The armies of Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states stood ready Thursday Jan. 5, for Washington to stand up to Iranian threats and send an aircraft carrier or several warships through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. Riyadh has been leaning hard on the Obama administration not to let Tehran get away with its warning to react with “full force” if the USS Stennis aircraft carrier tried to reenter the Gulf or Iran’s pretensions to control the traffic transiting the world’s most important oil route.

Wednesday night, the Iranian parliament began drafting a bill prohibiting foreign warships from entering the Gulf without Tehran’s permission. debkafile‘s Washington sources report that Saudi Arabia has warned the Obama administration that Iranian leaders mean what they say; their leaders are bent on provoking a military clash with the United States at a time and place of their choosing, rather than leaving the initiative to Washington. To this end, Iranian officials are ratcheting up their belligerence day after day. Notwithstanding their military inferiority, the Iranians believe they can snatch a measure of success from a military confrontation, just as the Lebanese Hizballah did in the 2006 war against Israel. In any case, they expect any clash to be limited – at least at first. The two sides will begin by feeling for the opposite side’s weaknesses while endeavoring to hold the line against a full-blown war.

America’s failure to rise to Iran’s challenge will confirm its rulers in the conviction that the US is a paper tiger and encourage them to press their advantage for new gains. The assessment of British military experts Thursday, Jan. 5, was that the question now is: Who will blink first? Will the US follow through on the Pentagon’s assertion that the deployment of US military assets in the Persian Gulf will continue as it has for decades? Or will Iran act on its warnings and block those waters to the entry of American warships? President Barack Obama can’t afford to cave in to Iran, especially while campaigning for reelection in Nov. 2012; Tehran, for its part, has made too many threats to easily back down. The entire region is now on tenterhooks for the next move, with US, Iranian and Gulf armies on the highest war alert. American and Iranian war planners both accept that their advantage lies in surprising the enemy – without, however, catapulting the Persian Gulf into a full-dress war. US Navy publications as of Wednesday, Jan. 4 showed a sign of the times: One ran a series of photos of F-18 Super Hornet fighter-bombers standing on the runways of the USS Stennis aircraft carrier ready for takeoff at any moment. Another depicted for the first time ever row upon row of huge bombs in the carrier’s hold to show the Iranians what they are taking on.

In the view of debkafile’s military sources, the fact that the US has deployed only one large aircraft carrier in the region does not signify any reluctance on Washington’s part to preserve the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. There is no longer a need to rush more carriers to a flashpoint in these strategic waters. The US maintains five huge air bases in the Gulf region – two, the Ali Al Salem and Ahmed Al Jaber bases, in Kuwait; the Al Dhafra base in the UAE; and the largest air bases outside the US – Al Adid in Qatar and the Thumrait in Oman.

The concentration of aircraft carriers at any given location is no longer treated as the marker of an imminent US military operation.

A rare seal certifying the ritual purity of an item to be used in the Second Temple in Jerusalem was discovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority as part of excavations under the Robinson’s Arch right next to the Temple Mount.

A rare seal certifying the ritual purity of an item to be used in the Second Temple in Jerusalem was discovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority as part of excavations under the Robinson’s Arch right next to the Temple Mount.

The find of the Aramaic inscription, “Pure for G-d”, occurred during an extensive sifting of soil removed from layers which were once part of a paved Herodian street serving as a main Jerusalem thoroughfare. The soil dates to the first century CE (late Second Temple period), just prior to – or maybe even during – the Maccabean rebellion celebrated during the holiday of Hanukkah.

The item is stamped with an Aramaic inscription consisting of two lines – in the upper line “דכא” (pure) and below it “ליה” (to G-d) – and is probably the kind of seal referred to in the Mishnah as a “seal (Tractate Shekalim 5:1-5), according to excavation directors and archaeologists Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that such an object or anything similar to it was discovered in an archaeological excavation and it constitutes direct archaeological evidence of the activity on the Temple Mount and the workings of the Temple during the Second Temple period”, Shukron and Reich said.

Jerusalem District Archaeologist Dr. Yuval Baruch drew a connection between the find and Hanukkah. “It is written in the Gemara (Talmud Bavli, Tractate Shabbat 2:21) that the only cruse of oil that was discovered in the Temple after the victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks, “lay with the seal of the High Priest” – that is, the seal indicated that the oil is pure and can be used in the Temple. Remember, this cruse of oil was the basis for the miracle of Hanukkah that managed to keep the menorah lit for eight days”, Baruch noted.

Other items discovered in the excavation included oil lamps, ceramic cooking pots and Hasmonean coins dating to kings Alexander Jannaeus and John Hyrcanus.

The findings were presented Sunday at a press conference attended by Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar at Ir David (the City of David).

Ezekiel 38:8-23, “… In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel … You and all your troops and the many nations with you will go up, advancing like a storm; you will be like a cloud covering the land… On that day thoughts will come into your mind and you will devise an evil scheme. You will say, ‘I will invade a land of unwalled villages; I will attack a peaceful and unsuspecting people …’ You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land … I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I show myself holy through you before their eyes … my hot anger will be aroused, declares the Sovereign LORD. In my zeal and fiery wrath I declare that at that time there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel… And so I will show my greatness and my holiness, and I will make myself known in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the LORD.”

By Raymond Ibrahim – “Time and time again, we see how Western concepts, when articulated through an Islamic framework, lead to results antithetical to the West. For instance, ‘democracy’ and ‘elections’—which in the West suggest ‘freedom,’ ‘human rights,’ ‘liberty,’ etc.—are today being used to bring Sharia law, the antithesis of Western law, to power.

In this recent video, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Dr. Safwat Hegazy, a popular preacher, talks about how he yearns to see Arab nations become ‘like the United States’—for them to unify into the ‘United Arab States.’ While that may sound like an admirable (or at least neutral) goal, bear in mind what he is alluding to: the resurrection of a caliphate—which by nature exists to expand, including through jihad.

Moreover, Hegazy made clear that his interest in seeing the ‘United Arab States’ has less to do with Arab solidarity (nationalism) and more to do with Islamic allegiance (religion). As he gushed about how wonderful it would be for Arab nations to unite into one bloc, the secular and skeptical host interviewing him reluctantly agreed, ‘so long as the capital is Cairo,’ that is, so long as Egypt’s integrity remains. To this, Hegazy replied: ‘No, I say the capital is Jerusalem, Allah willing.’

Thus, just as that sacrosanct word ‘democracy’ is being used to establish fascist rule in the Muslim world, so too is the notion of a ‘United Arab States’ fraught with problems—from the elimination of Israel to the establishment of an expansionist caliphate on its remains.”

Peace negotiations in the Middle East must tackle the issue of the status of the holy sites of Jerusalem”, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican’s Council for Interreligious Dialogue, declared several days ago in Rome.

The Vatican’s former foreign minister asked to place some Israeli holy places under Vatican authority, alluding to the Cenacle on Mount Zion and the garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

The first site also houses what is referred to as King David’s tomb. 

“There will not be peace if the question of the holy sites is not adequately resolved”, Tauran said. “The part of Jerusalem within the walls – with the holy sites of the three religions – is humanity’s heritage. The sacred and unique character of the area must be safeguarded and it can only be done with a special, internationally-guaranteed statute”.

The Israeli government and the Vatican are deadlocked in discussions over the status of the religious sites. Vatican officials are now reiterating their demand for control over the religious sites in the ancient and holy city founded by King David as the capital of ancient Israel and now the capital of the reestablished Jewish state.

Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, declared that Israel might consider giving the Vatican “a greater role” in operating the sites. In the last weeks, the Roman Catholic Church’s authorities increased their political initiatives for Catholic control over some sites in Jerusalem.

The Vatican’s former arcibishop in Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, just promoted an appeal to the European Union and United States to “stop the Hebraization of Jerusalem”.

Two weeks ago Msgr. David-Maria Jaeger, who was recently appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the Vatican’s highest court, talked in Washington about a current U.S. Supreme Court case over whether an American boy born in Jerusalem should add Israel after the name of the historic city on his U.S. passport. Jaeger said that the question about Jerusalem is not “whether it is the capital of Israel, it is a question of whether it is a part of a national territory”.

A few days earlier, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, gave a speech to greet the bishops of Europe and North America during their annual pilgrimage in Israel, in which Twal denounced “the Israeli right wing invading more and more of Jerusalem and trying to transform it into an only Hebrew-Jewish city, excluding the other faiths”.

Claudette Habesch, the Caritas general-secretary in Jerusalem, a Vatican NGO that works in social activities, just released an interview to Zenit news agency, in which he “christianized” the Palestinian Intifada against “what we call the Checkpoint of Humiliation”.

In September, Patriarch of Jerusalem Twal was at the White House for a meeting with the American administration as well as to support the PA statehood bid at the UN. Twal repeated Benedict XVI’s speech of May 13, 2009 in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, one of the most political speeches ever pronounced by Ratzinger during his pontificate. It was given in front of the most eloquent symbol of the conflict: the security wall between Israel and the PA areas.

On that day the Pope spoke specifically of an “independent Palestinian state”.

The Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, the Vatican’s powerful agency for worldwide pilgrimages, just organized a “marathon for peace” in Jerusalem to protest against the security fence near Bethlehem and to support ”Palestinian political rights”. The march began on the Mount of Olives, “where the Last Supper took place”.

On December 1st, several Christian and Muslim dignitaries met in Beit Sahour for a conference on “How to live together in a future Palestinian state?”. Patriarch Emeritus of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah and Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, also attended the event organized by Al-Liqa, a Vatican ecumenical center based in Bethlehem.

Sabbah said that “recourse to the UN for a Palestinian state is a step toward peace”. Last summer, Latin Patriarch Twal took part in a meeting in London with Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, in which the Vatican envoy denounced the “more than 550.000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank” and “the demography of Jerusalem changing rapidly with the sacred space being threatened”.

In 2006, then Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, negotiated to give away the “holy basin” to the Vatican.

At the time, President Moshe Katzav, in the face of increasing public pressure, was forced to deny any plans to sign away the King David’s complex in Jerusalem.

It now appears that this option has once again surfaced. A major voice for the Vatican’s plan is Hanna Siniora, the elder statesman of Palestinian ‘peace’ activists, whose office is in the Vatican’s Tantur Institute for Ecumenical Studies in Jerusalem.

The site known as King David’s Tomb is the major target in the Vatican’s plan. It’s a complex of buildings of some 100,000 square feet where David and Solomon, and kings of Judea, are said to be buried, although this is disputed by historians.

The Upper Room, or Cenacle, as it is known, is on the second floor of the Crusader-era building. During his visit to Israel in 2000, Pope John Paul II held Mass there. The Roman Catholic Church has been fighting for more than 450 years to win back control over the sanctuary, which was seized from Franciscan monks during the Ottoman Empire’s rule around 1551.

The building was granted to the Diaspora Yeshiva over 40 years ago, and yeshiva heads fear that the Vatican wishes to turn it into a pilgrimage site for hundreds of thousands of Catholics and hold religious services there.

The Vatican wants Israel relinquishing sovereignty at the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. The Holy See uses the expression “Holy Basin”, which refers to the area of the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives, Mount Zion and a variety of Christian holy sites which the administration of former U.S. President Bill Clinton began reccomending be administered under a “special regime”.

The Obama plan also calls for resolving the two thorniest issues in the conflict by sharing Jerusalem and settling Arab refugees in Arab countries or a future Palestinian state, but not in Israel. According to Obama, the Old City of Jerusalem would be designated an “international zone”.

Israel’s President Shimon Peres, who has no authority, also agreed to hand over to the Vatican the sovereignty of the holy sites.

Any Vatican claim to a seat at the negotiating table is undermined by the complicity of the Vatican between 1948 and 1967. During the Jordanian occupation, Judaism’s holiest sites were desecrated and Jews were barred from visiting these shrines. The Jordanians built a hotel and a road through the Jewish cemetery on Mount of Olives and they used the broken headstones to build the latrines in the construction of the Intercontintental Hotel, which likely rests on burial grounds.

As was its practice during the Holocaust under Pius XII, the Vatican then turned a deaf ear to these gross violations of Jewish human rights.

If Israel would cede Jewish sovereignty on the holy sites, it would mean returning to a time when Jerusalem was separated by a seven-kilometer wall, barbed wire, minefields and bunkers. A tourist visiting the holy city would have found signs warning “Danger – Frontier ahead!”, “Snipers nearby” and “shetah hahefker”, which in Hebrew means: No-Man’s Land. 

It would be Sarajevo, not the Holy City of Jerusalem. 

Ezekiel 47:8, “Then he said to me: ‘This water flows toward the eastern region, goes down into the valley, and enters the [dead] sea. When it reaches the sea, its waters are healed.”

By Dr. Jimmy DeYoung – “It almost seems like a contradiction of terms to read the headline for this story that life, in fact, new life has been discovered in the Dead Sea by a team of Israeli and German scientists and this report comes at a time when the Dead Sea is dangerously low due to evaporation of the salty Dead Sea water.

Deep beneath the sea bed of a body of water long believed incapable of sustaining life, Israeli scientists have found deep fresh water springs and German scientists have discovered microorganisms growing on the sea floor.

While researchers have known for decades that the Dead Sea is a misnomer, the rich variety of life evidenced in the underwater springs and the microorganisms at the bottom of the Dead Sea may lead to new life for this body of water…

Freshwater springs at the bottom of the Dead Sea and newly discovered microorganisms in this body of water set the stage for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled.

For a number of years, I have been reporting on the death of the Dead Sea as this famous body of water has been going down in level almost 3 feet per year. There have been major discoveries that may also be used to save the Dead Sea from death. These underwater springs and even the microorganisms discovered by the marine scientists could well be a lifeline needed for this project.

What is so interesting to a student of Bible prophecy is that two ancient Jewish prophets foretold of freshwater flowing into the Dead Sea and making this body of water, which is ten times saltier than any ocean on earth, a freshwater lake.

Zechariah wrote of what happens after Jesus Christ returns to the earth, how living waters flow from Jerusalem to the former sea in the text which is the Dead Sea, Zechariah 14:8. Ezekiel, in the 47th chapter of his prophecy, wrote of water flowing from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, actually from the Temple itself, down the Kidron Valley, all the way to the Dead Sea, Ezekiel 47:1-8. Verse 8 reveals that the saltwater in the Dead Sea will be healed and the fishermen will dry their fishing nets at Ngedi.

The Dead Sea will indeed be healed.

As the US completes its final withdrawal from Iraq, American special forces troops have been diverted to positions in Jordan opposite a Syrian tank concentration building up across the kingdom’s northern border, debkafile‘s military and intelligence sources report.
As of last Thursday,  military convoys, air transports and helicopters have been lifting US troops across the border from Iraq. They have been deployed in position to ward off a possible Syrian invasion in the light of President Bashar Assad’s warning that he would set the entire Middle East on fire if the pressure on his regime to step down persisted.  

Syria’s other neighbors have taken precautions against this contingency but this is the first time US boots have hit the ground directly opposite Assad’s army.

The incoming US contingents are disclosed by our sources as having been housed at the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq, 10 kilometers from the Syrian border. US troops were sighted Monday, Dec. 12, building surveillance towers and army posts in the Jordanian villages of Albaej, Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah al-Houshah as well as near the Sarham dam of the Yarmoukh River which runs down the international border between Syria and Jordan.

Three months ago, the Syrian ruler cautioned Jordan’s King Abdullah II to stop granting asylum to Syrian military deserters and allowing his country to serve as a conduit for pumping arms to the opposition.

The king was not deterred by this threat. Seen from Damascus, Jordan would be easier to take on militarily that either Turkey or Israel. Saturday, Dec. 10, Jordanian surveillance units confirmed that Syrian armored units were gathering opposite the Jordanian town of Bura Al Hariri.

Iraqi sources report that the American units came from the big Iraqi Ain al-Assad air base in the western province of Al Anbar opposite the Jordanian border. This base is in the process of evacuation as the US military drawdown in Iraq approaches completion. Most of the troops are flown to US bases in the Persian Gulf and Europe.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, when he met US President Barack Obama at the White House Monday, approved the transfer of American contingents from Iraq to Jordan across their common border. Obama was therefore able to state after their talks: “We share the view that when the Syrian people are being killed or are unable to express themselves that’s a problem. There’s no disagreement there.”

By this comment, the White House sought to stress that the Baghdad government is not letting Tehran twist its arms on the Syrian question.