Does Obama Have a Plan B for the Middle East?

It’s hardly surprising that President Barack Obama chose to schedule a White House visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dead of night Monday, because right now Obama has little to show for his 10-month effort to revive a Mideast peace process. The Israeli leader’s refusal to abide by Washington’s demand for a complete freeze of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — and the Palestinian refusal to enter talks without one — has left the Administration’s plans in tatters, with President Mahmoud Abbas threatening to resign and pull the plug on his Palestinian Authority, and the peace process of which it forms part

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Israel keeping Gaza parched, Amnesty International says

Israel is denying Palestinians access to adequate water supplies by controlling shared water resources, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday. He said that Israeli consumption of water from the mountain aquifer had gone down in absolute terms from 1967 to today, despite the fact that Israel’s population had more than doubled in that time to its current level of approximately 7 million people

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Jury to begin deliberations in Travolta extortion trial

A jury will likely begin deliberations Wednesday in the trial of two people accused of attempting to extort $25 million from actor John Travolta. All closing arguments ended Tuesday at the trial in Nassau, Bahamas, and the judge is to instruct the jury Wednesday morning before it begins deliberations.

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