"It is important to also remember that indictments, when they are issued, are just that, indictments - not judgments or verdicts. The sealed work of the investigators will go to a pre-trial judge who will then take between six to eight weeks to review the findings and then make a determination as to whether or not they create sufficient grounds to merit prosecution. Only if the judge agrees to proceed will arrest warrants be issued. Note that it is only at this point that the names of those to be indicted may become official and public."

"...to use these concerns to construct a notion that any or all of them nullify concern with the plight of the Palestinians or the fate of Jerusalem is sheer fantasy. As our polling has consistently demonstrated, Palestine is not merely an issue, it is an existential concern that not only unites Arabs, it defines their sense of common history and their deepest feelings of betrayal by and their vulnerability in the face of Western machinations. In a real sense, the plight of Palestinians is to the Arabs, what the Holocaust is to Jews world-wide. To ignore this reality is to invite disaster."

"Evidence of the Obama administration’s “moral collapse” is profuse; the pattern is clear, the consequences already terrible. During the weeks and months ahead, progressives will need to engage in fresh strategic discussions. Public candor may be insufficient, but it is necessary."

So is the logic here that Israel will go through this "agonizing" internal debate (sweetened with incentives) to agree to stop doing what they should not have been doing all along, and then put the ball in the Palestinian court, forcing them to accept what they were never a party to in the first place, or appear to be the "spoilers"?

"By its own account, the U.S. government has been at war for more than nine years now and there’s no end in sight. Like the Pentagon, the State Department is serving the overall priorities of the warfare state. The nation’s military and diplomacy are moving parts of the same vast war machinery....Such a contraption requires a muscular bodyguard of partial truths, deceptions and outright lies. With the USA’s ongoing war efforts at full throttle, the contradictions between public rationales and hidden goals -- or between lofty rhetoric and grisly human consequences -- cannot stand the light of day."

"There can be no doubt that those who lobby for Israel are a force to be reckoned with, but several facts must also be considered: right-wing Christian fundamentalists (who form 40% of the Republican Party's voter base) have a major role in shaping policies toward the Middle East; polls show that most American Jews (and Christians) do not support hard-line Israeli positions; and the myth of the invincible AIPAC is just that - a myth."

"Escalation of warfare in Afghanistan is running parallel to escalation of class war -- waged from the top down -- in Washington. The presidentially appointed co-chairs of the deficit commission, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, are pushing scenarios that would undermine Social Security."

"The only conclusion that one can make from all of this is that those settlements that Israel built over the last 43 years, in defiance of international law - which have been described by successive American administrations as "illegal", "an obstacle to peace", "unhelpful", "counterproductive" and more recently as "illegitimate"- have now become "subsequent developments" that will be accommodated by "agreed land swaps"....So Jabal Abul Ghnaim is no more, and will be no more, despite international condemnation and U.S. "regrets". The once green Arab hill has been replaced by "subsequent developments".  Given of the timidity of the U.S. response to the extension of Har Homa, in all likelihood, that too will be built, and some day soon be a reality that Palestinians will be told they must accept."