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U.S. vice president Joe Biden arrived in Israel on Monday ahead of a week-long trip to the Middle East. The Obama administration is billing this as a hugely important trip -- a chance to lay the groundwork for "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and also a chance to speak directly to the Israeli people. And indeed, the White House announced on Monday that both sides had agreed to the talks.

Nearly half of Palestinians would vote for Fatah if presidential elections were held next week, while only around 11 percent would vote for Hamas, according to a survey conducted recently in the West Bank and Gaza.

The poll, which queried 880 Palestinian men and women, found that nearly one third were undecided or would not vote.

The survey was conducted between Feb. 13 - 15. So far, it appears, only Benjamin Joffe-Walt of the Media Line has reported on the results. Our efforts to reach the polling group, Near East Consulting, by e-mail were unsuccessful.

As we said on Wednesday, British officials haven't officially blamed Israel for Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's assassination -- but they clearly suspect Mossad, and they're angry that the killers used fake British (plus Irish, French and German) passports. The Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Ron Prosor, was summoned to Whitehall yesterday to discuss the case.

But now a British tabloid, the Daily Mail, claims a Mossad agent tipped off the British government shortly before the hit.

Two headlines from Lebanon's Daily Star (which desperately needs a new Web design, by the way).

Conference debates Palestinian refugee population's right to work in Lebanon
Gun battle in Ain al-Hilweh leaves one woman dead

Not implying a causal relationship between the two! Ain al-Hilweh won't suddenly become a paradise if the Palestinian refugees living there get better access to well-paying jobs (though it certainly wouldn't hurt).

Well -- not exactly. The Palestinian Authority announced today (عربي) that it arrested six "al-Qaeda sympathizers"; the men reportedly had a cache of explosives and were planning to attack targets in the West Bank.

But Brig. Gen. Ibrahim Ramadan, the head of preventive security in Jenin, said that men have no known connections to al-Qaeda. They're allegedly inspired by Osama bin Laden -- but they were operating autonomously.

Depending on your perspective, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad this week reaffirmed either that he's the best hope to build a future Palestinian state, or that he'll never win enough popular support to be an effective leader. (Or maybe both?)

Fayyad traveled to Herzliya, a coastal town north of Tel Aviv, to take part in the annual Herzliya Conference. He delivered a 30-minute address to an audience of mostly Israeli leaders; he sat next to Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak; and he was lauded by Israeli president Shimon Peres as "the Israeli Ben-Gurion."

Obama's State of the Union address last night didn't spend much time on foreign policy, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn't come up once. White House officials weren't even thinking about it: On a conference call with reporters before the speech, press secretary Robert Gibbs said he "didn't remember" whether the Middle East process was included in the text.

It came up today, though, in a town hall meeting in Tampa, Florida. A woman in the audience asked Obama a pointed question about U.S. policy in the region.

Palestinian officials are reportedly considering a proposal (عربي) for direct -- but low-level -- talks with Israel.

Israeli and Arab media say George Mitchell suggested the talks during his visit to the region last week. A team of ministers from both sides would discuss "confidence-building measures," like the transfer of territory from Israeli to Palestinian security control. The meetings would not include Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

The U.S. is reportedly pressuring Abbas to restart talks, either directly at a lower level, or indirectly (through Mitchell) at a high level.

Here's something you don't see very often: Al-Ahram, the state-run Egyptian newspaper, published an article yesterday (عربي) praising Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli Mossad.

The slightly bizarre article -- written by Ashraf Abu al-Hawl, the former head of Al-Ahram's Gaza bureau -- calls Dagan the "Superman" of Israel. It commends him for working to undermine Iran's nuclear program, and for opposing Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Syrian government.

Ha'aretz ran an almost Onionesque headline yesterday: Mitchell to arrive in Mideast this week with no plan, no agenda.

That's not really an exaggeration, nor an attempt at humor. President Obama's Middle East envoy is headed back to the region for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials. He does so without any guarantees: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas asked Mitchell to promise that Israel would totally freeze settlement-building, and Mitchell refused, because Israel hasn't approved anything of the sort.

Fatah operatives "hired a house and cars in the eastern part of Gaza City" as part of a plan to kidnap a "senior" Hamas military official and turn him over to Israel in order to provide intelligence on the location of captured soldier Gilad Shalit, a Hamas security official told Haaretz on Thursday.

But Hamas foiled the plan, hatched by the Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet, according to Abu Abdullah, the head of Hamas internal security.

It makes sense that Israel wants to explore all its options, and there's certainly leverage to be had in knowing as much as possible about Shalit's whereabouts and welfare, but this story begs the question: Would it be worth it for Israel to stage a snatch-and-grab?

That's the word from Gaza's health ministry, which confirmed today that five people have been infected with swine flu. Authorities are concerned about a possible outbreak, because the Gaza government only has about 1,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine -- not enough to vaccinate Gaza's 8,000 health care workers, let alone the general population.

Officials in Gaza blame the shortage on the Hamas-Fatah rivalry: They say the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank has more vaccine, but refuses to send additional doses.

Gaza's medical infrastructure is in tatters because of the years-long Israeli embargo -- though, ironically, the embargo is also responsible for keeping the virus out of Gaza until now.

Israeli newspapers and wire services are reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu will announce a 10-month settlement "freeze" today.

I use scare quotes because the proposal will include the usual loopholes: The government will continue to issue building permits in East Jerusalem, and it will not stop construction on some 3,000 homes which have already been approved. So today's "new" proposal is actually very similar to Israel's previous proposals, which the Palestinians said they wouldn't accept.

We haven't written about a possible Gilad Shalit deal in, oh, two months, so I think we're long overdue for some speculation.

Reports today say Shalit could be released by the end of the week, in exchange for several hundred Palestinian prisoners. Israel reportedly agreed to free an extra 160 prisoners whose release had been previously vetoed. (That means they're probably militants.) The deal could happen as soon as Friday, the start of Eid al-Adha, according to reports.

Hamas officials are in Cairo today for a meeting with Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief, to discuss the deal.

Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed today that he won't accept Turkey as a mediator for those Israeli-Syrian talks that may or may not be starting sometime soon. (Our money's on the latter.)

"If a mediator is involved, he should be impartial. The Turkish prime minister has not reinforced his image as an objective, unbiased mediator," Netanyahu said.

"We would agree to talks under French mediation, if France is so inclined."

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the industry and trade minister (and a member of the Labor Party), disagrees: He insisted last week that Turkey is the only effective mediator.

Commenter Tom, responding to our post on Saeb Erekat's plan to ask the U.N. to recognize a Palestinian state, raises a great question:

What would be the Israeli response to a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood? I have an idea of what it wouldn't do, but what would the actual response be? Invade the West Bank? Physically dismantle what's left of the PA?

Honest answer: I'm not sure! The Israeli government really hasn't talked too much about this issue.

Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, has an interview (عربي) in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam in which he says the PA might ask the United Nations Security Council to formally recognize a Palestinian state along 1967 borders.

No surprises here: The Palestinian electoral commission has indefinitely postponed the general election scheduled for January because Hamas threatened to boycott it.

(The electoral commission also doesn't have enough time to meet Abbas' Jan. 24 election date; even if it started preparing today, it needs more time to find polling places and register voters and recruit poll workers.)

There's some speculation in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat today that Mahmoud Abbas will stay on as Palestinian president, despite his pledge not to run for re-election.

The moral of this story, I guess, is that it's pointless to speculate about what Abbas will or will not do. We'll find out in January. Actually, we probably won't; it seems almost certain that the PA will have to delay elections, since Hamas is threatening a boycott in Gaza and no preparations have begun in the West Bank.

I wrote a sort of political obituary for Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, after he announced that he wouldn't run in the 2010 election.

I got on a plane Friday and realized I forgot to write about the alternative scenario: Abbas might have no intention of resigning. He might just be bluffing.

Abbas' frustrated resignation speech was aimed at the American government (and, to a lesser extent, the Israeli government). He has been an amenable partner for negotiations over the last few years, and he obviously wanted Obama and Netanyahu to consider their alternatives.