Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Riyadh Turns to Moscow, Far East to Attain Self - Controlled Nuclear Fuel Cycle & Military Self-suffic
Jun 27th, 2015
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Contemporary Issues

Saudi Arabia’s Eastward Pivot Anti-American rhetoric reached a new crescendo in Riyadh after Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) saw President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on June 18. The most important deals that they struck were not released for publication.
(See last week’s DEBKA Weekly report: Salman Seeks a Russian Safety Net in Case Saudi-US Collaboration Fails to Oust Assad.)
The atmosphere in Riyadh these days was best depicted by Abdulrahman Al-Rashid, a prestigious Saudi journalist with close ties to the royal house. He wrote on June 23:
The most important feature of the Deputy Crown Prince’s visit was that it was not customary; it took place at a time when the United States and its European allies have decided to economically boycott Russia, sanctioning Moscow over events in Ukraine. This is one of the rare times that Riyadh has taken an opposing line to Washington. But the reason is clear: the Saudis who supported the Western position to boycott Iran for 20 years have discovered that Washington betrayed them when it decided to collaborate with Tehran, without coming to an understanding with its partners who had joined the initial boycott.

Saudis offended by US ridicule of their capabilities
The transaction Prince Mohammed signed for Russia to build and operate 16 nuclear reactors in the kingdom under the supervision of Russian nuclear engineers – a deal modeled on Moscow’s Bushehr reactor sale to Iran – makes naught of Washington’s insistence that the nuclear deal shaping up with Tehran would curb a Middle East nuclear race – even though President Barack Obama himself admitted in 2012 that “other players in the region would feel it necessary to get their own nuclear weapons.”
And, indeed, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi too has just signed a nuclear deal with Moscow similar to the one negotiated by the Saudi prince.
The Saudis are still smarting over the derisive article by the American writer Fareed Zakaria, a friend of the Obama White House, published in the Washington Post on June 11. He mocked Saudi Arabia by asking: “If the Kingdom has not been able to make a car, how can it develop sophisticated nuclear weapons?”
The wide-ranging Saudi transactions with Moscow - and the reciprocal invitations exchanged between King Salman and President Putin - may be seen partly as a rejoinder to the Obama administration’s contemptuous attitude towards the Saudi royal house.

Saudis now aim for own nuclear weapons program
In another part of Riyadh’s rejoinder, DEBKA Weekly reports exclusively that the king’s son and Putin agreed to Moscow establishing a Saudi nuclear research program with military dimensions. Russian nuclear research institutions will immediately start taking in 1,000 Saudi students and train them to fill future slots in this domestic program.
According to our Gulf sources, Riyadh is talking about nuclear cooperation - not just with Moscow, but also with Beijing and Tokyo – but most significantly about a radical nuclear policy departure.
The Saudis are waiting to see how the Six Power-Iran nuclear negotiations turn out and will then, those Gulf sources disclose, form a select committee to draft a white paper on a national weapons nuclear program. Its underlying strategy will hinge on “indigenous technology to ensure that the entire fuel cycle remains under Saudi control,” those sources disclose.
In short, King Salman has adopted the key word “indigenous”, turning away from his predecessor’s policy of “buying nuclear weapons from countries like Pakistan.”

Saudis stock up on sophisticated arms against a nuclear-armed Iran
In another token breakaway from reliance on the US, our sources reveal that Riyadh and Moscow have contracted a huge secret arms deal. Only a few particulars have reached us, but our Moscow sources disclose that they include some of the highly sophisticated weapons systems supplied hitherto exclusively to the Russian army and never made available to foreign buyers.
Those sources estimated that this transaction would give the Saudi army the “military edge” (a term used by the US with respect to Israel) over any other armed force in the region, including Iran.
The Saudi acquisitions are likely to include the Iskander 3 mobile short-range ballistic missiles (NATO-named SS-26 Stone) which are capable of delivering nuclear warheads, in which the Saudis expressed an interest.
Last year, Riyadh secretly purchased from China another nuclear-capable weapon - the DF-21D (CSS-5 Mod-4) anti-ship ballistic missile. It is the first ASBM weapon system capable of targeting a moving aircraft carrier and its strike group from long-range, land-based launchers.
The Saudis are not of course planning to fire this missile against American carriers, but in their sights are Iranian Revolutionary Guards warships and missile bases on the Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Sirri Islands which command the Strait of Hormuz.

American and Gulf oil tracks move apart
The picture unfolding is of a well-planned, cautious Saudi strategy to arm itself with a self-owned stock of state of the art Russian and Chinese nuclear-capable ballistic missiles of varying ranges. They will serve to defend the oil kingdom’s essential Persian Gulf oil routes against a nuclear-armed Iran, without its having to resort to the United States for protection or assistance.
Riyadh is pivoting toward the east to replace America with new strategic allies in Moscow and the Far East.
This strategy is moving on two tracks: On the one hand, America is fast reducing its imports of Saudi oil. By 2035, it is estimated that the United States will be buying only 100,000 pbd, while 90 percent of Middle East oil will go to Asia. On the other, China and Japan are increasing their purchases of Gulf oil.

Let the Headlines Speak
Jun 27th, 2015
Daily NewsFrom the internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Syria crisis: Islamic State 'kills 120 civilians' in Kobane
Islamic State (IS) militants have killed more than 120 civilians since launching a fresh attack on the Syrian border town of Kobane, activists say. IS "fired at everything that moved" after entering on Thursday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A separate IS attack on the north-eastern city of Hassakeh has displaced 60,000 people, the UN says.  

Tunisia launches security clampdown after resort attack
Tunisia's Prime Minister Habib Essid has announced a clampdown on security after an attack on a holiday resort in which 38 people were killed. He said army reservists would be deployed to archaeological sites and resorts. About 80 mosques accused of "spreading venom" will close within a week, he said.  

‘UN resolution on Palestinian state is dangerous – even if US plans to veto it’
French MP Meyer Habib is worried. ...“I tried to tell the president on our flight that, in my opinion, it is counterproductive to go to the UN and try to force Israel’s hand. The great powers should push parties to negotiate, that is the only way to reach a good agreement. I think he listened. He said he would update me,” Habib told The Jerusalem Post from his office in Paris the next day.  

Analysis: Facing Western diplomatic and economic pressure, Israel looks east
FACING MOUNTING Western diplomatic and economic pressure, Israel has been...cultivating ties with...Asian giants, China and India. In Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s view, the potential in Israel’s “pivot to Asia” is unlimited. On the economic level, it has been impressive. With annual trade of over $11 billion, China is already Israel’s second largest single country trading partner after the US.  

Study Suggests Porn Addiction Isn't Real
A new study out of the University of California Los Angeles suggests porn addiction does not exist.  

White House Lit in Rainbow Colors After Supreme Court Ruling
The colors illuminated the north side of the White House as Obama returned Friday evening from Charleston, South Carolina, where he delivered the eulogy of the funeral of Clementa Pinckney, one of nine people murdered in the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last week.  

Tunisia Attack: Gunman Kills at Least 39 at Beach Resort, ISIS Claims Responsibility
A gunman opened fire on beachgoers at a hotel in Tunisia today, killing at least 39 people and injuring at least 39, officials said. The attack took place at the Hotel Imperial Marhaba in Sousse, a popular resort town on the northeast coast of Africa.  

Escaped New York Inmate Richard Matt Shot and Killed by Police, Search Ongoing for David Sweat
Escaped convicted murderer Richard Matt was shot and killed by authorities in upstate New York today, according to officials, 20 days after he made an elaborate escape from prison.  

Amid new IS offensive, scores die in Syrian town
Fighting raged into the night Friday between Kurdish fighters and Islamic State militants in the Syrian border town of Kobani, as reports mounted that at least 120 civilians, including women and children, have been killed by the extremist group since it launched a new offensive on the strategic town the previous day.  

Greece debt crisis: Tsipras announces bailout referendum
Greece will hold a referendum on 5 July on a controversial bailout deal with foreign creditors, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has announced. In a televised address, he described the plan as "humiliation" and condemned "unbearable" austerity measures demanded by creditors.  

Vatican under fire from Israel over accord with Palestine
The Vatican came under fire from Israel Friday after signing a historic first accord with Palestine, two years after officially recognising it as a state. The accord, which covers the activities of the Church in the parts of the Holy Land under Palestinian control, was the first since the Vatican recognised Palestine as a state in February 2013.  

The 30,000-pound bomb that could be used against Iran's nuclear facilities 'boggles the mind'
Negotiators are working toward a June 30 deadline for a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. Should the negotiations ultimately fail and the talks fall apart, the Obama administration and any future US president will have what Michael Crowley of Politico describes as an awe-inspiring "plan B" — the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).  

America’s Extreme Makeover is Socialism in Action
The pace of change impacting the United States of America is accelerating at an alarming rate. This week the Supreme Court bolstered ObamaCare by rewriting the law and sanctioning the subsidies that are the centerpiece of the program. On Friday, by a 5-4 margin, the justices legalized gay marriage in all 50 states. This sweeping decision rendered meaningless the vote of Americans in states across the nation.  

Kings Salman & Abdullah Plan to Redraw the Mid East Map to Contain and Shrink Isis
Jun 27th, 2015
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Contemporary Issues

For the first time in decades, the centuries-old royal banner of the Hashemite House of Jordan was unfurled in a quiet, history-loaded ceremony in the Jordanian capital of Amman on June 9. It was presented with great solemnity by Jordan’s King Abdullah II to the Chief of the Royal Armed Forces, Lt. Gen. Meshal Al Zaben, in the presence of the royal family, ministers of state and high officials.
The dark red flag which proclaims, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger,” was first hoisted by Al Sharif Abu Nami in 1515. Prince Abdullah, later King Abdullah I and great-grandfather of the incumbent monarch, symbolically raised the banner in 1920 when he led his troops to Maan in southern Jordan during the Great Arab Revolt.
By handing over this highly symbolic flag, Abdullah elevated his army’s status as the bearer and defender of a historic Arab national and Islamic message. He reaffirmed the “noble status of the armed forces” and their role as “carrier of a pan-nationalist and Islamic message throughout their history and in the future.”
It must be said that this high-sounding message and this banner was peripheral to the Hashemite Kingdom’s contemporary history until it was hauled out on June 9, 2015.
But that ceremony, DEBKA Weekly reveals, imbued the old symbols with high practical significance.

New Saudi monarch broaches ambitious new plan
When King Salman bin Abdulaziz ascended the Saudi throne last January, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was well on the way to engulfing western and central Iraq and northern, eastern and southern Syria. On the assumption that the United States could not be relied on to keep the tide away from his realm, the new king started the ball rolling on a revolutionary scheme. It hinged on expanding the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to form a Sunni-ruled buffer state as a barrier against the encroaching jiahdist peril – even if this entailed ditching post-Colonial borders and redrawing the Middle East map anew.
The two Sunni monarchs quickly put their heads together on the plan.
During their face-to-face conversations and phone calls, Salman maintained that there was no time to be lost because Abu Bakr Al-Baghdad’s Islamic caliphate, unless stopped, was bound to get stronger and devour bigger slices of territory in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip. ISIS strongholds might also rise in Palestinian-ruled on Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank, right up to Jordan’s western border.

Jordan would double in area, quadruple its Sunni population
The Saudi king put in work on the figures.
Jordan today, with its small population of 6.8 million and 110,000 enlisted officers and men plus 60,000 reservists, is nowhere strong enough to stand up to the Islamic State on its own. Jordan’s future would be safe only in the unlikely event of America investing all its military might in the effort, supplemented by Israeli’s military and intelligence support. But as matters stood today, Salman advised King Abdullah that the smaller kingdom’s only chance of survival lay in acquiring more territory to augment its small population and military resources.
His advice was to establish a new Sunni national entity, the Greater Hashemite Kingdom. It would draw new populations from the Sunni nomadic tribes sprawling over the Iraqi province of Anbar and the Syrian borderland, from the Sunnis of southern Syria and northern Saudi Arabia, and from the West Bank Palestinians.
This revamp would double the area of Jordan from 89,342 sq. km to around 180,000 sq km by the attachment of Anbar province (90,000 sq, km), southern Syria (4,500 sq. km.) and a 5,000 sq. km, slice of the West Bank.
Jordan’s population would expand fourfold to an impressive 20 million.

The scheme would clearly be bankrolled by Saudi wealth, which would put up the funds for the new economy and enlarged army.

The post-Arab Spring era is the most volatile in decades
For months, Abdullah sat on the fence. He did not reject the Saudi King’s scheme, but neither did he take steps towards accepting it – that is until June 9. It was then that the Hashemite King signaled his commitment to the new Sunni state by the ceremonial unfurling of the historic Hashemite flag in Amman.
His announcement that the Jordanian army was to be “carrier of a pan-nationalist and Islamic message through their history and in the future” symbolically affirmed the Jordanian king’s endorsement of the initial steps necessary for implementing the Saudi scheme.
He accepted King Salman’s premise that changed circumstances had made it necessary to change Middle East national borders for the first time since they were drawn by Britain and France.
The region’s face was redrawn for ever by the Arab Spring of 2011, an event which demonstrated how swiftly unforeseen, spasmodic occurrences could alter the region in a trice, toppling rulers and regimes almost overnight, throwing up new political and military entities and splintering nations into violent fragments in established countries like Libya, Syria and Iraq.
No one in Riyadh or Amman ventures to assess how long it will take to create the new Sunni state. But there is a sense of urgency in both capitals and a feeling that dark crises are gathering fast around their borders.

Abdullah in London to canvass Western support and aerial support
This sense brought King Abdullah to London Tuesday, June 22 for secret meetings with officials of the non-Arab members of the coalition the US set up last year to fight the Islamic State.
According to DEBKA Weekly’s exclusive sources, he brought with him a blueprint drawn up by King Salman and himself outlining a new strategy for fighting and containing ISIS on the ground.
The two monarchs are convinced that their two-stage operational plan is ready for immediate implementation.
In the first stage, Jordanian intelligence and special operations units would spread out across the western Iraqi province of Anbar and southern Syria. Abdullah planned to show his interlocutors a list of Sunni tribes and clans in Iraq and Syria, who were willing to join Jordan in the campaign against ISIS.
Large sums of Saudi and Jordanian cash changed hands to buy their loyalty and willingness to fight the jihadis
Jordan’s king was to explain that his army stands ready to move into the targeted areas of Iraq and Syria and consolidate its presence there, but it needs a Western air umbrella.
He could not say how much time would be needed for capture and consolidation. But once this was accomplished, he said, the next stage would go forward, to bring the new territories under the Hashemite crown and establish the region’s newest, fully-fledged Sunni state.

\An obstacle against ISIS and Iranian hegemonic expansion
The new kingdom – if it came to be - would herald epic changes in the region:
1. The turbulence in the wake of the Arab Spring has progressively eroded the lines drawn in the 1916 Sykos-Pikot Agreement, which divided Middle East spheres of influence between Britain and France – and indirectly Russia – after the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. The Saudi creation of an expanded Jordanian kingdom would finally obliterate those lines and draw the map anew.
2. Greater Jordan would fill three major functions:
a) Provide Saudi Arabia with a broad defense land barrier against ISIS encroachments.
b) Pre-empt the Shiite Crescent plan entertained by Tehran for building a contiguous land link across the Middle East between Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut .The Islamic Republic of Iran would be denied its ambition to dominate an area from the Persian Gulf up to the eastern Mediterranean;
c) Build an impassable impediment between Saudi Arabia and the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah terrorist group, which Riyadh regards as an enemy as dangerous as ISIS.

Bashar Assad looks a bit like an asset for some Saudis, maybe
3. Making the Sunnis of Iraq and Syria independent of their governments would obviate the urgent need to end the rule of Bashar Assad in Damascus, by making them safe from his vengeance.
For five years the Saudis were unshakably determined to topple the Syrian ruler, the sworn enemy of Sunni Muslims, by any means. These days, word is going around the Gulf that some Saudi circles may be amenable to a reassessment, viewing him as an asset in view of his adamant fight against ISIS and therefore worth keeping in power
DEBKA Weekly cannot confirm that this thinking is part of King Salman’s plans.
The fate of the Assad regime came up in the talks Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held on June 18 in St. Petersburg with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who along with Tehran has been arming and backing Bashar Assad throughout the civil war.
4. Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas might as well stop running around the world in pursuit of international condemnation for Israel and the imposition of a two-state solution, because the Greater Hashemite Kingdom envisaged in Riyadh will, in concurrence with Israel, attach the Palestinian West Bank to Amman as the wing of a confederation.

Khamenei Last - Minute Red Lines: a Blocking Tactic or a Hard Bargain
Jun 27th, 2015
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Contemporary Issues

Nuclear Negotiations Approach Finale

ust seven days before the self-imposed deadline of June 30 for a final nuclear accord between the Six World Powers and Iran, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei set more impediments in its path with four red lines which he laid down on Tuesday, June 23:
1. “We will not accept a long-term limitation [on enrichment] for 10-12 years…we have told them a smaller number of years would be acceptable.”
2. There will be no limitations on nuclear “research, development and construction” during the period limiting enrichment.
3. “Economic sanctions, whether by the UN Security Council, Congress or the US Government, must be removed immediately after the signing of the agreement… and all remaining sanctions removed after a reasonable time.”
4. No inspections of military sites, interviews with “Iranian individuals” (scientists) or “unconventional” inspections will be allowed.

Khamenei turns the negotiating clock back
None of those four conditions were new, DEBKA Weekly notes. Khamenei stepped in to turn the clock back at the critical final stage of arduous negotiations going back many years, with long hours spent by America’s finest nuclear experts on the smallest technical minutiae.
Earlier this year, Foreign Minister Mohamed Javad Zarif gave ground on those very points. So what was the supreme leader playing at when he put them back on the table as the sine qua non for the comprehensive nuclear accord so badly coveted by the Obama administration?
Not surprisingly, US officials in Washington did their best to brush his words aside and talk over the “I told you so” comments heard from critics of the deal by “explaining” that Khamenei needed to show his hardliners at home a tough front against President Barack Obama. This would give him an out so that when the deal gets signed, he will be able to pretend that President Hassan Rouhani and Zarif were not authorized to ink the paper and acted without his sanction.
Administration officials insist nonetheless that a comprehensive nuclear accord will be signed with Iran and the proof of its worth will come with its implementation.

Fork out a Hundred Million and the deal is Done
His other motive appears to be to drive a hard bargain five minutes before the deal is finalized.
DEBKA Weekly’s Iran experts have never held out much hope of the US procuring a nuclear accord with Iran, and contended that even if it is finalized, the Iranians will not honor its commitments.
But a third possibility may be gleaned from Khamenei’s latest pronouncement. He will find it hard to renege on his red lines after they were trumpeted to the entire Iranian nation over state television. But close analysis shows him to have refrained from nixing the deal. Instead, he attached expensive strings, namely the removal of sanctions forthwith - as laid out in his third demand.
This demand alone is worth an instant $50-100 billion bonanza for the Iranian treasury.
Khamenei’s red lines add up to a simple demand: Fork out and we’ll sign; otherwise the deal – even if signed - will be scrap paper.
This tactic comes straight out of the Persian bazaar, where a merchant may put up the price sharply at the very moment that the buyer’s hand reaches out to pick up the goods.
The supreme leader gave the game away in the exegesis he offered for his four red lines in that same state TV broadcast.

Khamenei: We don’t need a nuclear deal; America does
After accusing the Americans of seeking “the destruction of the … nuclear goals of the country and changing Iran’s nuclear program into a meaningless picture,” Khamenei went on to say “…the focal point of the resistance economy model is [self-reliance] and an internally-oriented viewpoint.”
He then explained: “This self-reliance does not mean isolationism, but rather a reliance on internal capacities and capabilities with a view to the outside.”
Stressing that the development of resistance economy policies should be “the product of collective wisdom and long consultations,” the supreme leader stated: “After the government’s transmission of these policies, many economic experts have confirmed it, and now the resistance economy is entering the country’s mainstream economic literature and culture.” Its implementation “in the country’s current situation is entirely possible,” he concluded
Khamenei’s message to the nation (and Washington) was that Iran has no need of a nuclear accord with the West in order to build a viable economy.

Five more influential US voices warn against deal
Zarif’s comments to The New Yorker a day earlier supplemented his boss’s bargaining position from a different angle:
If the nuclear talks do not produce a final deal, he said, “it won’t be the end of the world. A failed deal is worse for the US, which would have lost a major, probably unique, opportunity.”
For Iran, Zarif said, “It’s not about nationalism or chauvinism. It’s simply about historical depth.”
Tehran’s price for a deal may be computed from the following equation: “Historical depth” plus “resistance economy” equal $100 billion cash on the barrel. But there is still a week for the price to continue to soar.
Thursday, June 25, as US Secretary of State John Kerry headed for Vienna to attend the last lap of the nuclear negotiations, five former members of President Obama’s inner circle released an open letter expressing concern that the pending accord “may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement.”

Israeli Diplomacy With Abbas Iced Over, But Thrives With Hamas
Jun 27th, 2015
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: The Nation Of Israel

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius collected a hatful of nos when, during his visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah Sunday, June 21, he put before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas a plan for breathing new life into their long comatose peace talks.
The new Security Council Resolution which France plans to table would set the parameters of a negotiated end to the conflict, an 18-month timeline for negotiations, a Palestinian state within 1967 borders with agreed territorial swaps and Jerusalem as the capital of the two states..
The Palestinian state would be demilitarized and Israel would pledge to withdraw its troops within a transitional period.
Abbas rejected the formulation outright, because it didn’t include a date for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or acknowledge the Palestinian refugees “right of return.”
Netanyahu turned it down lock, stock and barrel, because, he maintained, Israel would never accept any solution to the conflict that was not reached through negotiations. “No international body will impose a solution on Israel,” he declared.

Abbas turns against his longstanding cronies and allies
Astonishment over the mistiming of the French peace initiative was registered in both Jerusalem and Ramallah, DEBKA Weekly’s sources report, since it is common knowledge that Palestinian leader, at 80, has lost interest in every issue other than his bitter feud with the former Gaza strongman and rival for the Palestinian leadership Muhammad Dahlan.
Living in exile since 2011, when he was expelled from the ruling Fatah party and sentenced in absentia to prison for graft, Dahlan is feared by Abbas to be positioning himself for a comeback to the Palestinian political stage.
Abbas, who holds all three Palestinian top jobs, Chairman of the PLO, head of the ruling Fatah party, and chairman of the Palestinian Authority, is described as constantly looking over his shoulder and jumping at shadows when he is not out of the country on trips. He even suspects longstanding allies of secretly spying on him and plotting his overthrow with Dahlan.
On June 22, Abbas ordered the PA’s Attorney General to impound the funds of the "Palestine of Tomorrow" organization, founded by former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad for Palestinian development projects - on suspicion that it was being misused to promote Dahlan’s interests on the West Bank. He also had his old crony Yasser Abed Rabbo fired from his veteran post as secretary of the PLO Executive Committee.

Palestinian governance skewed by Abbas’ suspicions
Members of the Palestinian Authority complain that Abbas burning preoccupation has left the routine government of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for five million Palestinians sadly skewed, because every piece of business is judged by a single yardstick: whether it will hurt or help Dahlan’s interests.
A striking example of a rare opportunity missed for that very reason occurred recently. After years of alienation, the Gaza Strip’s Hamas government recently broke up and its leaders actually asked the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to step in, staff the ministries and manage the enclave’s day-to-day affairs.
Hamas even swallowed its long objections and bowed to the Egyptian demand to remove its forces from the border crossings to Egypt and Israel and surrender them to the control of Palestinian Authority officials.
Yet Abbas rejected these long hoped-for Hamas concessions, because he suspected a trick hatched by Dahlan to convert the PA officials manning the crossings and persuade them to support his bid to supplant Abbas.

Dahlan has built a following and spending lavishly for a comeback
During his five years in exile, Dahlan built strong ties with the rulers of the United Arab Emirate and, more recently, with the Sisi government in Cairo. He also made a fortune, reportedly from arms trafficking and construction enterprises in and outside the Arab world. Because of his background in “security” - as the late Yasser Arafat’s top terror facilitator in the Gaza Strip during the years of the Palestinian intifada against Israel - he has been in demand as a consultant for the intelligence services of certain Arab rulers.
Most of his wealth is thought to have originated in his partnership with Arafat’s financier, Mohammed Rashid, who is believed to have laid hands on Arafat’s fortune after his death. The partners are currently setting up a large building in central Belgrade. He has taken out Serbian citizenship and reported to make his home in Montenegro.
Many Palestinians believe that, although expelled and disgraced, Dahlan could raise enough popular support for a comeback. He maintains a following on the West Bank and Gaza Strip and would not be short of funds or influence in the local media to promote his campaign.

Five-year Gaza truce in advanced negotiation
While Israeli diplomacy with the Palestinian Authority is iced over, a track with Hamas is ongoing, thanks to the efforts of the Middle East Quartet’s coordinator, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
On the table is a five-year truce in Gaza hostilities between Israel and Hamas.
The two diplomats are working closely with the Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, who is very keen on resolving the Gaza conflict for the sake of gaining a foothold in the Palestinian enclave and an opening to the Mediterranean Sea.
The process has advanced enough for Hamas to appoint a high-ranking three-man group of negotiators. It consists of deputy secretary Mussa Abu Marzouk, West Bank Hamas leader Ahmed Yousuf and Hamas spokesman Razzi Hamad.
They are studying the Israeli offer of a choice between three options for opening up the Gaza Strip in return for a long-term truce: permission to open a seaport; permission to reopen the airport; or a large dock or a floating island opposite the Gaza shore as a port for shipping.
Mahmoud Abbas, more incensed than ever, has been blasting Israel and Hamas alike since their negotiations came to his notice. Tuesday, June 23, he submitted the first documents to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for his war crimes case against Israel.