the 1970’s.

True, the Kadima party victory wasn’t enough to definitively crown Livni, 50, prime minister. Livni now foreign minister still faces the hurdle of forging a new government with fractious political parties, and still won’t get a mandate to do even that until scandal-struck Prime Minister Ehud Olmert carries out his pledge to resign.

But these weren’t the only reasons why the former member of Israel’s Mossad espionage agency delayed her victory speech last night.

The real problem was that Israeli television exit polls had predicted a wide victory for Livni over her closest contender, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, a tough-minded ex-general. Yet the projected 10 point margin turned out to be barely more than one percentage point — or a mere 431 votes — once the votes were actually counted, turning what was supposed to be a celebration into a marathon somewhat resembling the plot of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”

As the hours dragged on, Livni’s campaign spokesman, Moshe Konforty, kept insisting she would show up but was only waiting until a significant number of votes had been counted, enough to prove she had won the election not just by the exit polls. What they didn’t reveal for quite a while was that the results were so close between Livni and Mofaz, that her victory was actually in question — despite the fact that Israeli radio stations had broadcast her declaring her victory in a call to supporters many hours earlier.

Reporters and supporters alike had been misled by projectors that beamed what turned out to be inconclusive results on a screen set next to what remained an empty stage, showing a town by town breakdown of the vote that indicated Livni had won in most districts by at least five percent. The real result was that Livni had won just 431 votes more than Mofaz of approximately 38,000 votes cast.

Official Kadima spokesmen, busy behind closed doors overseeing the counting of the ballots, made no comment for hours as to why it was taking so long to publish final results.

Bored by the anti-climactic atmosphere, young women hoping to see the nation’s first female leader in decades from up close, settled for picking out carnations from the flower arrangements on a lonely stage.

The uncertainty was so vexing that some Livni supporters kept coming over to myself and correspondent Ari Rabinovitch, convinced that our laptop sitting just opposite the screen where results were being projected had to contain more of the mysterious voting results.

 The chaos was rather typical of Israeli internal party elections, where contests tend to be closely fought between sworn rival camps. The acrimony between Livni’s followers and those of Mofaz, who alleged voting “irregularities” tilted the vote in her favour, was reminiscent of the political battles fought by Kadima’s founder, former prime minister Ariel Sharon against former rivals in the rightist Likud party that he bolted three years ago in a dispute over his Gaza withdrawal.

 In 1992, a narrow margin of victory in a party vote had also delayed Shimon Peres, now Israel’s president and a former head of the leftist Labour party, from conceding to the late Yitzhak Rabin in a closely fought primary.

But Rabin who went on to some historic peacemaking with Palestinians, did eventually give his victory speech that night, unlike Livni, who only got to issue a bland statement the morning after, long after bleary-eyed supporters had given up waiting for a party that wasn’t to pass, and gone home.
 

 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was all smiles a day after police recommended that he face criminal charges in a corruption scandal.

 Declining to answer reporters’s questions, an ebullient Olmert grinned broadly and waxed patriotic as he greeted a jumbo jet-load of new immigrants from the United States.

 ”Welcome to the State of Israel,” Olmert said in English to applause, holding his arms out in a symbolic embrace. “I want to tell you something: You came from a great country to the greatest country in the world.”

 He hadn’t looked this happy in public in months. Widely unpopular at home, a chance to speak to a largely foreign audience might have been a welcome break.

 A day earlier, Israel’s national police said they had evidence showing Olmert illegally received money from a U.S. businessman and made duplicate claims for travel expenses when he served as mayor of Jerusalem and trade and industry minister.     He has denied any wrongdoing.

 With Olmert committed to resigning after his Kadima party holds a leadership vote on Sept. 17, the police recommendation to indict him — a decision only Israel’s attorney-general can make — will have no immediate impact on his tenure. And he could soon be a lame duck in limbo — a caretaker prime minister in charge until his Kadima successor forms a new coalition government, or failing that, until a general election can be held. That process could take weeks or months, and there’s no telling when Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz will make his decision.

 In the meantime, speculation is mounting in the Israeli media that Olmert might just call it quits — sort of — by announcing a leave of absence, perhaps to undergo a long-delayed operation to treat his prostate cancer. If that happens, Olmert’s deputy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni would become acting prime minister — even if she loses
the Kadima leadership race to her main challenger Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz. That would reshuffle the political deck in Israel.

 Confused? Well, as Olmert would say: Welcome to the State of Israel.  

Hezbollah literally rolled out the red carpet to welcome home five prisoners released by Israel in a U.N.-mediated exchange deal. Securing the release of the last five Lebanese held by Israel was a major triumph for the group, which in turn handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured in a 2006 raid into Israel.

Having achieved a long-held goal, Hezbollah is holding up the exchange as further evidence that its uncompromising, armed approach to dealing with Israel brings results, directly challenging the policies of Arab leaders who have engaged in negotiations or signed peace treaties with the Jewish state. The New York Times called the prisoners’ homecoming a triumph.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, visibly delighted by the prisoner release, addressed the issue during a rare public appearance. He saluted “the true identity of the peoples of our region … the identity of resistance”.

Broadcast into homes across the Arab world by satellite stations, Nasrallah’s rhetoric resonates with viewers who have seen few results from years of talks over the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Spoken by a man widely recognised as the Arab world’s most effective orator, the rhetoric is a challenge to states such as Jordan and Egypt. Both are ruled by U.S.-allied governments that have made peace with Israel and are concerned by the rising
influence of Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor.

But while Hezbollah’s charismatic leader still wins admiration across the Arab world, his Shi’ite group no longer enjoys the broad respect it once did in fractious Lebanon.

Nearly two years of political conflict with other Lebanese, including the country’s main Sunni leader, have opened deep sectarian wounds. Hezbollah’s brief takeover of Beirut in May increased the concerns of Lebanese critics who were already suspicious of the group’s vast arsenal.

Hezbollah is riding high in its conflict with Israel. It is now seeking reconciliation with Lebanese adversaries to avoid more conflict at home.

 Is the United States going soft on Iran?

 In the past President George W. Bush accused Tehran of belonging to an “axis of evil”, compared negotiations with its president to appeasing Adolf Hitler, and warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would lead to World War Three.

His administration refused to join international talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, which it suspects could be used to produce a nuclear bomb, unless Tehran halted enriching uranium. It pointedly declined to rule out military action if a diplomatic solution was not found.

Now, the United States is sending one of its top diplomats – along with representatives from other major powers — to talks in Geneva on Saturday with Iran to hear its response to an offer of financial and diplomatic incentives if Iran gives up its sensitive nuclear work.

And Britain’s Guardian newspaper says Washington will announce in the next month that it plans to establish a diplomatic present in Tehran for the first time in 30 years — a move the newspaper describes as a “remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush”.

U.S. officials say the decision to send senior diplomat William Burns to the Geneva talks sends a strong signal that the United States is committed to diplomacy, adding that Washington will only join full-blown negotiations if uranium enrichment stops.

 One hawkish former U.S. administration official sees it differently. “This is, and the evidence is plain for all to see, the total intellectual collapse of the Bush administration,” former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Reuters. 

He wrote in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: “There was a time when the Bush administration might itself have seriously considered using force, but all public signs are that such a moment has passed.”

He urges Washington to consider what cooperation it “will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran” but he doesn’t seem to think the U.S. administration is listening.

So is Washington preparing for a deal instead of war?

This might explain a flurry of regional diplomacy.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki heads for Turkey, shortly after meetings in Ankara by President George W. Bush’s National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.
Burns will attend the Geneva meeting and then there’s the Guardian report.

Any deal has a logic that could benefit both sides. Analysts often point out overlapping regional interests. The two countries, say analysts, ultimately want a stable Iraq, share a loathing for the radical Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan and (despite Iran’s recent buddying up) are equally distrustful of Russia. (It’s no accident that Iran under the shah was Washington’s closest Middle East ally — bar Israel.)

And yet — there always seems to one of those — the wheels of this happy bandwagon could come off, and quickly.

Much hinges on what happens in Geneva when Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili sits down for talks with the European Union’s Javier Solana, the representative of world powers in Saturday’s Geneva talks. Solana will want to see signs that Iran is ready to consider suspending uranium enrichment, a process Tehran has so far refused to halt.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose opinion ultimately holds sway in Iran, spoke on Wednesday of Iran’s “red lines” — not a very promising statement on the face of it.

Overlapping interests, say analysts, may not be enough for Iran to rehabilitate ties with the “Great Satan”. Interests have overlapped for the past 30 years or so but the hostility has continued. (President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has, however, said Iran would consider any overture to open an interests section).

And then, say some Western diplomats, there’s Israel. Will it take matters into its own hands after vowing not to let Iran get The Bomb? Diplomats say it might.

So there may be a shift in Washington. Some at least have detected it. Inside Iran, there has been an unusually public debate on how to handle the nuclear file even if there have also been some fairly uncompromising comments.

But are we really close to a breakthrough? And how long is Israel ready to wait? There’s still plenty to debate.

The European-Mediterranean summit in Paris might have produced grand projects ranging from cleaning up the Mediterranean sea to using North Africa’s sunshine to generate power. But that is is not what it will be remembered for.

It will be remembered for the glorious welcome it bestowed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who until yesterday was persona non-grata in the West, an autocrat leading a pariah regime, which many believe orchestrated the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.  

Assad was the star of the show, which sealed a new detente between Syria and Europe, with the Syrian and Israeli leaders sitting at the same table for the first time.

So what happened? And why are things finally looking up for Bashar? What lay behind this sudden turn in his fortunes? Are Bashar and his government really off the hook?       Is it all forgotten because Assad relaunched indirect peace talks with Israel and gave his blessing to a Qatari-mediated accord that ended Lebanon’s political crisis, allowing the election of a Lebanese president? After all, the new government was in Syria’s favour.

Or is it as some experts commented because Assad proved once again, like his father late President Hafez al-Assad before him, that there won’t be any stability or peace in the region without Syria, that Syria –  with its strong links with Iran, Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah, the Islamist Hamas movement and a string of hired guns — still  calls the shots and could act as a spoiler if ostracised? 

Some observers even speculated that there was collusion in Damascus for the killing in February of Imad Moughniyah, the chief of Hezbollah’s security network and an agent of Iran who topped the U.S. most wanted list for 25 years.

Those familiar with Syrian techniques joked that Syria keeps resorting to the same old get-out-of-jail-free-cards and dodges to get out of crises with the West.

In the 1980’s,  for example, Syria was shunned by the West for its alleged links to an El Al bombing plot in London, its alliance with Iran against Arabs in the Iran-Iraq war, and because of its support for Shi’ite Islamist bombing s of U.S. and French targets in Lebanon.

Yet it regained its place in the Arab fold –  and the good grace of Washington – by joining the U.S.-led alliance that ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. Syria was well rewarded - the US gave it a free hand to operate in Lebanon and Arab states gave aid and investment.  
Syrian journalists accompanying Assad were delighted by their leader’s confident performance at the Elysee Palace. He shared a table with Sarkozy, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and the Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Yet most journalists directed their questions to Assad.

Heading out of the palace one Syrian journalist joked with a colleague: “Our Lebanese friends will be upset because the story is no longer the Hariri tribunal”.

Assad and his glamorous wife Asma savoured their moment of glory. Both were invited to stay on for Bastille Day.

“Bashar is here to stay…It is a very different situation. We saw lots of self-assurance and self-confidence. He was conducting himself with a statesman-like appearance,” one analyst said.  

Is Syria back in the fold or is full rehabilitation a long way off? Has Assad outsmarted Syria’s critics?

 Four years ago this week, on July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague, known as the World Court, ruled in an advisory opinion that the wall and fence barrier which Israel was building in the West Bank was illegal under international law and that Palestinians affected by it should be compensated. Israel responded  by dismissing the decision as politically motivated and defended the barrier, which it calls the “security fence”, as an effective response to “Palestinian terrorism”. Israel says the barrier, whose projected route of fences and walls snakes through the West Bank for over 700 km, has saved Israeli lives by preventing a continuation of attacks, notably suicide bombings.

 The United Nations General Assembly voted  later in July 2004 to demand that Israel comply with the decision of the World Court. Following the court ruling, the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators - the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia - also reaffirmed an earlier statement which said “We note the Government of Israel’s pledge that the barrier is a security rather than political barrier and should be temporary rather than permanent. We continue to note with great concern the actual and proposed route of the barrier, particularly as it results in confiscation of Palestinian land, cuts off the movement of people and groups, and undermines Palestinians’ trust in the roadmap (peace) process by appearing to prejudge the final borders of the future Palestinian state.”

 There is continued international pressure from otherwise friendly governments who say Israel should build on its own land, not occupied Palestinian territory, and should evacuate Jewish settlements in the West Bank. There have also been repeated complaints from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during peace negotiations resumed under U.S. sponsorship last year.

 But Israel has continued to work on the barrier. The Israeli Supreme Court ordered part of the route to be change last year in a judgment which found in favour of Palestinians in the town of Bilin who had complained the barrier would cut their farmland off from their homes. Critics like the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem say that little has changed on the ground, however. It has gathered testimonies of Palestinians recounting hardships, including loss of land and access to facilities, as a result of the construction.

 As the fourth anniversary of the World Court decision approaches, Israeli troops have responded to anti-barrier protests near Nilin, 20 km west of Tel Aviv, by sealing off  the West Bank town since Friday. Days after a Palestinian construction worker killed three Israelis with a bulldozer  on one of Jewish west Jerusalem’s busiest streets, the arguments about land and security show no sign of abating. The killer, Hosam Dwayyat, was a resident of a West Bank village that Israel annexed to its Jerusalem Municipality after it occupied the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem in 1967. As a result, like another Palestinian who killed Israelis in Jerusalem this year, he lived on the Israeli side of the barrier.

 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government is considering demolishing Dwayyat’s family home as a deterrent. One of his closest allies suggested the time had come to separate Arab areas from Jewish parts of Jerusalem - though Israel hopes to maintain control of Jerusalem as its ‘united’ capital, a status that has not been recognised internationally. Many Israelis accused the government and police of failures in allowing Dwayyat to mount his attack - including columnist Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post. But some Israelis question the long-term practicality of sealing their state off from their Palestinian neighbours, as columnist Akiva Eldar, writing in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper notes. As another anniversary passes in the Middle East, there is no sign of an end to complex questions involving competing demands for resources and security among the various communities.          

There is a running joke among Western journalists, diplomats and other foreigners based in Iran who have the task of trying to understand what is going on behind the scenes: the longer you stay here, the more opaque Iranian policy making becomes.

It may be said lightheartedly, but it contains more than a grain of truth. The longer you spend trying to peel back the layers of the Iranian establishment to understand what the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is thinking, the more layers you discover.

And, frankly, as a Westerner — and even for Iranian journalists — there’s a very real limit to how many layers you are ever going to penetrate.

But penetrate you must because it’s Khamenei’s thinking that is the key.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the most public — and often most worrying to Western capitals — voice out there. But he is just one of the layers. One constituency contributing towards consensus. When national decisions are taken, however, Khamenei will be behind them.

So determining Iran’s nuclear policy, the most sensitive of issues in the Islamic Republic, often seems to present more questions than answers. Does Iran want negotiations that will end the standoff with the West? Or is talking just a way to buy time to master nuclear technology? Has the establishment calculated that it can survive military strikes on its nuclear facilities? Or is it looking for the “red line” so it can pull back from the brink at the last minute? And, perhaps, one of the more worrying questions is: does the Islamic Republic know where that “red line” to prevent military action really is?

There are analysts who look at Washington and say, after more than a quarter of century without an embassy in Tehran, the U.S. ability to understand Iranian policy calculations has been deeply eroded. But the same too can be said of Iran, which under the shah was — Israel aside — Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East but now is a sworn enemy. Set together, the possibility that both sides will end up talking past each other is real.

Some analysts also describe a big gap between a U.S. policy approach that tends to want straight talking and the Iranian preference for pondering its path in drawn out negotiations. The stereotype again may not be so far from reality: the cowboy with his six-shooter versus the carpet seller in the bazaar working out a price over endless cups of tea.

So now, six world powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have again offered a range of incentives, such as state-of-the-art civilian nuclear power technology and trade benefits, if Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment (Enrichment is the real worry to Western capitals because, despite Iran’s denials, they fear the process will be used to make nuclear bomb material not fuel for power plants).

We’ve been here before. The deal is not so very different from one offered in 2006, and which was roundly rejected by Iran. Some Western diplomats chatter that senior Iranian officials have been making more positive noises. Others are more sceptical. But everyone is wary of predicting which way it will go. And with good reason. It’s those layers, you see. To change the metaphor, what most of us following Iran are able to learn about the Islamic Republic’s decision-making are the outer ripples from a stone that has been thrown into a pond. What that stone looks like is well below the surface.

The Gaza Strip and the Israeli towns and farms surrounding the Palestinian enclave spent a quiet morning on Thursday after a ceasefire deal came into force after dawn between the Jewish state and the  Hamas Islamists who rule Gaza’s 1.5 million people. The absence of mortars and improvised rockets falling on the Israeli side of the border and of Israeli air strikes and ground incursions on the other were welcomed by ordinary people. For Palestinians in Gaza, the biggest hope is an increase in supplies which Israel has kept under tight blockade since Hamas seized control a year ago.
Both sides, as well as Egypt which mediated the deal over several months and the international powers, have plenty of reasons to see the truce work . The UN even told Reuters it could help pave the way for UN peacekeepers in Gaza.  But equally there are plenty on all sides who are already saying it is as doomed as previous “calms” between Israel and Hamas, which has been shunned by Western powers for its refusal to give up violent tactics such as suicide bombings and Gaza rocket salvos. Not least among the apparent pessimists has been Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has warned the peace may be short-lived. Olmert has plenty of critics who would happily use that adjective of his own career - the prime minister has promised to resign if he is indicted in a corruption investigation that has already seen an American businessman testify to handing Olmert large sums of cash stuffed in envelopes. The premier has survived a series of such scandals in his two and a half years in power and he again denies all wrongdoing. However, his enemies, including within his own coalition government, are circling and could vote next week to dissolve parliament and start the process of triggering an early election .

So how is Olmert fighting back? By making himself seem indispensable to Israelis as a peacemaker on all fronts, some say. As well as U.S.-sponsored talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, begun last November,  he has lately revealed Turkish-mediated talks with Syria, a desire to open negotiations with Lebanon and progress in talks with Hezbollah on exchanging prisoners. Not to mention today’s truce with Hamas. So can Olmert stave off the public prosecutor and keep the peace?