The new White House press secretary told journalists aboard Air Force One on Friday that President Obama is "deeply concerned" by reports of violence against peaceful demonstrators in the Middle East.

"I am deeply concerned by reports of violence in Bahrain, Libya and Yemen. The United States condemns the use of violence against peaceful protesters in those countries, and wherever else it may occur," the president said in a statement read by Press Secretary Jay Carney.

Obama said people everywhere "have certain universal rights, including the right to peaceful assembly."

"The United States urges the governments of Bahrain, Libya and Yemen to show restraint in responding to peaceful protests and to respect the rights of their people," the president said.

Mounting protests against long-reigning regimes in the three Mideast nations have turned violent in recent days. A hand grenade thrown into a crowd of Yemeni demonstrators on Friday killed one and injured dozens, and the death toll from clashes in Libya over the last two days was reported to be as high as 50. In Bahrain, where at least four were killed Thursday when government troops cleared protesters from central Pearl Square, guns and tear gas were used by security forces on Friday when marchers approached the focal point of this week's sectarian demonstrations.

-- Carol J. Williams 

On the eve of a planned United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution condemning Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, President Obama called his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, on Thursday to discuss the measure.

Palestinian sources said Obama tried to dissuade Abbas from proceeding with the resolution, which the U.S. strongly opposes on grounds that it will obstruct efforts to resume Palestinian-Israeli negotiations suspended since September.

Abbas’ spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, confirmed that the conversation took place and said it went on for over 50 minutes. He said the two leaders discussed the situation in the Middle East, particularly developments in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as the anti-settlement resolution.

Palestinian officials said the resolution was submitted to the Security Council on Wednesday for discussion and a vote by Friday. The resolution condemns Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and calls for a total halt to settlement construction in the region, including East Jerusalem.

Earlier Thursday, Abbas said he decided to go to the Security Council after the Middle East quartet, which is made up of the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the U.N., had failed in its last meeting in Munich, Germany, to condemn Israeli settlements and recognize the 1967 lines as the borders of a future Palestinian state.

Abu Rudeineh said Abbas has summoned the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee and his Fatah party’s Central Committee for an urgent meeting on Friday to discuss the Obama conversation.

"President Abbas, and after a long telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama, has called members of the Palestinian leadership to a quick and urgent meeting to discuss the latest developments that were the subject of discussion with President Obama," he said.

Sources said Abbas wants to discuss with the Palestinian leaders Obama's ideas regarding the resolution, which Palestinian officials have already said does not rise to the level of their expectations.

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Malki said the U.S. has tried to convince the Palestinians to withdraw their Security Council proposal, but without success. He said the proposed U.S. alternative to the Palestinian resolution would not make them change their minds.

The U.S. apparently tried to persuade the Palestinians to accept a nonbinding statement by the Security Council condemning Israeli settlements and calling for resumption of negotiations based on the June 1967 borders, but not a state based on those borders.

Malki said a U.S. veto of the proposed Security Council resolution would seriously hurt Washington's already shaky credibility in the region, particularly because the declared U.S. position is that the settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace and that Israel should stop them.

If Abbas, on the other hand, accepts a watered-down U.S. proposal on settlements, he might hurt his standing at home, particularly as the Arab street is up in arms against the traditional leadership.

In Ramallah, over 1,000 Palestinians demonstrated in the city center on Thursday under the slogan "the people want an end to division." This movement, if it grows, may become a serious concern for the Palestinian Authority as its demands may go beyond just a call for unity.

As a way to cool down rising uneasiness in the street, Abbas has called for presidential and legislative elections in the Palestinian territories before September. Analysts say he's hoping that this move would shift the pressure to his arch rival, the Islamist Hamas movement, which ousted his forces from the Gaza Strip and took control of it in June 2007. Hamas opposes elections, including local elections scheduled for July 9.

But before people were able to swallow the idea of national elections, Abbas said Thursday that elections would not be held without the Gaza Strip, knowing very well that Hamas would not allow them to be held in its territory.

For the Palestinian people, this means no elections, indefinitely.

-- Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

Leaders, media, academics and arm-chair politicians (basically most Israelis) continue to monitor the upheaval rocking its big neighbor, just one door down. If there's a theme de jour, it seems to be "careful what you wish for."

Monday, during a news conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted that while the main cause of unrest doesn't stem from radical Islam, such forces could take over a country in turmoil. The next day he said -- in a closed-door diplomatic-security consultation -- that Israel supports advancing free and democratic values in the Middle East, but warned that neither would be achieved if radical forces are allowed to exploit the processes and take power.

President Shimon Peres also spoke in this vein, advising the world to study the results of the pressure for free elections that brought Hamas rule to Gaza but not a single day of democracy to Gazans since. "Democracy is not just elections because if you elect the wrong people, you bring an end to democracy." True democracy, he said, starts the day after elections, in ensuring the people's human rights and welfare.

These messages are intended for the West, whose pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been successful, whether by design or miscalculation, to the point where results could be out of the comfort zone for Israel and others.

The question is, who needs to do what about it.

The U.S. position on Egypt has taken Israel by surprise and left people wondering what the Americans are doing and what this means for other allies in the region, including Israel.

When the administration first urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to address demonstrators' legitimate demands, commentators in Israel were puzzled, almost appalled.  OK, Mubarak's s not perfect, but why would America think his replacement would be any more democratic or pro-Western? Once again, the Americans are looking at the region through Western eyes and clearly, they don't know what they're doing, was the tone of many Israeli analysts. Politicians are not talking much about the crisis.

As the protests continued, some began thinking maybe Obama does know what he's doing — but they're not sure they like it.

"A knife in the back," was how Dan Margalit of the Yisrael Hayom free-sheet described the American treatment of Mubarak. "Obama threw Mubarak to the dogs," wrote Eitan Haber in Yediot Aharonot. Others were more subtle but most share the opinion that the Obama administration is sending its partners in the Middle East a message through Egypt.

Ephraim Halevy, former chief of Mossad and a highly respected former diplomat, said he's having a hard time understanding some of the American moves, reminding that Egypt was a key strategic partner to them too. But, Halevy notes, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that all strategic alliances are conditional, as in both "temporary" and with actual "conditions." American conditions, at least in principle, are democracy and rights.

But only Mubarak is getting read the riot act, which suggests to Halevy that this isn't a principled move but a practical one, with a specific purpose. The question is, what does Obama think he will get in return.  "Obama is not naive; this is a gamble," Halevy said.

Uzi Rabi, head of Middle East and Africa studies at Tel-Aviv University, notes that this sends a "very negative message." Shaking off Mubarak in rather a cruel way should raise questions in other Arab countries who dwell "under the American umbrella," Rabi said, adding that this might cause leaders to calculate their moves differently as part of the geopolitical change the region is undergoing.

Does this include Israel?

There are many lessons to be had from the events in Egypt events — and Israel needs to learn some of them yesterday, according to Eitan Haber, former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Unlike his predecessors, the current U.S. president has no sentiments for Israel, he writes. Watching him sell Mubarak down the river "in return for popularity with the masses", Israel's lesson should be "that the man in the White House could sell us from one day to the next." The thought that the U.S. might not be there for Israel on D-day is "chilling," he wrote.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday the United States was playing a "shameful" role in the Egyptian crisis and accused it of hypocrisy for supporting, then abandoning, strongmen around the world.

Chavez told Reuters news agency he had spoken to Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi and Syria's President Bashar Assad on the protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world.

“In Egypt, the situation is complicated," Chavez said.

“Now you are seeing comments from Washington and some European nations. As President Kadafi said to me, it's shameful, it makes you kind of sick to see the meddling of the U.S., wanting to take control.”

On Sunday, President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other U.S. officials urged an orderly transition to democracy in Egypt to avoid a power vacuum but stopped short of calling on President Hosni Mubarak, an ally of three decades, to step down.

Chavez has generally cast himself as pro-Arab, opposed to the policies of Israel and the United States.

But in brief comments carried on state TV, he avoided any further specific comment on Egypt, saying only that “national sovereignty” should be respected.

Chavez scoffed at what he called the United States' changeable foreign policy.

“See how the United States, after using such-and-such a president for years, as soon as he hits a crisis, they abandon him. That's how the devil pays,” he said.

“They didn't even give a visa or anything to the president of Tunisia,” he said, referring to President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, who fled this month after failing to quell the worst unrest of his more than two-decade rule.

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U.S. Embassy in Cairo to begin voluntary evacuation flights Monday

Egyptian opposition leaders plan to negotiate with military, not president

Defense Secretary Robert Gates speaks with counterparts in Egypt, Israel about unrest

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: President Hugo Chavez in Caracas on Jan. 26. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

British Prime Minister David Cameron joined President Obama in condemning violence in Egypt on Sunday and called for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to follow a comprehensive process of political reform.

“The prime minister and President Obama were united in their view that Egypt now needed a comprehensive process of political reform, with an orderly, Egyptian-led transition leading to a government that responded to the grievances of the Egyptian people and to their aspirations for a democratic future,” a spokesperson for Cameron told Reuters.

Cameron discussed the crisis in Egypt during a telephone call with U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday evening.

RELATED:

Military jets buzz protesters over Cairo

Muslim Brotherhood members escape prison, rally in Tahrir Square

Egyptian opposition leaders plan to negotiate with military, not president

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: David Cameron in Switzerland on Jan. 28, 2011. Credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Bloomberg

Al Jazeera's latest leak of hundreds of secret Palestinian negotiating papers is providing the kind of fly-on-the-wall insights to Mideast peace talks that usually only emerge many years later in the autobiographies of politicians and diplomats.

Though some of the initial coverage and spin by Al Jazeera and other organizations has been inaccurate or out of context, the documents themselves offer a treasure trove of detailed information about Palestinians' internal strategy and tactics. Most of the documents were produced by the Palestinian Authority's own attorneys, advisors and negotiators and include transcripts of private strategy sessions and internal talking points. It's a bonanza for Israel, which can get a peek into the Palestinian thought process as recently as last year.

One December 2009 document discusses "Palestinian Messaging and Implementation." Another lays out the legal risks of a premature declaration of statehood. An internal summary of where peace talks last broke down reveals that Palestinians were prepared in 2008 to limit the number of returning refugees to 15,000 a year for 10 years, or 150,000.

Israel's foreign relations are suffering these days from an outbreak of poor diplomacy. Not necessarily bad; just poor.

Foreign Ministry employees say they are just that, poor. Their basic salaries have been devalued by about 40% since last being updated in the early 1990s, and many of them rely on help from welfare services, say activists from the ministry workers' union.

The diplomats have years of experience, a stack of academic degrees and high motivation to serve. They also have families to feed and pensions to fund, and say neither is doable on their paychecks, which some revealed on a popular news site. Only an idealist or a fool would join the foreign service under these conditions, they said. Finance Ministry officials said the paychecks didn't reflect considerable extras.

After raising the issue in private back-channels as well as personally with U.S. presidents, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to publicly and officially appeal to President Obama to release Jonathan Pollard. 

Netanyahu's decision follows a personal letter from Pollard, hand-delivered to the prime minister by Esther Pollard, wife of the convicted spy. "I hereby request that you submit an official request for my release to the President of the United States now, without further delay, and that concurrently you announce this request publicly," wrote Pollard, who stated his willingness to "bear the risk of any consequences " that may result from the prime minister's action.

Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. naval intelligence analyst, was convicted of passing classified information to Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987. Israel did not acknowledge Pollard for many years but granted him Israeli citizenship in 1995, during Netanyahu's first term in office. A few years later, Israel publicly conceded Pollard had been an Israeli spy.

American intelligence officials have been staunchly opposed to any compromise on the issue and are believed to have foiled previously reported deals on his release. Others maintain that Pollard's sentence was disproportionate at best, and based on circumstances that are no longer relevant.

As more international help continues to fly into Israel to help combat the fire decimating the Carmel woodland, the worst in the country's history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed thanks for the many helping hands. He has spoken with 30 heads of state over the the last three days and says he finds the mobilization heartwarming. There is "no shame" in receiving help, said Netanyahu. "It is part of our existence in a global village.... We both receive and extend assistance."

The wake-up call was harsh and Netanyahu heard it well.  The prime minister announced his intention to supply Israel with an aerial firefighting force, "which we need in this era of global warming." Speaking Satuday at the command center set up at Haifa University, Netanyahu commented on assistance from the Palestinians, Jordan and Egypt, and said that forming and equipping the force will establish "a regional network for the benefit of our peoples." A proposal for building the force will be submitted quickly and budgeting expedited.

U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who arrived Tuesday on a Mideast trip to try to salvage the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, seemed determined to continue his efforts to bridge the fast-growing gap between Israel and the Palestinians on the issue of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

Mitchell held one round of separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the last couple of days. He will now hold a second round in the next couple of days with both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, looking for what he called “common ground between the parties” to salvage the month-old direct negotiations.

It is not yet clear whether he will succeed in bringing Abbas and Netanyahu together again at the same table, as was the case before the settlement freeze expired Sept. 26.

President Obama gave a much-anticipated interview to the BBC Persian’s Bahman Kalbasi on Friday in which he tackled Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions, Afghanistan, the Arab-Israeli peace process and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s controversial comments blaming the American government for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“It was offensive. It was hateful, and particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of ground zero, where families lost their loved ones,” Obama said of Ahmadinejad's comments made during a speech on Thursday at the United Nations in New York. “It just shows once again the sort of difference between how the Iranian leadership and this regime operates and how I think the vast majority of the Iranian people -- who are respectful and thoughtful -– think about these issues.” 

Obama went on to respond to criticism that sanctions against Iran run counter to the message of diplomacy he offered in his first direct message to the Iranian people, which was broadcast last year on the occasion of the Persian new year.

“Iran has not been able to convince the international community that its nuclear program is peaceful,” Obama said. “This is not a matter of us choosing to impose punishment on the Iranians. This is a matter of the Iranian government, I think, ultimately betraying the interests of its own people by isolating it further.”