A Palestinian youth flashes the V sign during clashes near the Kalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem, Wednesday, March 17, 2010. (AP)

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What a stretch it’s been in U.S.-Israel relations.

Joe Biden snubbed in Israel. The vice president quoted saying, essentially, that Israeli policy is getting American soldiers killed. The Pentagon seconding something like that notion. Hillary Clinton dressing down the Israeli prime minister. The Israeli ambassador in the headlines saying it’s the worst crisis in 35 years.

Now the headlines are full of denials, clarifications, and attestations of unbreakable bonds. But something unusual just broke in the open here. And it’s not over.

This hour, On Point: American interests and the blowup with Israel.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, or on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington are:

Mark Perry, an author who specializes in military, intelligence and foreign affairs analysis. His online piece for Foreign Policy magazine, “The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story,” put the issue of the Pentagon’s interest in this issue in public in an unusual way. His book “Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage With Its Enemies,” won the National Jewish Book Award.  He also served, from 1989 to 2004, as a consultant to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Martin Indyk, vice president and director of foreign policy at Brookings and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel. He is the author of “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peacemaking Diplomacy in the Middle East.”

David Sanger, Pulitzer Prize-winning chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. His book, “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” has just come out in paperback in an updated edition.

Palestinian Hamas militants participate in a rally for the memory of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, seen in the portrait, in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, on Feb. 17, 2010. (AP)

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Dubai has become the new Casablanca — the hottest spy center in the hottest corner of the world, where Russians, Afghans, Chechens, Americans, Pakistanis, Iranians, everybody, does spy business with full creature comforts nestled up against oil, holy war and nuclear brinksmanship.

Even so, the assassination of a top Hamas leader in his Dubai hotel room in January has made big, ongoing headlines.

Dubai says Israel’s secret service, Mossad, did it. Twenty-seven agents, lots on video tape. A wild story. Israel won’t confirm. What happened here?

This hour, On Point: a killing in Dubai, and the fallout.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Paul McGeough, chief correspondent and former editor of Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. He’s the author of “Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Meshal and the Rise of Hamas.” He joins us from Washington.

Ronen Bergman, senior intelligence and military analyst for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth and author of “The Secret War With Iran.” He joins us from Tel Aviv.

Tobias Buck, Jerusalem bureau chief for The Financial Times. He joins us from Jerusalem.

More:

This AP video from Feb. 17 shows surveillance camera footage from the hotel where al-Mahbhouh was staying:

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Middle East politics is stone-cold serious. Israel’s soldiers and spies and Palestinian militants compete so ruthlessly, it’s more than a little incongruous that Mideast history took a hairpin turn in 1997 with a crazy tale of Israeli assassins saving the life of the man they tried to kill.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Fast forward about a decade, and the intended victim is a savvy Hamas mastermind, and the same Israeli prime minister who tried to take him out is back in power.

This hour On Point: The story of the mission to kill Hamas leader Khalid Mishal.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation.

Guest:

Paul McGeough joins us from Sydney, Australia.  Chief foreign correspondent and former executive editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, he has twice been named Australian Journalist of the Year and in 2002 was awarded the SAIS-Novartis Prize for excellence in international journalism by Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His new book is “Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas.”

Egyptian activists are confronted by police during a protest in Cairo against the Israeli attacks in Gaza, on Dec. 31, 2008. (AP)

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Israel announced today it will pause its attack on Gaza three hours a day for humanitarian relief. The other 21 hours a day, the Israeli action goes on. The pounding. From the air. On the ground.

The whole world is watching — the Arab world, closest of all. Arab television is wall-to-wall images of Gaza death and destruction: women, children, hospitals, morgues soaked in blood, Hamas counterattacks framed as defiance, the United States and Israel linked as one. Arab leaders portrayed as ineffectual.

Where does this go? This hour, On Point: Israel’s neighborhood, the Arab world, watching Gaza.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Roula Khalaf, Middle East editor of The Financial Times.

Labib Kamhawi, Jordanian political analyst.

Tamara Wittes, director of the Middle East Democracy and Development Project at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution.

Smoke rises following an Israeli missile strike in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 30, 2008. (AP)

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Nightmare scenes in Gaza, where for five days F-16s and Apache helicopter gunships have rained fire on one of the poorest, most crowded enclaves on Earth.

And nightmares across southern Israel, where rockets out of Gaza have now reached as far as an empty kindergarten classroom in Beersheba. Four Israelis dead since Israel’s assault on Gaza began. Nearly four hundred Palestinians dead. Many more injured.

After grinding seasons of embargo and tunneling and Hamas defiance, Israel’s defense minister now speaks of “war to the bitter end.”

This hour, On Point: Bloody showdown over Gaza.

You can join the conversation. Did Hamas make this inevitable, with its rocket fire and its fury? Did Israel make this inevitable, with its chokehold and its demands? Will this turn Palestinians away from Hamas, or more deeply against Israel? What should the U.S. have done? What should it be doing now? Tell us what you think.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Margaret Coker, Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal.

Aaron David Miller, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He advised six U.S. secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, from 1978 to 2003, and is the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

Shai Feldman, chair of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and professor of politics at Brandeis University.

Issam Nassar, professor of history at Illinois State University.