Long sued Bank of America and West Asset Management, a unit of West Corp.

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Thirty-three of the 48 American banks that offer international remittance services are in the mid-west, and America's bank regulators are encouraging the efforts.

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Meanwhile, that process is not proceeding, as Mr Netanyahu toys with a new idea holding a referendum on whether to accept America's proposal for withdrawing from part of the West Bank.

ECONOMIST: Tampering with Jerusalem

Making that question yet more vexed, the Israeli government is considering a non-binding referendum on America's proposal for a small, staged withdrawal from the West Bank.

ECONOMIST: Stretching Jerusalem

Moreover, peace between Israel and Syria would need backing from America, whose attitude to Mr Assad's regime has been to isolate and punish it for its suspected hand in killing Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, and for its support of America's enemies in Iraq and Israel's in the West Bank and Gaza.

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America is also very keen, say Israeli analysts, on winning some relative quiet in the West Bank and Gaza in readiness for its strike on Iraq.

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For all its economic worries at home and military woes in Iraq and Afghanistan, America is far from weak in the Levant, where both Israel and the nascent Palestine in the West Bank continue to depend on it in countless vital ways.

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Indeed, Bank of America itself still has a few gaps, such as parts of the mid-west.

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