As I wrote in February, the End Times pastor is at the bleeding edge of a Christian Zionist movement seeking to confrontation with Iran in order to accelerate the Second Coming of Christ and the final battle in Israel. In addition to its prodigious fundraising and public relations efforts on behalf of the hard right in Israel, ince the 1990's, Hagee and his group CUFI (Christians United for Israel) has tried without success to breed the "red heifer," the "perfect calf that will signal the Second Coming."

Now, just weeks after John McCain traveled to Israel, Hagee and his allies are throwing another faith-based monkey wrench into the peace process in the Middle East. As the AP reported:

Hagee and his group, Christians United for Israel, joined keynote speaker Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's hard-line opposition Likud Party, at a rally in support of Jerusalem remaining united and under Jewish control.

"Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would be tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban," Hagee told an audience filled with Americans who waved Israeli flags and cheered...

...Hagee said his group was giving $6 million to 16 Israeli causes. Recipients include the Magen David Adom rescue service and a conference center in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel.

For a Bush administration desperately hoping to manufacture a peace agreement by year's end between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Hagee's latest venture comes as unwelcome news. As far back as 2002, President Bush insisted "Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop." Speaking in Jordan on March 31 during her latest swing through the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated Bush's firm opposition to new settlement activity in the West Bank, even as the Israeli government announced plans to build hundreds of new homes in the occupied West Bank:

Asked, however, about Israel continuing to approve construction of new housing in contested territory, Rice criticized the close U.S. ally.

"Settlement activity should stop - expansion should stop," Rice said.

That position is shared by all three of the remaining presidential candidates, including John McCain. As the Israeli paper Haaretz reported last week:

At the end of the day it is hard to find differences in the promises being made by the candidates that have survived in the race - Clinton, McCain and Obama - regarding the peace process. All of them want involvement, all are opposed to Hamas, all are in favor of a Palestinian state and against Palestinian terrorism, all are in favor of security for Israel and against the settlement construction.

All of which means that John McCain hasn't seen the last of his John Hagee problem. A featured speaker at CUFI's July 2007 conference in Washington, McCain said of Hagee February 2008 endorsement:

"All I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's support."

As we get closer to election day in November, we'll see if John McCain still feels the same way.

(For more background, see "McCain, Hagee and Armageddon as Foreign Policy.")

UPDATE: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met today in an attempt to advance the Annapolis peace process. As the AP noted, the settlement issue dominated the talks, with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat claiming, "The settlement activities occupied a large part of the negotiations."