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At least three people were killed and 19 others were wounded Monday after a suicide bomber targeted worshipers who were exiting a mosque after finishing their prayers in the Saudi city of Najran, close to the Yemeni frontier, Al Arabiya News Channel reported.

Had Yitzhak Rabin lived, would the Oslo Accords have nurtured genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians?It has been 20 years since the assassination of Israel's fifth prime minister in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish fanatic who considered Rabin a traitor and bitterly opposed the Oslo process. The murder traumatized Israel and its friends, and the recriminations still reverberate. To this day there are those whoargue that Amir's terrible crime killed not only the country's democratically-elected leader and renowned military hero, but also the "land-for-peace" paradigm with the Palestinians that he had championed.From the perspective of two decades,...

Russia says it is ready to help US-backed rebels in Syria in their battle against militant organisations like the Islamic State group. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Russian air force could support the Free Syrian Army provided the US shares information about rebel positions. The FSA has so far been among the rebel groups targeted by Russian strikes which have drawn Western criticism. Russia is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It has been bombing targets in Syria since last month and says it is primarily hitting IS positions. But Western powers say most of the air...

Hamas leader stresses that all Palestinian Arabs are united and that no one can stop the latest violent uprising. "No power in the world" can stop the "intifada", Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh declared on Sunday, according to the Ma’an news agency. Speaking at a demonstration in Beirut, Haniyeh said, "We are ready for political and popular unity at all levels and willing to agree on a united national strategy to protect the intifada, regain Palestinians' rights, and adhere to the inalienable nationalistic principles." He added that national unity was "embodied today by Palestinian people in the field" and should be...

Tel Aviv (AFP) - Thousands of Israelis rallied Saturday for fresh Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the killing of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The demonstrators chanted "Jews and Arabs don't want to hate each other" and "Israel, Palestine, two states for two peoples" as they came together amid a new upswing in violence which makes prospects for peace in the decades-old conflict look deeply gloomy. They gathered at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square, the site where the Nobel peace laureate was gunned down by a rightwing Jewish extremist at the age of 73 on November...

It would have been bad enough for Washington if Moscow had simply intervened in Syria and left it to the media to speculate and report on the progress made by Iranian ground troops operating under the cover of Russian airstrikes. But subtlety isn’t really Putin’s style and besides, the conflict in Syria represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to lay bare the West’s deplorable strategy of funding and arming extremists on the way to destabilizing recalcitrant regimes. ... We are of course not attempting to trivialize the death of Joshua Wheeler by writing this off as some kind of...

France’s highest court of appeals has upheld a decision that found BDS advocates guilty of inciting hate and/or discrimination, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions has reported. Last week the Court of Cassation ruled on a case involving two attempts to boycott Israeli products in the Carrefour supermarket, one in 2009 and one in 2010. The boycotters were wearing shirts with the slogan “Long Live Palestine, Boycott Israel,” handed out pamphlets stating that the sale of Israeli goods supports “war crimes” in Gaza, and yelled slogans such as, “Israel assassinates, Carrefour is complicit.” …

Secret intelligence files held by Yemeni security forces and containing details of American intelligence operations in the country have been looted by Iran-backed militia leaders, exposing names of informants and plans for U.S.-backed counter-terrorism operations, U.S. officials say. U.S. intelligence officials believe additional files were handed directly to Iranian advisors by Yemeni officials who have sided with the Houthi militias that seized control of the capital of Sana last September and later toppled the U.S.-backed president. For American intelligence networks in Yemen, the damage has been severe. Until recently, U.S. forces deployed in Yemen had worked closely with President Abdu...

Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of conflict. The issue goes beyond old Cold War worries that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: In times of tension or conflict, the ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations...

ew York (AFP) - Russia's dramatic entry Wednesday into the Syrian war put the United States on the back foot once again and left Washington struggling to regain the military and diplomatic initiative. As US Secretary of State John Kerry was in New York trying to coordinate with his Kremlin opposite number Sergei Lavrov, a Russian officer contacted the US embassy in Baghdad. His message was simple: Russian jets are about to launch air strikes in Syria, please stay out of their way. Kerry quickly protested to Lavrov that this was not in the spirit of Moscow's promise to agree...

Vice President Joe Biden’s announcement on Wednesday that he would not run for president of the United States made it a foregone conclusion that the media would worship at the shrine of Hillary Clinton during her Benghazi testimony on Thursday. They have no other choice. The precious must be protected at all costs, which means covering up for her lies, her calculated obfuscations, and her charmless faux-gravity. ... Hillary maintained on Thursday that she believed the attack still had something to do with the YouTube video, “The Innocence of Muslims.” But the night of the attack, she emailed Chelsea Clinton...

Now that the gloves have come off and the IDF has pretty much just ground the PA HQ underfoot, does anyone care to speculate about the Dome of the Rock aka Al-Asqa? Some thoughts on this are twofold. One, Israel might just decide to strike while the iron is hot (destroy it on general principles IMHO unlikely) or attack the mosque if it is used as a point where palestinian gunmen start opening fire on Jews at the wailing wall. Two, what better way to totally enrage the Muslim world and enlist help for the Palestinians that if it were...

ISIS has released a video featuring a militant speaking in Hebrew. In a video seen by The Foreign Desk, a Jihadist announces a “clear and important message for all Jews, the first enemy of Muslims.” Addressing “Jews who conquered the land of the Muslims” he warns that the “real war has not started yet” adding that “everything that happened in the past is child’s play compared to what will occur in the near future… There will not remain a single Jew in Jerusalem, nor throughout the entire land”

US Senator and presidential contender issues scathing rebuke of Obama administration's handling of the Mideast conflict. US Senator Ted Cruz, the conservative Republican firebrand from Texas, is running for president. Up until a few weeks ago, his candidacy was met with indifference as the media and political operatives all dismissed the viability of his candidacy. But that is beginning to change. The voices arguing that Cruz, the favorite of Tea Party fiscal conservatives and Evangelical Christians may have what it takes to win the Republican nomination have multiplied. Since arriving in Washington four years ago, Cruz has arguably been Israel’s...

Terror organization want to unite Palestinians by declaring official intifada, setting up joint leadership. A senior member of the Islamic Jihad's political bureau, Muhammad al-Hindi, has expressed his support for declaring the recent wave of terror to be an intifada, and for setting realistic goals to achieve. Al-Hindi posted on his Facebook account that ending what he referred to as the settlements and the land thefts, as well as breaking up the settlements in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank are reasonable goals to present to the international community. Domestically, such a focus could also unite the varied Palestinian factions.

In order to defeat Palestinian terrorism, it is necessary to defy political correctness, shifting gears from chasing individual terroristic mosquitoes to draining the terroristic swamp In contrast to national liberation movements, Palestinian terrorism has targeted—deliberately, institutionally and systematically—Arab and Israeli non-combatants, sometimes hitting combatants. Palestinian terrorism has haunted Arab societies in Jordan (especially during the 1968-1970 PLO terrorism), in Lebanon (particularly during the 1971-1982 civil wars), in Kuwait (during the 1990 invasion by Saddam Hussein), in Iraq (until 2002, serving as an arm of Saddam Hussein’s ruthless domestic oppression), in Syria (until 2012, bolstering Assad’s regime of horror) and currently...

Top diplomats of Russia, US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia have discussed a range of global issues, including the ongoing situation in Syria. Russian, US, Saudi Arabian and Turkish foreign ministers discussed specific ideas on the situation in Syria during their meeting in Vienna, and decided to maintain contacts, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday. "We have expressed a number of specific ideas on all issues which were discussed with our colleagues from the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, these ideas will be continued, I hope. We have agreed to continue contacts, and we stressed the need to make...

A taste of their own medicine —

The Islamic Republic of Iran is already reaping diplomatic dividends from the disastrous nuclear deal it entered into last July with the P-5 + 1 nations (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany). Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will be visiting Rome Italy next month, marking his first trip to a European Union capital. His trip will include a meeting with Pope Francis. Rouhani will then be moving on to Paris. It is a victory lap by the president of a regime that got virtually everything it wanted in the deal, and is choosing selectively which portions...

Turkey is ready to accept a political transition in Syria in which President Bashar al-Assad stays in symbolic power for six months before leaving office, and is discussing the plan with Western allies, two senior government officials said on Tuesday. NATO member Turkey has long been one of Assad’s fiercest critics, insisting that no lasting peace can be achieved in Syria without his removal from power. “Work on a plan for Assad’s departure is under way ... (Assad) can stay for six months and we accept that because there will be a guarantee of his departure,” one of the officials...