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Representatives of The Sunday Telegraph spent three days in Georgia at the end of July, and they reported that "Georgians wait in fear for the Russians to return". Tensions were rising again and the newspaper reported a number of interviews with displaced persons from the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, who were unable to return to their shattered homes because the way was blocked by Russian troops.

The Russians have forced two international observer missions to withdraw from the conflict zone, and in breach of its ceasefire commitments, have prevented the European Monitoring Mission (EUMM) from operating in South Ossetia or Abkhazia. The EUMM has said that, whilst Georgia has abided by the ceasefire agreement, the Russians have not.

Many Georgian citizens are fearful that war with Russia could flare up again. The five-day war in August last year is considered to be "frozen but never resolved". A senior Western diplomat is recorded as saying, "Moscow wanted control over Georgia, to prevent construction of a gas pipeline that would reduce Europe's dependence on Russia". He also said that the aim of Russia was to "find an easier way of supplying its troops in Armenia".

Observers are saying that Russia's tactics are "partly aimed at laying the groundwork for a new war". Russia has deployed thousands of troops in each of the breakaway provinces and has begun building new military bases there. Some military analysts in Moscow say "Russia is contemplating a new war", with the intention of ousting Georgia's pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whose determination to seek Nato membership for Georgia "has consistently infuriated the Kremlin". The aforementioned senior Western diplomat predicted that Russia would make "creeping advances, or launch occasional bombing raids, to destabilise its neighbour. Georgia would protest to the international community, but without guaranteed success. The law of the strongest will apply".

At sealed border crossings, Georgian and Russian guns are trained on each other, with less than 100 yards separating them. The International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention think tank, has recently warned that "extensive fighting could again erupt". The Sunday Telegraph approached the Russian defence minister asking him to comment on Russian troop levels in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He "angrily declined" and accused the newspaper of "failing to respect its dignity". One Georgian, who fled from a Georgian enclave in South Osettia when militiamen embarked on a looting spree in destroyed villages, reached Gori, a supposed sanctuary deep in Georgian territory. Now he fears a Russian onslaught. "If war resumes", he said, "every citizen of Gori will fight. Even the women will fight. We have nothing to lose".

A high-ranking Russian navy source reported 21 July that the Soviet-era naval maintenance base near Tartus in Syria is to be expanded and modernised to become "fully operational". DEBKAfile's military sources report that Russia is building the facility up as its main sea base for operations in four seas. The upgrade of Russian port facilities at Tartus, its only foothold in the Mediterranean, will automatically enhance Moscow's strategic interests in Syria and Bashar Assad's regime.

The Russian source said that 50 naval personnel and three berthing floats currently deployed at Tartus with accommodation for up to a dozen warships will be beefed up with a new berthing float delivered by two tugboats from the Black Sea Fleet. DEBKAfile's sources disclose that those warships include large vessels such as the nuclear-armed guided missile cruiser Peter the Great, and the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which called in at Tartus in January. (Weekly World Watch).

This was a headline to a BBC News article on the conflict between Israel and the US on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In the middle of July, US officials told the Israeli Ambassador to America that the building of 20 apartments in East Jerusalem should be suspended. Benjamin Netanyahu rejected this request in comments he made at his weekly Cabinet meeting. "We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and buy (homes) anywhere in Jerusalem. Unified Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it is unquestionable".

The report noted that President Obama has pressurised Israel to "freeze settlement activity on land that Palestinians want for a future state". And Palestinians are saying peace talks cannot proceed until settlement activity halts. A senior Palestinian negotiator said that Mr. Netanyahu's comments had further undermined efforts to restart the peace process. "The decision to pursue this project reflected Israel's defiance of international calls for a halt to settlement activity. This undermines the efforts being exerted to revive the peace process and this undermines the credibility of those involved in making the peace process continue".

The international community regards East Jerusalem as "occupied territory", and they do not recognise the annexation by Israel nor their claim that the city of Jerusalem (East and West) is Israel's "undivided and eternal capital".

At the end of July, America began a fresh diplomatic offensive in the Middle East, designed to "unlock the Palestinian dispute" and to bring about "a truly comprehensive deal between Israel and its Arab neighbours". President Barack Obama dispatched three high-ranking officials to the Middle East in his quest to achieve this object.

George Mitchell, the US special envoy to the Middle East, held "candid and positive talks" with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, about the possibility of restarting Israeli-Syrian negotiations. He followed this by flying to Israel for talks with Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, over "freezing Jewish settlement building in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem" - both considered to be occupied territory - "in an attempt to reopen talks with the Palestinians". He later had a two-hour meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in an attempt to end the deadlock over settlements. He also met the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who said that "peace talks cannot be renewed until all settlement building is ended". The Daily Telegraph commented that "the subject of Israeli settlements is one of the most contentious between the two sides. The Palestinians view the settlements as an affront and a physical obstacle to their plans of building part of their future state in the West Bank".

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, met Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak to discuss "missile defence, Iran's nuclear ambitions and bilateral security issues". Two days later, General James Jones, the US national security adviser, met Mr. Netanyahu. It has also been revealed that America has asked Arab countries to make "confidence-building gestures towards Israel in the hope that they could kick-start the peace process". The White House has approached at least seven Arab countries to consider "what they might do in return for an Israeli pledge to freeze construction of settlements in the West Bank". The US administration is reaching out to moderate Arab countries in the region "to inject some momentum into efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks". Mr. Obama himself recently visited Saudi Arabia for talks, but left "without any promises in hand".

The Daily Telegraph commented on this flurry of visits, saying, "It outlined Mr. Obama's determination to keep peace in the Middle East high on his agenda", believing that a concerted approach is "more likely to yield a wide-ranging breakthrough".

In early August, Fatah, the dominant faction in Palestinian politics, staged its first Congress since a meeting in exile in 1989 and, even before the Congress started, Palestinian leaders were warning Arab states that "any effort to normalise ties with Israel at the urging of President Obama would deal a damaging blow to the quest for statehood".

The Fatah organisation is composed of 'exiles' and 'activists'. The 'exiles' have spent years exiled overseas and are contemporaries of Yasser Arafat, the founder of Fatah in the 1950s. They demand a "robust stance" against Israel, while the 'activists' - those living within the Palestinian territories - possess a more moderate approach to the peace talks. The 'exiles' have an obsession for the recovery of land lost in the 1948 war - known by them as the Nakba, or catastrophe - whilst the 'activists' give a lower priority to this.

A former PLO ambassador, Abu El-Izz Dajani, is running for a post in the Fatah leadership. In a rather outspoken statement he said, "Normalisation of Israel's ties with Arab countries is the last thing that the Palestinians should have to experience. It is as dangerous as the Nakba, as dangerous as the 1967 seizure of the West Bank and Jerusalem".

The 41-page draft Fatah party platform makes a settlement freeze a precondition for talks with Israel. It declares the movement's goal to be a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and adds that negotiations should have a timetable. It rejects the Israeli demands that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state.

The three-day Congress was attended by 2,000 delegates following pressure from Fatah's 'young guard' for the number to be increased fourfold. This will increase the chances of sweeping out many of the old guard. Their places will most likely be taken by the 'young guarders' who are more hardline than the current leadership.

Hamas, Fatah's militant competitor, has set up a film unit to spread its message. In the showing of the first film, which celebrates the short violent life of one of its militants, audiences cheered when one of the characters announced, "To kill Israeli soldiers is to worship God". This demonstrates the enormous difficulty in getting the Palestinians to speak with a unified voice. Hamas, a religious movement turned political, is at enmity with Fatah following a surprise victory in parliamentary elections and the subsequent taking control of Gaza. This enmity was illustrated by Hamas banning 400 Fatah members from leaving its territory to attend the Congress.

Later news - Initial results of the voting for the powerful Central Committee and Revolutionary Council indicate gains for the younger leadership at the expense of the so-called 'Old Guard', who kept only four of the 18 elected seats. The new Central Committee reveals a shift from the founding generation of Fatah to a younger leadership group.

The conference discussed revisions to the Fatah charter, but delegates said the new wording would not abandon the old document's call to "liquidate the Zionist entity". It would also call for a Palestinian state to be established on the basis of 1967 borders, and a capital in Jerusalem.

Fatah suffered a dramatic defeat to Hamas in the January 2006 elections. There will be new elections in January 2010, in which the rejuvenated Fatah will face a great challenge. The BICOM website commented, "The result of these elections will be crucial for future peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership". Finally, the BBC website concluded its review by saying, "As long as the Palestinian house remains divided, a breakthrough to Israeli-Palestinian peace will be impossible".Israel's Deputy Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is not alone in straight talking on the Israeli political scene. Following his recent speech, published here in full last month, we have seen a report of an interview conducted in Time magazine, with Avidgor Leiberman, Israel's Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. He made clear his approach to Israeli politics by saying, "I say exactly what I mean, and I mean what I say". He has a knack for saying "decidedly undiplomatic things", which could scuttle President Obama's plans for peace in the Middle East - he calls the Obama Administration's push to curb the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank "a mistake". He also believes that Israel's Arab citizens, who make up nearly 20 per cent of the population, should be "forced to sign oaths of loyalty".

Leiberman has no room for political correctness, and his bluntness has earned him "the devotion of Israel's hawks, and the disdain of liberals, Palestinians and just about every government in the Arab world". Calling him "the most talented politician on the scene today", a professor of political science at the Hebrew University added, "His kind of politics is also dangerous to Israeli democracy and to the prospect of any kind of peace settlements with the Palestinians".

Avidgor Leiberman moved to Israel from the Soviet Republic of Moldavia in 1978. Speaking about his early family life, he said, "In my home we spoke only about Israel. It was a dream that one day we would come here". For a time he was a member of Netanyahu's Likud Party but, having split from Likud in 1999, he formed Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home), "an unapologetically nationalist party". The party's "most explosive position" is the call for all citizens to "pledge allegiance to the Jewish State as a condition of the right to vote".

Whilst he has no objection to talks (without pre-conditions) with the Palestinians and says he "supports an independent Palestinian state", his governing idea is, "Jews on one side. Arabs on the other". The interviewer commented, "Insisting on physical separation as a pre-requisite for a peace deal is a safe way to ensure that one is never struck". The verdict following the interview was that Lieberman's views "are not the way to forge a lasting peace in the Middle East".
Another Political Speech
On Thursday, 18 June, David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative Party, addressed the Conservative Friends of Israel during their annual lunch. His speech covered such subjects as: support for Israel, a two-state solution, getting all to meet their obligations, fighting anti-Semitism and confronting Iran.

With regard to Israel he made plain his convictions and aspirations. "I passionately believe in the right of Israel to exist, to defend itself and to live in peace and security". He emphasised that this belief rested not just on "the tragedies of history, nor the realities of today, not because of my Party's unstinting support for Israel through the decades - but also because its something I feel very deep inside of me". He went on to say, "The belief I have in Israel is indestructible - and you need to know that, if I become Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who would never turn his back on Israel".

With regard to a two-state solution, Mr. Cameron said, "I know peace will not come overnight. Its going to take perseverance, dedication and compromise from all sides". He welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu's speech a few days earlier (on Sunday, 14 June - as reported last month), calling it "an important and welcome statement". He called upon the Palestinians to recognise their obligations - "Prove you are a reliable negotiating partner. Bring order to your own society. And renounce violence completely".

He spoke of some in the West who "see some sort of equivalence between Israel and Hamas". He made his position quite clear, "I do not". He made the following contrasts, "Israel is a democracy. Hamas want to create a theocracy. Israel strives to protect innocent life. Hamas targets innocent life". He was forthright in saying that "we won't judge Hamas just on words. Our test is whether their actions show that they are going to end the terror, recognise Israel, and accept all previous peace agreements".

Moving on to speak about anti-Semitism, he said, "I will stand firm against anti-Semitism in all its forms wherever it occurs. Referring to the success of the BNP (British National Party) in winning seats in both European and local elections, and the fact that "the most disgusting literature can be bought in our bookshops and found in university campuses", he noted that "these are incredibly worrying times for the Jewish community in Britain. Anti-Semitic incidents have increased by ten per cent". This is made worse by the present government letting into this country "with open arms", foreigners who are blatantly anti-Semitic.