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1. I'm pretty sure the Israelis have a nuke arsenal.
2. They are simultaneously pulling a Saddam, or trying to, by refusing to say one way or the other publicly.
3. I remember reading (I forget where) that Israel somehow pirated fissile material from the US and then presented the US with a fait accompli in some secret talks. I wish I could remember the details.
4. They have a hard enough time surviving as it is now, and it would be worse if they didn't have nukes. The one comfort Israel's neighbors have is that Israel is very unlikely to use them unless the country was at immediate threat of extinction (as distinct from, say, al-Qaeda or some of teh "rejectionist" states that would use them in a heartbeat if they had them).
5. Obama will fail just like everyone else. The problem isn't solvable now and won't be for at least another 10-20 years. He's an ambitious guy, and since this is the world's most intractable conflict, it seems irresistible to him to try to solve it. He won't succeed. The conflict will end when we have a source of endlessly renewable clean energy, thereby rendering the Middle East much less interesting and removing the Arab states' leverage over everyone else. When that happens, the Palestinians will be about as interesting to the rest of the world as the Tamils in Sri Lanka were.
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