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accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization as much as a spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations. In Pakistan’s mountains, the agency had broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force. For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, Special Operations troops under secret “Execute Orders” have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies. With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A. And, as American counterterrorism operations spread beyond war zones into territory hostile to the military, private contractors have taken on a prominent role, raising concerns that the United States has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes unaccountable private army.

“For the first time in our history, an entity has declared a covert war against us,” Mr. Smith said, referring to Al Qaeda. “And we are using similar elements of American power to respond to that covert war.” Some security experts draw parallels to the cold war, when the United States drew heavily on covert operations as it fought a series of proxy battles with the Soviet Union. And some of the central players of those days have returned to take on supporting roles in the shadow war. Michael G. Vickers, who helped run the C.I.A.’s campaign to funnel guns and money to the Afghanistan mujahedeen in the 1980s and was featured in the book and movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” is now the top Pentagon official overseeing Special Operations troops around the globe. Duane R. Clarridge, a profane former C.I.A. officer who ran operations in Central America and was indicted in the Iran-contra scandal, turned up this year helping run a Pentagon-financed private spying operation in Pakistan.

A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode, increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by human rights groups.

Avital Leibovitch, a spokeswoman for Israel's military, said Israeli authorities will bring the guilty parties to justice. "The Israeli police ... have opened a very widespread investigation; the other security forces in Israel will be a part of [it], as well as Palestinian information that has some contribution to this investigation," she told Al Jazeera. "We see this incident in a very severe manner. We will do the utmost to find these lawbreakers and bring them to court."

Much of the talk here is [calling this a] religious type of attack rather than a politically motivated one.

"A mosque was burned in the West Bank earlier this year by settlers who say it was on their land - land that they claim and occupy. "There is certainly a pattern here. There will be a settler demonstration north of the West Bank today which is also linked to a mosque that the settlers want destroyed."

An intriguing report in Asharq Alawsat says the US and Israel have been quietly exploring the possibility of a land-lease option for parts of the West Bank.  The proposal is that under a peace deal, Israel would lease some land (including "land in occupied eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley") from the Palestinian Authority for a period of between 40 and 99 years. This is reminiscent of the situation following the Opium Wars in the 19th century when Britain leased parts of Hong Kong from China for a period of 99 years before handing back the whole territory to the Chinese in 1997.

With all the challenges Egyptians face — more than half the population lives on less than $2 a day — nothing has mobilized public opinion in recent history quite like the events that occurred in Sudan. Egypt thought it would beat Algeria and earn a World Cup berth for the first time in 20 years. It approached the contest more like a nation going to war than to a soccer game.

With all the challenges Egyptians face — more than half the population lives on less than $2 a day — nothing has mobilized public opinion in recent history quite like the events that occurred in Sudan. Egypt thought it would beat Algeria and earn a World Cup berth for the first time in 20 years. It approached the contest more like a nation going to war than to a soccer game. When it lost and Egyptian fans left the stadium, many said they were chased down and harassed by Algerians, and some suffered minor injuries. But, most of all, they said they were deeply offended and left feeling helpless.

“How can Egypt, the Arab symbol of strength, be humiliated like this in the streets of Khartoum?” asked Ahmed Tarek, 33, who runs an Egyptian advertising agency in Sudan. “And if we are really a strong country, why aren’t we doing something about it? Nobody had ever insulted the Egyptians to this degree. This issue revealed so many things, it woke up the people.”

But the main problem with the functional search for hybridity and exoticizing `indigenous' and `traditional' practices is that it relies on  essentializing the Afghan culture.  The international community swings from one extreme of trying to redo every institution to uncritically embracing all that is  ‘traditional’.

The abandonment of liberal peace seems to be an exit strategy for the international community. But this is making a grand exit while blaming Afghans as a convenience: the government for corruption, Afghan culture for being fundamentally illiberal, or Afghans’ vision of order and loyalty, for being fragmented. By implication, the modern state which expects to command the full loyalty of its own citizens, becomes too distant from what the Afghans deserve, and culture is essentialised as anti-modern and static.  This is to place blame in the wrong place and to ignore any kind of internal dialogue and dynamic that is taking place in Afghanistan.

Most respondents in our Sciences Po research argued that genuine Islam, where rights and freedoms were limited automatically through   akhlag (morality) and iman (faith), was far superior both to the liberal peace model, based on individualism, and to the notion of a traditional peace, based on hierarchy and authority.  Yet, it seems that understanding religion as a source for principles of social organization is a step too far for the secularized, rational west which automatically associates the adjective “Islamic” with extremism and fundamentalism.  This is sadly a missed opportunity.

A senior Hamas leader has said that the Palestinian group is close to reconciliation with the rival Fatah movement.

"We are in the final stages now."

“This is our final word to the Syrian authorities: Our first expectation is that these operations stop immediately and unconditionally,” Mr. Davutoglu said at a news conference in Ankara, the Turkish capital. “If the operations do not end, there would be nothing more to discuss about steps that would be taken,” he said, without saying what that action might include.

would limit our ability to ensure that Iraq remains stable and free from significant foreign influence in the years to come

Many Palestinians have expressed anger at PA President Mahmoud Abbas for seeming to let Israelis off the hook following Goldstone's trenchant criticism of Israel's blockade of Gaza and attacks on its citizens.

Academics and rights workers held a street protest on Monday.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, has lashed out at the decision as "shameful and irresponsible", and posters saying "to the trash heap of history, you traitor, Mahmoud Abbas" have appeared in the Strip.

A Saudi court on Wednesday sentenced a man who caused uproar by bragging about his sex life on television to five years in prison and 1,000 lashes

He made the comments on Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, which aired the interview a few months ago. Saudi authorities shut down LBC offices in Jeddah and Riyadh after airing the interview on an episode of its popular show "A Thick Red Line." Abdul Jawad was arrested shortly after the program aired and charged with violating Saudi Arabia's crime of publicizing vice.

The segment in question has been posted on the video-sharing site YouTube since its initial broadcast last month, and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

"The credibility and foundations of international human rights and humanitarian law as well as of the UN as a whole is at stake," he said.

Israel's impunity

But Gabriela Shalev, Israel's ambassador to the Security Council, did not refer at all to the Goldstone report during the meeting on Wednesday, but dismissed its findings before the debate even began.

At least 132 people have been killed and 520 injured in two car bomb attacks in Baghdad, Iraqi officials say.

This is the deadliest attack in Iraq since August 2007 and comes three months after the US handed security control of cities to local forces.

Iraq then blamed foreign fighters and accused Syria of involvement, demanding a UN investigation.

The Hamas-run interior ministry in the Gaza Strip has ordered Palestinians in the territory not to take part in elections called by Mahmoud Abbas, the West Bank-based president. 

"Any preparations, any committees, any collecting of names will be regarded as an illegal action that we will pursue," he said.

Abbas himself was elected on January 9, 2005, for a four-year term. The Palestinian Authority extended his presidency by one year so presidential and parliamentary elections could be held on the same date, as required by Palestinian Basic Law.

Israeli authorities have torn down several Palestinian houses in occupied east Jerusalem, defying international calls to halt the demolitions in the disputed city. 

Palestinians say that the municipality discriminates against them, making it virtually impossible for them to get legal permits for new homes or extensions to existing ones.

As a result, thousands of effectively illegal structures have been built in recent decades with Israel responding by destroying dozens of houses each year.

Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, the chief Palestinian negotiator has said.

Israel has rejected the idea of a de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank, incorporating the Palestinians as citizens, as a "demographic timebomb" that would make Jews the minority.

"This is dictation and not negotiations," he said.

appeared to endorse an Israeli position that talks could start before a settlement freeze which the Palestinians are demanding.

Washington has changed tack, saying the most important thing was to get the negotiations going again.

The Palestinian refusal to acquiesce in this means the chances appear slimmer than ever that these talks about talks can be turned into substantive negotiations, BBC Jerusalem correspondent Paul Wood said.