Arson attacks spread Saturday, Dec. 4 from the North to Jerusalem, where fires started near Tsur Hadassah and the Jerusalem Forest. Day Three of the Carmel fire began with a fleet of foreign planes, including two giant Russian Il-76s taking off at first light to dump water and fresh supplies of retardants on the flames and smoke again engulfing Beit Oren, Ein Hod, Nir Etzion and Isfiya, fanned by scorching winds.

Arson alert declared in the North against proliferating attacks.

A suspected arson attack on the West Galilee village of Tal El east of Acre Friday night, Dec. 2, strengthened the suspicion gaining ground among police and military circles on Day Two of the fiercely rampant Carmel blaze, that Israel may be facing a wave of deliberately-set fires. Officers talking to debkafile's sources did not identity the hand behind these attacks, commenting only that Israel appears to be confronted with a new kind of warfare outside its experience.

Riyadh has signaled its intention for the secret Saudi-Israeli meetings on Iran taking place for more than a year to continue after the changing of the guard at the Mossad, debkafile's intelligence sources reveal. This message Tamir Pardo found on his desk when he took over from Meir Dagan this week as head of Israel's external spy agency. It means that, regardless of WikiLeaks disclosures, the Saudis stand by their conviction that Iran's nuclear program must be destroyed.

Israeli Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin warned the Israel cabinet Sunday, Nov. 21:  "Tel Aviv will be a front line in the next conflict."  debkafile's military sources report he was referring to the thousands of missiles with enhanced ranges of 300 kilometers Syria and Hizballah have received from Iran and which Iranian engineers are outfitting with guidance systems to challenge Israel's aerial capabilities and missile defenses. Syria's chemical warheads are now fully guided.

The Israeli prime minister is keeping under his hat a series of secret negotiations in Amman, Jordan, at which dramatic progress has been made in five key areas of contention with the Palestinians. The key to one problem would be the deployment of Jordanian troops on the Jordan River's ...

Dovish politicians, a media baron and opposition leaders have combined to unseat the Netanyahu government starting with defense minister Ehud Barak and slotting Kadima's Tzipi Livni in their place.

The sharp differences between Israel and Britain came to the fore Wednesday, Nov. 3, during William Hague's first visit to Israel as Foreign Secretary. He was informed that Israel had halted the strategic dialogue with the UK in protest against the failure of successive British governments to repeal a law allowing its leaders to be arrested for war crimes on arrival in Britain. The visitor struck back by meeting and praising three groups leading the Palestinian anti-Israel protest movement.

While raising Cain about Israeli settlement construction, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is seriously weighing a secret plan for bringing a fresh influx of Hamas fighting and intelligence forces into the West Bank at points opposite Israel in a bid to patch up their feud, debkafile's sources report. Israel warns that this plan would bring IDF troops back into the West Bank towns turned over to the Palestinians and restore the dozens of dismantled roadblocks.

The Netanyahu government chose silence in the face of the imperialist Shiite energy Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad exuded in his all-conquering visit to Lebanon. On his first day in Beirut he showed the world that Tehran calls the shots in Beirut - and that would be just for starters. debkafile's sources find in Israel's inaction today a regrettable analogy with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's handover of Czechoslovak Sudetenland to Germany in 1938 so ushering in World War II. 

debkafile's sources report:  Towards the end of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first day in Lebanon Wednesday Oct. 13, a high alert was declared in the Israeli, Syrian, Lebanese armies, the Hizballah militia and the UN peacekeeping force ahead of his tour of the Lebanese-Israeli border Thursday. The Iranian president and Nasrallah both called for Israel to "disappear".  But first he announced the formation of a new anti-Israel Eastern Front encompassing Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinians and Iraq.

By releasing the 1973 Yom Kippur War papers now, Jerusalem signaled Bashar Assad that his capital could be in peril if Syria and Hizballah go through with their plot against the Hariri government in Beirut. The papers reveal that 37 years ago, Israel's late Prime Minister Golda Meir denied defense minister Moshe Dayan and IDF chief David Elazar permission to bomb Damascus before and after Syrian and Egyptian forces advanced towards Israel at the war's outset.

US and Israel skirted around admitting that direct Israel-Palestinian dialogue had foundered after 26 days Sunday, Sept. 26, as Israel's settlement construction freeze expired. American spokesmen commented that with the resumption of building, a one-year clock was ticking for a peace accord. The talks have resulted for now in Hamas preparing to go to the next, expanded phase of its terror campaign, Egypt and Syria patching up their quarrel and the two terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hizballah, crowing.

The pact confronts the Russian military with the first test of its ability to handle advanced Western technology. The Kremlin will have to show whether it is willing to cooperate in this field with the United States, which overseas the pact.

The Obama administration has sent Syrian president Bashar Assad a stern warning that he will be held personally accountable and face consequences if Israel and the Palestinian Authority are subjected to a terror campaign - whether by Hizballah or the Palestinian extremist groups based in Damascus, debkafile reports from Washington. The warning went out Thursday, Sept. 2, as Israelis and Palestinians sat down to talk in Washington after two attacks.

A top Iranian general said Friday, Sept. 3: "Iran hopes there won't be a need to target the nuclear facility of the Zionist regime, but if there is, Israel would receive dreadful retribution."
Saturday, Sept. 4, Israeli ambassador in Washington Michael Oren reported that Iran's proxy Hizballah had positioned 16,000 rockets in South Lebanon, altogether quadrupling the number ranged on the Israeli border four years ago. They can now reach every part of Israel as far south as Eilat with enhanced precision.

Tehran and its extremist and terrorist allies, having failed to abort Barack Obama's initiative for direct Israel-Palestinian diplomacy, hit back with two belligerent steps. debkafile's sources disclose Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah have set up a joint military command for sinking Israeli warships, and Hamas has brought all 13 Palestinian rejectionist groups under one roof for a bid to intensify terror operations against Israel. They took advantage of Binyamin Netanyahu's single-minded focus on diplomacy.

Using new tactics imparted by Iranian Guards and Hizballah, Hamas terrorizes West Bank highways to sabotage US Middle East diplomatic initiative and topple Mahmoud Abbas.

Another drive-by shooting claimed by Hamas injured Moshe and Shira Morani from Maaleh Efraim at the Rimonim junction near Ramallah Wednesday night, Sept. 1. The couple saved their lives by fleeing their vehicle. debkafile: Hamas has adopted new methods for its latest campaign to sabotage peace talks: Frequent small attacks by cells of unknown perpetrators imported from Syria and Lebanon and carefully compartmentalized.

Western intelligence sources report that on August 30, Hizballah put its forces on a state of war alert and issued a partial call-up of reservists, apparently in preparation for a major attack on Israel in response to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington or during the Jewish New Year festival starting on Sept. 8. Iranian pressure for an attack has intensified in the wake of the Palestinian Hamas's drive-by murder of four Israeli civilians on a road near Hebron gave Tuesday night Aug. 31.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards chief Gen. Mohamed Ali Jafari, who rarely leaves his country, paid a secret visit to Damascus a few hours before Tehran launched the Bushehr nuclear reactor Saturday, Aug. 21. With him were top Al Qods Brigades commanders in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. They conferred with Bashar Assad on roles for Syria and Hizballah in an Iranian reprisal for a US or Israel attack - or a "pre-emptive strike" against Israel.