AMMAN -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has launched an unusual kind of peace campaign, by targeting the Israeli public with paid advertisements in major Hebrew-language newspapers to promote the Arab peace initiative.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obamas historic election victory may have done a lot more for Israeli moderates than just boost the election prospects of the Kadima party and its new leader Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. A remarkable public speech by one of the Jewish states espionage chiefs Monday suggests that Obamas emergence is encouraging Israeli doves to spread their wings, even in the military high command.

The minor escalation of hostilities this past week between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip did manage to make some noise amid the epochal cacophony of the global financial crisis. The headlines in the international media, however, had less to do with the limited border skirmishes, rocket launches, air strikes, and border closures which transpired, than with the fact that the nearly five-month ceasefire between the Palestinian militant group and the Jewish state appeared to be unraveling.

Many people in the Arab world wasted little time before criticizing President-elect Barack Obama for choosing Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Before those who find fault with the president-elects new appointment, let me offer the following advice: take a deep breath and give the next American president and his team the benefit of the doubt.

The recent acknowledgment by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of her problems in creating a coalition government, and her request for national elections can create the conditions for her coming back to power. If she succeeds, she represents a better chance for peace than her rivals Benjamin Netanyahu chairman of the hawkish Likud party and Ehud Barak, the leader of the Labor party.

It is an Israeli thing. When a politician, say Ehud Barak, running for the office of prime minister appears at a public event, the crowd will often chant, "Ehud, King of Israel." It is a takeoff on the traditional song, "David, King of Israel," sung on Jewish holidays and celebrations.

And now it is Israels turn to go to the polls. Israelis will be electing next February a new 120-member parliament. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.

MOSCOW -- The election campaign began in Israel when its foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, elected the leader of the Kadima party last September, failed to form a government coalition supported by a majority of the Knesset, Israels parliament.

In a farewell interview he gave to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dropped a bombshell. "What Im telling you now," he said to his interviewers, "no Israeli leader ever said before me: We have to pull out from almost all the territories [in the West Bank], including in East Jerusalem, including in the Golan Heights."

Will Israels Prime Minister designate Tsipi Livni order a strike against Iran? Highly unlikely, at least not before the November elections in the United States, and possibly not at all. The anti-Israel fear mongers in Washington and elsewhere are likely to be proven wrong once again.