Lebanon-Israel Tensions Create Dilemma for U.S. and France

By James M. Dorsey

World Politics Review

A covert Israeli-Lebanese intelligence war, combined with tension along the two countries' border and fears of renewed Lebanese civil strife, has created policy dilemmas for the United States and France as they seek to strengthen the Lebanese government while isolating Hezbollah. The Shiite militia-cum-political party, which the U.S. and France have both designated as a terrorist organization, occupies two cabinet posts in Lebanon's constitutionally mandated power-sharing arrangement.

The intelligence war as well as a recent Lebanese-Israeli border clash in which five people were killed have persuaded Lebanese President Michael Sulaiman and Prime Minister Saad Hariri to increase coordination between Lebanon's national armed forces and intelligence services and Hezbollah, which maintains its own armed militia. The goal is to thwart Israel's apparently extensive infiltration of Lebanon, to expand the presence of Lebanese regular forces along the largely Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese side of the border with Israel, and to prevent Lebanon from sliding into civil war. Expectations that a United Nations inquiry will implicate Hezbollah operatives in the 2005 assassination of Hariri's father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, have fueled fears of renewed Lebanese civil strife.

Lebanon has compiled a list of 150 cases of Israeli espionage, which it intends to submit to the U.N. Security Council. Scores of alleged Israeli spies -- including government and army officials, phone company executives and a car dealer who allegedly sold Hezbollah SUVs equipped with tracking devices that allowed Israel to follow their movements -- have been arrested in the last two years. The Lebanese government has also helped Hezbollah bust alleged Israeli spy cells by granting it access to tools and tradecraft acquired from its U.S. and European allies. Just in the last month, Lebanese courts have charged an army colonel and telecom executive with spying for Israel and sentenced two men to death, bringing to five the number of people handed the death penalty in the past year for spying for Israel. Lebanese authorities also arrested a prominent politician and a retired general who had headed the army's counterterrorism and espionage unit.

The spy war and clash with the Israelis have left Hezbollah little choice but to welcome the closer intelligence and military cooperation, which is to some degree likely to curtail its freedom to operate independently. The militia is smaller than the Lebanese army in terms of men, but better-equipped and more battle-hardened. The stepped-up cooperation would reverse Lebanon's past policy of keeping its army away from the southern border due to concerns that it lacked firepower and could spark renewed sectarian fighting. The move also breaks with fears that the army -- which split during Lebanon's 15-year-long civil war and was reunited in 1990 to include Christians and Muslims -- could be torn apart again were it to be fully deployed along the Israeli border.

Closer cooperation between the army and Hezbollah could have potential benefits for Western nations as well as for Israel, by limiting Hezbollah's ability to retaliate for a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Nonetheless, members of the U.S. Congress have forced the Obama administration to put a hold on $100 million in military aid for Humvees, small arms, and maintenance support to Lebanon -- the second-largest recipient of American military aid per capita after Israel -- pending a review of the Lebanese military's relationship with Hezbollah.

Lurking in the background of the review are concerns that Hezbollah is increasing its influence within the Lebanese military by inducting into the army Shiite fighters who have first served for two years in the militia. Israeli intelligence also asserts that Iranian intelligence and commando officers were allowed to tour the border area where Lebanese and Israeli forces had clashed, escorted by commanders of the Lebanese army unit involved in the incident. The Lebanese government called the U.S. hold on aid unwarranted. Iran, supported by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, has offered to step in with military assistance.

Closer military and intelligence ties with Hezbollah also threaten to scuttle plans for a defense cooperation treaty with France that would increase French-Lebanese cooperation in combating organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering, because of French fears that Hezbollah would benefit from the agreement. Those fears were fueled by Lebanese demands that the treaty adopt the Arab distinction between terrorism and resistance, which would have allowed Hezbollah to be classified as a legitimate movement. Hezbollah supporters in southern Lebanon have clashed in recent weeks with French members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), after Hezbollah accused the peacekeeping force of gathering intelligence on Israel's behalf. French animosity to Hezbollah dates back to 1983, when Shiite suicide bombings in Beirut killed 242 U.S. and 58 French soldiers.

Parallel to its offer of increased cooperation, the Lebanese government last week reaffirmed its new resolve by announcing that it had formed a commission to tackle arms possession in a country where ethno-sectarian militias remain prevalent. "From now on, the military and security forces, the army and internal security forces, will assume the responsibility of controlling security, and will track down anyone who may provoke problems in this country," Hariri said in a statement. The decision followed clashes in a Beirut neighborhood between Hezbollah and the pro-Syrian Sunni group, Al-Ahbash, killing at least three people. Rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns were used in the skirmish, the worst since sectarian fighting in May 2008 that killed at least 80 people.

Too weak to intervene in the 2008 fighting, the Lebanese army watched from its Western-made armored vehicles as Hezbollah and pro-Syrian forces humiliated the more Western-leaning militias loyal to Hariri. Now, with Hariri moderating his positions toward Hezbollah as well as Syria, the refusal by the U.S. and France to give the Lebanese military what it needs to position itself as a symbol of national unity could wind up undermining Western interests in Lebanon more than Hariri's unavoidable cooperation with Hezbollah.

US and EU struggle to make Iran sanctions watertight

by James M. Dorsey

Deutsche Welle

The US has designated three Maltese companies owned by an Iranian shipping company for violation of its sanctions regime to restrict the Islamic republic’s ability to import what the US terms as dangerous cargoes.

The focus on shipping is being closely coordinated with the European Union and US Treasury officials say the emphasis on shipping compliments their earlier focus on Iran's banking and energy sectors that forced European banks accused of violating the sanctions regime, including Credit Suisse and Lloyd's, to pay hefty fines.
Barclay's Bank recently agreed to pay $298 million (236 million euros) in penalties for hiding transactions with banks in Iran and other countries sanctioned or embargoed by the US.

"Commerce with Iran requires extraordinary vigilance. Iran has used channels of legitimate commerce, by which I mean banking, shipping, transshipment. They have used all these facially legitimate methods to facilitate illicit conduct," said the treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Stuart Levey, at the beginning of a Middle East tour to ensure adherence to the sanctions by key Iranian trading partners, foremost among them the United Arab Emirates.

The treasury officials say the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL), Iran's national shipper, which owns the Maltese companies - Marble Shipping Limited, Bushehr Shipping Company and ISI Maritime Limited -, is a prime carrier of cargoes related to Iran's missile and other military programs as well as of arms shipments to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia-cum-political party designated by the US and some European countries as terrorist.

The treasury designated IRISL in 2008, but is now seeking to ensure that its sanctions are effective and prevent the company from circumventing restrictions by renaming and reflagging its vessels or chartering third-party ships. The renewed focus is also designed to make it more difficult for IRISL to obtain insurance and services. In line with the US effort, the EU last month expanded its restrictions on shipping to Iran to include all shipping companies and vessels as well as air transport rather than only IRISL or other Iranian shippers and vessels.

Prosecutors in the southwestern German city of Karlsruhe this month charged a German and an Iranian national with violating the arms embargo and the EU's export ban on dual-use equipment by shipping to Iran a vacuum sintering furnace in July 2007 worth 850,000 euros ($1.1 million). The prosecutors charge that the furnace needed to construct parts for a missile's guidance system and warheads, falls under the embargo because long-range missiles could carry weapons of mass destruction in their payload.
Britain's Lord Chancellor Ken Clarke is investigating claims made by a BBC documentary and The New York Times that Isle of Man shipping companies set up as shells by IRISL are busting sanctions by shipping arms to Iran. The Isle of Man government has denied the allegations. The BBC documentary said Israeli navy commandos seized a cache of arms off the coast of Cyprus last November. The weapons were packed in crates marked IRISL on an Isle of Man-registered vessel, the Visea, that had set sail from Iran to Egypt, the BBC said.

Levey warned that "some of Iran's most dangerous cargo continues to come and go from Iran's ports, so we must redouble our vigilance over both their domestic shipping lines, and attempts to use third-country shippers and freight forwarders for illicit cargo." Levey's concern is particularly true for freewheeling Dubai and Ras al Khaimah (RAK), the two UAE emirates that operate as major Iranian transshipment nodes. Iran does $12 billion-a-year worth of trade with the UAE, on which it relies for the import of goods, many of which fall under UN or US sanctions.

The UAE recently restricted Iranian use of Dubai's port and its central bank froze accounts of 40 entities and an individual blacklisted by the UN for assisting Iran's nuclear and missile programs. Ras al Khaimah's free zone, home to some 200 Iranian firms, has stopped issuing licenses to new Iranian companies, according to the zone's CEO, Oussama el Omari. "RAK was looking to offer benefits to attract Iranian companies in the past. Now perhaps it's not in their favor to do so due to sanctions so they have changed their viewpoint," said Morteza Masoumzadeh, the head of the Iranian Business Council in Dubai.

The UAE's apparent renewed commitment to the sanctions regime follows the disclosure via satellite imagery of Iranian military installations on Abu Musa, the largest of three islands at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz occupied by Iran. The installations included three missile launch pads, an elaborate underground market, and a sports field with the words "Persian Gulf" emblazoned on it - a provocative reminder of Iran's hegemonic view of a region the Gulf states describe as the Arab Gulf. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahayan recently stopped short of comparing Iran's occupation of the islands to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. "Iran refuses to allow us to send teachers, doctors and nurses. I am not comparing Iran to Israel, but Iran should be more careful than others," Al Nahayan said.

Ensuring that the sanctions against Iran are watertight is proving difficult despite the stepped up commitment from countries like the UAE. China, Russia, India and Turkey, in response to the latest US and EU sanctions, have moved to capitalize on investment opportunities. The four nations have reiterated their adherence to weaker sanctions imposed on Iran in June by the UN Security Council, but say they are not obliged to follow the recently announced more stringent US and EU rules.

In violation of petroleum-related deals with Iran, China and Turkey recently sold gasoline to Tehran while Russian officials say they will ship gasoline by the end of this month. The four countries are also signing deals to invest billions of dollars in Iran's oil and gas fields, petrochemical plants and pipelines. "Sanctions will not hinder us in our joint cooperation," Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said at the signing in July in Moscow of an energy partnership agreement with Iran.

In his talks with Lebanese leaders, Levey, according to well-placed Lebanese sources, raised US and EU concerns about a mysterious twice-monthly Iran Air flight from Tehran to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas with intermediary stops in Damascus and Beirut. Current and former EU, US and Israeli intelligence officials assert that Iran Air flight 877 ferries people and weapons to Latin America in advance of possible retaliatory attacks against the US should the US or Israel strike at Iranian nuclear sites. They also say the flight may be ferrying back to Iran sanctioned items for Iran's military programs. Although flight 877 is publicly announced, would-be travelers seeking a reservation are invariably told by Iran Air that no seats are available, Western intelligence sources say.

Former CIA Direct Michael J. Hayden concedes that Western intelligence services are unable to substantially monitor the flights or understand their precise purpose. Hayden says the flights are a concern because they constitute a direct and uncontrolled Iranian link into the Western Hemisphere. "I can tell you that we're really interested in that direct flight… It is something that we are sensitive to," Hayden said. The State Department declined comment on the flight, saying in a statement that "nations have the right to enter into cooperative relationships with other nations."

Pakistan Floods Provide Political Boon to Islamic Militants

James M. Dorsey | 11 Aug 2010

World Politics Review


Pakistan's worst flooding in almost a century may well be remembered as much for the magnitude of the disaster as for the fact that it constituted a major setback in the government's efforts -- backed by its Western and Muslim allies -- to defeat Islamist militants allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

There is a long list of natural and man-made disasters in Islamic countries in which militant Islamists have garnered popularity by quickly and effectively responding with relief and emergency aid, in stark contrast to governments that were slow to react and unable to provide services to victims. By launching immediate and effective aid operations, the militants bolster their contention that governments perceived as corrupt, authoritarian and heavily dependent on foreign aid cannot be trusted to serve the people. Past disasters in Pakistan itself as well as in countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia and Bangladesh demonstrate that such crises provide an opportunity for militants to build political capital.

This history is repeating itself with the Pakistani floods. In areas where the Pakistani government is competing with militants for control, militant Islamist charities, some associated with groups designated by the United Nations or the United States as terrorist organizations, provided aid to thousands displaced and made homeless by the floods days before government and foreign aid started to arrive. Meanwhile, rather than staying at home to coordinate relief efforts, already unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari visited France and Britain during the floods.

Charities like Falah-e-Insaniyat (Foundation for the Welfare of Humanity), the charity arm of Lashkar-e-Taibe, widely suspected of being responsible for the Mumbai attacks in 2008, have for the second time in five years emerged as the most effective providers of relief in disaster-stricken areas of Pakistan. The charities' performance emulates their success in the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir where their immediate and efficient relief efforts served as a recruitment tool for their militant backers. The 2005 experience did not translate into votes for religious parties in Pakistan's 2008 elections, but the Islamists' latest success with the floods and widespread criticism of the government threatens to undermine popular support for the U.S.-backed government's military campaign against al-Qaida and homegrown Taliban militants in the northwest of the country.

The lesson to be learned from the floods and past disasters is that economic competition with militant Islamists is as important a component in the struggle to defeat faith-inspired political violence as is military strength and law enforcement. An examination of the world's most sustainable and lethal faith-based terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taibe, Palestine' s Hamas, Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Taliban in Afghanistan, shows that economic competition may hold the key to substantially weakening, if not defeating these groups.

These groups are effective at providing such aid because they trace their origins to being faith-based service providers. Eli Berman, a former member of the Israeli military's elite Golani brigade who is now a University of California economist, calls such groups "economic clubs." Only at a later stage of their development, and sometimes only reluctantly, did they bolt a military apparatus onto their civil activity.

"The government may defeat the insurgent military cadre, but, with few exceptions, insurgencies do not end until case-specific root causes are addressed: The kind of grassroots support necessary to build and sustain an insurgency is fed on social, economic, and political discontent," concludes a recently published Rand Corporation study on how insurgencies end.

The problem for Western governments and their allies is translating from theory into practice the realization that they need to compete economically, not only militarily with militants. As is evident with the Pakistani floods, the cost-benefit analysis of that realization and the organizational implications it has for U.S. and other Western militaries has yet to sink in. Adapting the organization of armed forces so that they can effectively incorporate economic competition in their strategy is a slow process that contrasts starkly with the speed in which militants like Lashkar-e-Taibe are able to demonstrate institutional flexibility. Western military officials and U.N. and other aid workers grapple in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, with the fact that the military is structured as a fighting machine rather than a development agency and aid organizations are not geared to defending themselves -- a combination of skills and ability inherent to successful militant groups.

Yet, the sooner the United States and its allies like Pakistan are able to adapt to a comprehensive counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency strategy that involves economic competition, the sooner they will likely produce sustainable rather than immediate but perishable results and the more prepared they will be when disaster strikes next. "Concentrating on capturing or killing every last terrorist (or buying off some warlord to do so) can probably only succeed in the short run, since the underlying conditions of weak governance and/or weak service provision will likely continue to generate new terrorist clubs," Berman argues. "The challenge is then to find a way to sustainably stabilize allied governments in countries currently generating terrorism, not by merely improving their coercive capability but by also enhancing the ability of local government to provide basic services that replace those provided by clubs."

Floods Provide Political Boon For Pakistani Militants

Pakistan’s worst flooding in almost a century may well be remembered as much for the magnitude of the disaster as for the fact that it constituted a major setback for the government and its Western and Muslim allies in their competition with militant Islamists for hearts and minds. The floods are joining a long list of disasters in a host of Islamic countries in which militant Islamists garnered popularity by quickly and effectively responding with relief and emergency aid in stark contrast to a government that was slow to react and unable to quickly provide services to victims.

Effective Islamist aid operations strengthen the militants’ contention that governments perceived as corrupt, authoritarian and heavily dependent on foreign aid cannot be trusted to serve the people. In the case of the Pakistani floods, that message is reinforced by mounting criticism of President Asif Ali Zardari for visiting France and Britain during the floods rather than staying at home to coordinate relief efforts, which he says are the responsibility of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. The message is compounded by the fact that militant Islamist charities, some designated by the United Nations or the United States as terrorist organizations, provided shelter, food, clothing and medical aid to thousands displaced and made homeless by the floods days before government and foreign aid started to arrive in areas where the government is competing with militants for control. If past disasters in Pakistan itself as well as in countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia and Bangladesh are any yardstick, the political capital up for grabs will likely be secured by the militants who for the umpteenth time have proven to be able to deliver where governments failed.

The lesson learnt from these disasters is that economic competition with militant Islamists is as important a component in the struggle to defeat faith-inspired political violence as is military strength and law enforcement. If anything, the study of the world’s most sustainable and lethal, faith-based terrorist groups, including Palestine’ s Hamas, Lebanon’s Hizbollah, Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taibe and the Taliban in Afghanistan, shows that economic competition may hold the key to substantially weakening, if not defeating these groups. Falah-e-Insaniyat, the charity arm of Lashkar-e-Taibe, widely suspected of being responsible for the Mumbai attacks in 2008, has emerged as the one of the most effective providers of relief in flood-ravaged areas of Pakistan. What makes these groups so effective is the fact that they trace their origins to being faith-based service providers. Only at a later stage, and sometimes only reluctantly, did they bolt a military apparatus onto their civil activity. They successfully win hearts and minds by effectively responding to natural and man-made disasters in areas where governments like that of President Zardari have effectively ceded responsibility for the provision of basic social services, including security, education and healthcare. “With a few exceptions, lasting insurgency endings are shaped not by military action but by social, economic, and political change…The government may defeat the insurgent military cadre, but, with few exceptions, insurgencies do not end until case-specific root causes are addressed: The kind of grassroots support necessary to build and sustain an insurgency is fed on social, economic, and political discontent…,” concludes a recently published Rand Corporation study on how insurgencies end.

The problem for Western governments and their allies is translating the realization that they need to compete economically and not only militarily with militants is translating theory into practice. As is evident with the Pakistani floods, the cost benefit analysis of that realization and the organizational implications it has for the military has yet to sink in. Adapting the organization of armed forces so that they can effectively incorporate economic competition in their strategy is a slow process that contrasts starkly with the speed in which militants like Lashkar-e-Taibe are able to demonstrate institutional flexibility. Western military officials and UN and other aid workers grapple in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example, with the fact that the military is structured as a fighting machine rather than a development agency and aid organizations are not geared to defending themselves – a combination of skills and ability inherent to successful militant groups.

Rocket Attack Points To Egypt's Bedouins

A recent rocket attack on the twin Red Sea resorts of Eilat in Israel and Aqaba in Jordan focuses attention on long-simmering discontent among Egypt’s Bedouins in the Sinai peninsula. Both Egypt and Jordan have charged that the rockets that killed one person in Aqaba were launched from the Sinai - the second such attack in the last three months. Egypt has denied the allegation arguing that its border with Israel is heavily monitored. Egyptian security forces have nonetheless launched a security sweep of Sinai, acknowledging that Palestinian and Bedouin groups are active in the region. Egyptian and Israeli authorities charge that Bedouin tribesmen are part of a smuggling network that tunnels supplies into the Gaza Strip and sneaks African migrants across the border into Israel. In an ominous development, the attacks signal increased militant activity in the Sinai and radicalization of local Bedouin groups. The rocket incident adds to mounting tension on Israel’s borders in a week in which Israeli and Lebanese forces clashed for the first time since Israel attacked the Lebanese Shiite militia Hizbollah in 2006 and Arab states are seeking to ensure that an international inquiry into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri that reportedly will point the finger at Hizbollah operatives does not plunge Lebanon into renewed civil strife. The rocket attack was launched barely two weeks after Egyptian Interior Minister Habib Adli agreed in a meeting with tribal leaders to release scores of detained Bedouins, including prominent activist and blogger Mossad Abu Fajr, in a bid to ease tension with the Sinai residents and neutralize Bedouin threats to sabotage oil and gas pipelines, including a natural-gas line that supplies Israel. In return for cooperation in apprehending terrorists, the government also promised to rollback repressive measures and initiate development projects that would create jobs in the Sinai. In June, security forces clashed with Bedouins after a police operation to capture unidentified fugitives failed. Egypt has long had difficulty in maintaining law and order in the Sinai, crucial to the country’s tourism industry. In 2004, twin bombings at resorts in Taba and Ras al-Shitan killed at least 34 people. A year later, 88 people died in bomb attacks in Sharm el Sheikh, and in 2006 at least 23 people were killed in blasts in Dahab. Bedouins, cooperating with various militant groups, including Hamas, Hizbollah and Al-Qaeda linked cells, are believed to have been involved in the attacks.

Palestine: A New Beginning?

US Vice President Joe Biden warned last year that then President-elect Barack Obama would early in his term be tested by a foreign policy crisis. The crisis came quicker than even Biden may have expected and tests the very tenants of US foreign policy. The war in Gaza poses a multitude of challenges. How Obama responds will influence the president's ambition to restore US credibility, particularly in the Muslim world as well as efforts to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

• Converting the halt to fighting in Gaza into a sustainable, more permanent arrangement. The stakes for the Obama administration are high. Obama this week signaled his understanding that failure to engage would embolden both Israeli and Palestinian hardliners and reinforce widespread perceptions in the Arab and Muslim world that the US continues to uncritically support Israel and therefore is not an evenhanded mediator. He will have to underline his sincerity by investing significant political capital to push for a two-state solution.
  

  
   

  The current ceasefire is likely to hold for some time as Israel focuses on its Feb. 9 election and Hamas seeks to exploit its survival of the Israeli onslaught and empathy for the Palestinian plight generated by the images of the carnage to ensure that it is granted a seat at the negotiating table on terms more favorable to the Palestinians. The appointment of Senator George J. Mitchell as Middle East envoy warrants the assumption that the Obama administration may seek, however cautiously, to come to grips with the post-Gaza war reality of the Middle East. Mitchell demonstrated diplomatic agility as well as toughness and fairness in his successful mediation of an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland by bringing the Irish Republican Army and Protestant militias to the negotiating table. Already, one major American Jewish leader has expressed concern that Mitchell may be too fair and evenhanded and not sufficiently pro-Israeli.
  

  
   

  The United States has a critical role to play in defining the terms of a more durable ceasefire, monitoring its implementation and providing incentives for both sides to stick to it. To do so, Hamas will have to be a party to any arrangement made. A failure of efforts to reunite Palestinian ranks could complicate efforts to stabilize the ceasefire. Prospects for reunification are dim given that the Palestine Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas has by its own admission been marginalized by the Gaza war. Hamas, despite playing lip service to Palestinian unity, may conclude that Abbas has been so discredited that reunification no longer is an option. Speaking at a news conference this week, Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for Hamas' military wing, the Martyr Izz al Din al Qassam Brigades, asserted that Hamas rather than Abbas' Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had become "the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people".
  

  
   

  The Obama administration as well its partners in the Quartet – the European Union and the United Nations who refuse direct talks with Hamas – can work indirectly with Hamas through Egypt and Russia, the fourth party to the Quartet, which maintains relations with Hamas, to bring it further into the fold by initially focusing on humanitarian and security issues. A likely Israeli demand that Hamas release Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured in 2006, as part of any deal to lift the blockade of Gaza, offers another opportunity. A further, more significant avenue to create needed incentives would be a quid pro quid that is difficult to swallow for Israelis and Palestinians: a commitment by Palestinian security forces must commit to doing everything in their power to prevent attacks on Israel in exchange for an Israeli halt settlement construction on the West Bank and support of humanitarian relief and economic development in the West Bank and Gaza.
  

  
   

  Speaking at the State Department on Thursday, Obama reiterated conditions for direct talks with Hamas: recognition of Israel's right to exist, renunciation of violence and adherence to past agreements made by Palestinian authorities. He stressed that aid to Gaza would be channeled through the Palestine Authority in a bid to revive its credibility as the only acceptable interlocutor for the international community. Obama did however say that Gaza's border crossings need to be open to support aid and commerce, a demand being touted by Hamas as a condition for perpetuation of the Gaza ceasefire that will be welcomed by ordinary Gazans and exploited by Hamas as more evidence of the success of its steadfastness.
  

  
   

  Middle East peacemaking has a track record for finding ways for parties who refuse to talk to one another to sit at the same table without necessarily acknowledging the fact. Richard Murphy, a Council of Foreign Relations fellow and former Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East and US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, draws a comparison to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)'s participation in the 1992 Madrid peace conference at a time at which Israel still refused contact with the Palestinian movement. "There is the same strong Israeli opposition to (Hamas) as there was toward the PLO. But Israel found a way to deal with the PLO. Israeli Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir with great unhappiness put up with the PLO presence within the Jordanian delegation at the Madrid conference in 1992," Murphy recalls.
  

  
   

• Addressing the political fallout of the Gaza war in the Arab and Muslim world. President Obama and a prominent Saudi on Thursday expressed two dramatically different views of the future of US relations with pro-US Arab governments. In his remarks at the State Department, Obama stressed Israel's right to defend itself, expressed empathy for Palestinian suffering and reiterated the need for a peace process leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He called on Arab states to act on their peace plan drafted by Saudi King Abdullah, endorsed by the Arab League and embraced by Israeli leaders as a basis for negotiation by normalizing their relations with Israel.
  

  
   

  Obama's remarks contrasted starkly with a warning to the United States by Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, chairman of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies and a former director of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to Britain and the United States. Obama may be getting off with Saudi Arabia on the wrong foot. Saudi King Abdullah was not listed among the Middle Eastern leaders Obama was reported to have phoned nor did he include the kingdom on his swing through the region last July. Al-Faisal warned in his article for the Financial Times that "unless the new US administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the US-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk… (Saudi) King Abdullah spoke for the entire Arab and Muslim world when he said at the Arab summit in Kuwait that although the Arab peace initiative was on the table, it would not remain there for long. Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens. If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact – especially its "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia – it will have to drastically revise its policies vis a vis Israel and Palestine.
  

  
   

  "The incoming US administration will be inheriting a "basket full of snakes" in the region, there are things that can be done to help calm them down. First, President Barack Obama must address the disaster in Gaza and its causes. Inevitably, he will condemn Hamas's firing of rockets at Israel. When he does that, he should also condemn Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians and support a UN resolution to that effect; forcefully condemn the Israeli actions that led to this conflict, from settlement building in the West Bank to the blockade of Gaza and the targeted killings and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians; declare America's intention to work for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, with a security umbrella for countries that sign up and sanctions for those that do not; call for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Shab'ah Farms in Lebanon; encourage Israeli-Syrian negotiations for peace; and support a UN resolution guaranteeing Iraq's territorial integrity," Al Faisal said.
  

  
   

  In a stunning revelation, Al-Faisal suggested the major divide in the Middle East between pro-US Arab governments such as Saudi Arabia and Israel on the one hand and Iran and Syria on the other hand may become a casualty of the Gaza war. Al-Faisal disclosed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad last week in a letter to King Abdullah recognized Saudi Arabia as the leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds and called on him to take a more confrontational role over "this obvious atrocity and killing of your own children" in Gaza. "The communiqué is significant because the de facto recognition of the kingdom's primacy from one of its most ardent foes reveals the extent that the war has united an entire region, both Shia and Sunni…So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls, but every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain…Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel. Today, every Saudi is a Gazan, and we remember well the words of our late King Faisal: "I hope you will forgive my outpouring of emotions, but when I think that our Holy Mosque in Jerusalem is being invaded and desecrated, I ask God that if I am unable to undertake Holy Jihad, then I should not live a moment more," Al Faisal said.
  

  
   

  By contrast to Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah of Jordan may be charting a very different course. The monarch replaced in early January Muhammad Dahabi, who as head of the General Intelligence Department (GID) had initiated a dialogue with Hamas, as well as his top aides with Muhammad Raqqad, The move signaled a return to the GID focusing on its core business: internal and external threats to the kingdom." "Raqqad's appointment may be an indication that the government has decided to end its brief flirtation with Hamas and turn inward to protect its domestic front. The suppression of demonstrations around the Israeli embassy in Amman and the severe beating of the Amman-based correspondent of al-Jazeera satellite TV who earlier had spearheaded an anti-Israeli campaign are evidence of this policy change. Ultimately, it is unclear how this security change will affect the issue of civil liberties and reform in Jordan. There is little doubt that the new GID director is a professional who will confront the Hamas challenge in the kingdom. It is less certain, however, whether Raqqad envisions how to balance the requirements of security with the demands for reform," says Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Matthew Levitt.
  

  
   

• Balancing Obama's ambition to restore the credibility of the United States as a nation of values with political realities in the Middle East. Sacrificing democratic reform in Jordan for a hardening of attitudes toward Hamas highlights the contradictions Obama will need to resolve attempting to achieve his goals of improved US credibility and Middle East peace. As does Hamas' claim to legitimacy by virtue of the fact that it won a democratic election universally accepted as free and fair.
  

  
   

  The dilemma is reinforced by what Rami G. Khouri, editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, describes as "the deeper reality that plagues the Arab world," namely "that the average Arab citizen faces an unsatisfying choice between a brand of Islamist-nationalist military resistance that triggers enormous Israeli attacks and Arab death and destruction, and a brand of Arab autocratic governance that breeds mediocrity, corruption and perpetual vulnerability and dependence. The choice is stark: Hamas or Fatah in Palestine; Hizbollah or Hariri in Lebanon; Mubarak & Son or Muslim Brothers in Egypt -- and the list continues through every Arab country. The slow gravitation and polarization of the modern Arab state system over the past three generations into two broad camps of status quo conservatives and resistance fighters is more apparent than ever, and equally frustrating.
  

  'Resistance' rings powerfully in the ears of ordinary Arab men and women, as we can witness on television screens throughout the region these days. Resistance will continue as long as oppression and occupation persist. But perpetual resistance means constant warfare and repeated Israeli destruction of Lebanese and Palestinian society, given Israel's superiority in conventional weapons and its barbaric willingness to inflict severe pain on civilian populations. The world's powers largely turn a blind eye to, or tacitly support, Israel's savagery against Palestinians and Lebanese, as we witnessed in 2006 and today. Europe and the United States actually joined Israel in its long-term material blockade and political strangulation of Gaza after Hamas' electoral victory in 2006," Khouri says.
  

  The inability of Arab governments to come to grips with Israel in war or peace as well as their inability to establish a modus vivendi with the Islamist opposition renders governments effectively paralyzed. Islamist movements thrive on this. The Gaza ceasefire perpetuates the choice confronting ordinary Arabs. With Hamas likely to resist pressure to make the full transition from a militia to a political movement, its perceived victory will reverberate throughout the Arab world.
  

  The dilemma for Obama is that America needs to be seen to be true to its own values to restore its credibility. But like in Palestine, pressing even delicately for greater freedom and democratic reform in the Middle East means engaging with Islamists and realizing that the legacy of support for autocratic regimes means that the people's will may not be to Washington's liking.
  

• Exploiting competition between rival internationalist and nationalist Islamist factions. The aftermath of the Gaza war highlights divisions in the Islamist movement between those pursuing nationalist goals such as Hamas and Lebanon's Hizbollah and those with a global agenda aimed at the United States, European nations, Israel and Arab governments. "There is nothing to negotiate with the global jihadists, but the Islamo-nationalist movements simply cannot be ignored or suppressed," says Olivier Roy, a research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research and lecturer at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. "Hamas is nothing else than the traditional Palestinian nationalism with an Islamic garb. The Taliban express more a Pashtu identity than a global movement. The Iraqi factions are competing not over Iran or Saudi Arabia, but over sharing (or monopolizing) the power in Iraq."
  

  
   

  Roy argues that former President Bush's failure to distinguish between Islamists with global ambitions and those seeking to achieve national goals had stymied any effort to seek a political rather than a military solution to national conflicts such as the Israeli Palestinian dispute. He notes that the political approach proved successful in Iraq where it drove a wedge between Al Qaeda and other armed Sunni insurgents by recognizing them as political actors pursuing an Iraqi rather than a global agenda.
  

  
   

  Adopting the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the International Herald Tribune reasoned in an editorial that the "deep-seated hostility between the Al Qaeda current of Islamism and the more nationalist tendency represented by Hamas suggests that Israel, the United States, and others might do well to shape policy with these distinctions in mind. If Hamas acts as a barrier against something much worse - the undeterrable fanatics of Al Qaeda - then the political eradication of Hamas might not be a desirable goal,"
  

  
   

  The rivalry between global jihadis and Islamist nationalists is clear in their responses to the Gaza war and Obama's taking office. Al Qaeda this week called for attacks on Western nations and their Arab supporters, in retaliation for Israel's offensive in Gaza. "It's high time that this criminal country, I mean Britain, paid the price of its historic crime," Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi said in a video posted on an Islamist website, holding Britain responsible for Israel's creation. "There is no child who dies in Palestine ... without this being the outcome of the (country) that handed Palestine to the Jews ... Britain…"Make them taste the bitterness of war and the tragedies of homelessness and the misery of horror," he said in a call to militant fighters. "They should not be secure while our people (Palestinians) are scared. "O, mujahideen (holy strugglers) everywhere rise like an angered lion ... do what you can to make the infidel capitals of the West and America and the Arab Tyrants taste what our brothers and weak folks in Palestine have been tasting," Al-Libi said in the 31-minute video.
  

  
   

  The Arab world may well be where the global jihadis seek to make their mark. Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Al-Dostor in Cairo warns in an editorial entitled 'The Coming Terrorism' that the Gaza war is likely to fuel religious extremism as younger, more religious Arabs conclude that their government's tacit siding with Israel and rejection of Hamas amounts to opposition to Islam. "The people are repressed. They will not raise their swords against their governments but their hearts will be stronger than their swords," Eissa says, predicting that terrorism will adopt a new form. This could well be scattered, uncoordinated attacks perpetrated by people with no connection to Al Qaeda or other globalist jihadi groups and not exposed to discussion on Jihadi Internet forums.
  

  
   

  Some moderate Islamists are willing to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt. Mohammed Essam Derbala, a leader of Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya, which employed terrorism from 1981 to 1997 to topple the Egyptian regime, urged Al Qaeda in a statement to declare a four-month truce with the United States in response to Obama's call to improve relations with the Islamic world.
  

  
   

  In a similar vein, Damascus-based Hamas Political Bureau chief Khalid Mashaal this week sought to exploit the aftermath of the Gaza war to ensure that Hamas would be included in diplomatic efforts to achieve a durable ceasefire with Israel. "I tell European nations ... three years of trying to eliminate Hamas is enough. It is time for you to deal with Hamas, which has gained legitimacy through struggle." Describing the Gaza wars as the "first and great real war that our people won" in which "Hamas and the resistance emerged as an indispensable part, Mashaal said. He said "there are (still) two battles to gain. Those of the lifting of the blockade and the opening of crossing points, including Rafah, which is our window on the world."
  

  
   

  Speaking barely an hour after Obama's appearance at the State Department, Hamas spokesman Osam Hamdan welcomed Mitchell's appointment, saying he believed the former senator "could make a change" and that his appointment was "a good sign." Hamdan was careful not to reject Obama's conditions but said Obama should have also demanded that Israel recognize Palestinian rights. "To achieve a peaceful solution, we need to talk about recognition of Palestinian rights and a clear definition of the realization of those rights," Hamdan said.
  

  
   

  Hamas is certain to hold on to its mantra of resistance. But popular sentiment in Gaza may be pushing it to focus on politics rather than resistance. While a majority of Gazans hail its steadfastness in public and would probably vote for it in an election, in private they may be less willing to sacrifice in the wake of the Gaza war. Jordanian counter terrorism expert Abdul Hameed Bakier suggests that the fact that Hamas launched few suicide attacks against Israeli forces while they were in Gaza is an indication that the Islamists have difficulty recruiting volunteers.
  

  Retired Col. Shmuel Zakai, who commanded Israeli forces in Gaza until 2004 and in the 1990s was sent to Britain to study counter-insurgency in Northern Ireland, argues that the groundswell for Hamas could have been predicted. Winning hearts and minds is as import as battlefield victories in the struggle against Hamas, he says. "We just keep creating bigger problems. Military power alone is not enough. We should be the first ones on the ground helping to rebuild Gaza and making sure Hamas isn't."
  

Perhaps, the biggest challenge to Middle East peacemaking is the need for a fundamental shift in the way Palestinians and Israelis look at one another. For Palestinians, this means accepting that Jewish Israelis are a people that have struck roots in Palestine and are there to stay with the attributes of nationhood and national identity that come with that. Israel can play a major role in changing Palestinian perceptions. "We Israelis must begin to realize this simple fact: the Arabs are not metaphysical creatures, but human beings, and human beings have it within themselves to change. After all, we Israelis change our positions, mitigate our opinions, and open ourselves up to new ideas. So we would do well to get out of our heads as quickly as possible the illusion that we can somehow annihilate Hamas or eradicate them from the Gaza strip. Instead, we have to work, with caution and good sense, to reach a reasonable and detailed agreement for a lasting ceasefire that has within it the perspective that Hamas can change . Such a change is possible and can be acted upon. Such fundamental changes of heart and mind have happened many times in the course of history," says A. B. Yehoshua, one of Israel's most prominent literary figures.

Demographics Likely to Loom Large In Peace Efforts

Israelis and Palestinians going at each other at regular intervals has become a fixture of the Middle East. Israelis can live with that as long as they maintain military superiority, American backing and are able to install the fear of God in their opponents. Israeli leaders take Hizbollah's domestic political calculations leading it not to broaden the last Gaza war with rocket attacks on Israel as evidence that their strategy is still valid. They hope the same will prove true in Gaza.

Yet, as Israelis go to the polls in three weeks time in which Binjamin Nethanyahu, a hard line believer in Israel's strategy of overwhelming capability and force, is the front runner, that strategy may well have run its course in much the same way that military technological advances made the geographic depth that occupation in 1967 of the West Bank and the Golan Heights obsolete in terms of security.

If there is a sliver of hope, demography may be it for many Palestinians and Arabs who have lost faith in the feasibility of the two-state solution involving a Palestinian state alongside Israel despair in the wake of the Gaza war and 21 years of failed peacemaking based on Palestinian concessions to Israel, Many Palestinians do not see an alternative to the two-state solution beyond notions of continued resistance and steadfastness that offer little prospect for building normal, prosperous lives, amid Palestinian

If the Israeli Palestinian conflict is turning existentialist in Palestinian perceptions, it is doing so for Israelis too even if Palestinians are unlikely to pose a military existentialist threat to Israel any time soon. Demographics could constitute a far greater threat to Israel than Palestinian rockets or terrorism and may be the monkey wrench that will break the cycle of death and destruction. It is what already has motivated Israel's partial withdrawals from occupied territory even if it refused to surrender control and empower Palestinian government and persuaded it to pay lip service to the two-state solution although it was unwilling to demonstrate the boldness and vision needed to make that happen.

The figures speak for themselves. Although Jews will remain a majority within sovereign Israel for the foreseeable future, they are projected to become a minority in the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea within the next decade. As long as Israel remains in the West Bank and Gaza, this demographic forecast will pose a threat to the country's Jewish identity. Nethanyahu has warned that if the Palestinians living inside Israel's pre-1967 border cross the 20% threshold, the Jewish nature of the state would be in danger. Fear of the demographic threats persist despite some studies that the demographic threat may be less imminent. Demographics leaves Israel with a choice: encourage Palestinian immigration, pursue a policy of attempting to break Palestinian will or seek a political accommodation that gives both parties a sufficient modicum of their aspirations. While Israel retains all three options, the memory of the images of the Gaza war are likely to focus the spotlight to a greater extent on the human rights aspects of Israel's military conduct as well its policies in the occupied territories. That may contribute to sparking debate in Israel on whether accommodation may in the end be its best bet.

Discussions mediated by Egypt throughout the Gulf war offer a sliver of hope. Israel has professed throughout its history that it seeks full-fledged peace with its Arab neighbors. Ceasefires were agreed after violent confrontation in a bid to give peacemaking a chance. In the Cairo talks, Israel appeared willing to settle for less. For more than a decade it rejected Hamas' call for a ten-year truce, its way of seeking accommodation with Israel without surrendering its refusal to recognize Israel or drop its insistence on the Palestinian right to armed resistance. In Cairo, Israel was gunning for such a truce while, Hamas emboldened by its survival in Gaza, dropped its proposal in favor of a one-year truce at best. For the Obama administration, the question is whether it should lower the sights of immediate peacemaking and seek to negotiate a long-term truce rather than definitive peace in the expectation that an end to violence and repression over a longer period of time will generate the vested interests needed to negotiate a final settlement.

Seeking more limited goals would allow the Obama peacemaking effort to give the dynamics of an armed truce time to do their work. The nature of the questions peacemakers need to answer would than in due course probably be different and no longer be as complex at those they confront now. Currently, peacemaking means trying to bring parties together who either don't want to talk to one another or whose goals are mutually exclusive. That would likely change if a long-term truce would prove to Israelis that non-violent coexistence and security is possible and demonstrate to Palestinians that they are being allowed to build a national existence of their own with a promise of political, economic and social development. That would reduce their urge to risk quiet and prosperity for violence, and nurture a majority that no longer would see militant confrontation as the only way of achieving moderated national goals.

Chances of achieving even the more limited goal of a long-term truce are waning in the wake of the Gaza war. Hamas recognizes that getting humanitarian aid and kick starting reconstruction in Gaza are a priority. In a bid not to appear as an obstacle to Gaza picking up the pieces, Hamas has said it will cooperate with the Palestine Authority headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whom Hamas describes as a traitor, to ensure the needed funding. As Hamas hardens its attitude toward Israel in the belief that the war solidified its position as the primary Palestinian representative even if much of the international community refuses to deal with it, international assistance becomes the key to attempting to bring the Islamist group back to entertaining a long-term arrangement with Israel. Early indications are that the international community will attempt to use assistance to strengthen Abbas and weaken Hamas, a strategy that since 2006 has failed and is unlikely to prove more successful now. In the meantime, is back to its rejectionist rhetoric. “After the ceasefire, if the Israelis pull out, maybe we will sign a one-year truce with them. Maybe we will sign a truce and after that we will continue to liberate all the Palestinians lands, from the river to the sea, including the 1948 lands….There can be no accommodation with Israel. Anyone who signs such an accommodation is a traitor,” said Hamas’ spokesman in Syria, Talal Nassar.

The hardening of positions is not just among militants. Pro-western Arab leaders are finding that they have to take public opinion in account where Hamas has gained in popularity. Speaking in Kuwait at the Arab economic summit, Saudi King Abdullah cautioned: "Israel has to understand that the choice between war and peace will not always stay open and that the Arab peace initiative that is on the table today will not stay on the table," Abdullah said during a speech at the summit.” Abdullah fathered a peace plan in 2002 that has twice been endorsed by the Arab League calling for peace with Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israelis officials have said the plan could serve as a basis for negotiations. Saudi Arabia is among Arab states that pledged $2 billion in Kuwait but are reluctant to see cash flow directly to Hamas.

Defining Victory

The history of Middle East wars is one in which military superiority or victory more often than not, does not translate into political success. The Israel Hamas war seems at this point of the fighting to be no different.

Despite Israel's overwhelming firepower, Israel and Hamas seem delicately balanced in the complex, multi-layered efforts to achieve a ceasefire. Both sides appear to be internally divided between those who see political and military mileage in continuing the fighting at the expense of ordinary Palestinians and those who feel the time has come for a silencing of the guns.

Hamas, riding on the waves of shock at the pictures of carnage dominating television around clock, is claiming its ability to survive the onslaught as a victory. Assuming Hamas continues to survive, both Israel and Hamas will have to justify their rival claims to victory with the terms of the ceasefire that ultimately will be agreed. Increasingly, the bare knuckles of an Israel Hamas agreement are clear: the opening of Gaza's border crossings in exchange for an end to rocket attacks on Israel. Packaging that so that both sides can claim victory and agreeing on the terms of that arrangement is what is prolonging the suffering in Gaza.

For Hamas, victory has to involve an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, full opening of the border crossings into the strip and the ability to maintain the mantle of resistance as long as some long-term arrangement in the form of a multi-year truce that allows for the emergence of a viable, sovereign, independent Palestinian state is not agreed. Israel needs the assurance that Hamas will no longer be able to smuggle military materiel into the strip through direct or indirect control of the Rafah border crossing, the one passage into Gaza that does not link the strip to Israel, and a halt to rocket attacks on southern Israel to argue that its offensive achieved its goal.

Ironically, the roles in demanding a long-term truce may have been reversed. Hamas has been calling for several years already for a 10-year truce; Israel consistently refused to negotiate with Hamas and kept pushing for a definitive Israeli Palestinian peace agreement negotiated with the Palestine Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

However, with Israel so far unable to destroy Hamas' military capability and the pictures of the carnage in Gaza fueling pressure to end the fighting, Hamas is now seeking an immediate end to the violence on terms it can project as constituting a victory while Israel needs to ensure that Hamas rockets will no longer pose a threat to Israeli's in southern Israel. "Hamas retains most of its combatants and substantial reserves of rockets. While Israel seeks to compel Hamas to accept an end to violence for the long term, Hamas has yet to clearly accept that as necessary," says Jeffrey White, a Washington Institute for Near Policy fellow focusing on military and security affairs.

Hamas suffered Thursday a significant blow with Israel's killing of Saeed Siyam, the third most important Hamas leader in the strip. Known as a hardliner within the Islamist group, Siyam was Hamas' interior minister in charge of internal security. Hamas prided itself on its ability maintain security in Gaza since it took over power there in 2007. Siyam is second senior internal security to have been killed in the war. Hamas police chief Tawfiq Jaber was killed in the very first days of the Israeli offensive.

Egypt say it is making progress in attempting to secure an end to the fighting based on its proposal that calls for an immediate ceasefire followed by a long-term truce and the opening of all border crossings policed by an international force or monitors. Hamas negotiator in Cairo Salah Bardawil, asserting on Al Jazeera that his group was achieving its goals, said "the Egyptian initiative is the only initiative that has been put forward to us and we continue to coordinate with the Egyptians," the negotiator said. Hamas as of this writing is reported to be willing to accept a one-year ceasefire provided Israel withdraws from Gaza within a week. Speaking in Jerusalem, United Nation Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said it could take several days to finalize technical details of the ceasefire.

While foreign governments, parties to the conflict, journalists and pundits will pour over the fine print of any ceasefire agreement to determine who emerged from the Gaza war on top, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argues that the winner may only emerge over time. He advocates Israel following its strategy in the war with Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006 where it was seeking to "educate," a euphemism for pummeling the Shiite militia into submission, rather than eradicate the Shiite militia. "Israel's military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon - when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That's when Lebanese civilians said to Hezbollah: "What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what?

"Here's what Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, said the morning after the morning after about his decision to start that war by abducting two Israeli soldiers on July 12, 2006: 'We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not.' That was the education of Hezbollah. Has Israel seen its last conflict with Hezbollah? I doubt it. But Hezbollah, which has done nothing for Hamas (in Gaza), will think three times next time. That is probably all Israel can achieve with a non-state actor, … If (Israel) is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims" Friedman says.

Friedman analysis involving the need to establish a near monopoly on forces parallels that of Asher Susser, a director of Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern and African Studies. "Israel cannot accept the rocketry of Iran's surrogates, which sends hundreds of thousands of its citizens scurrying for the shelters at any time of their choosing, as a way of life. All Israel's neighbors must be deterred from following Gaza's example by the recognition that the price to be paid for such provocation will be unbearable. If Israel demonstrates a lack of resolve and an unwillingness to fight it will prove itself to be incapable of delivering such a message to the neighborhood and its long term survival will be in serious doubt. … When Israel elected not to retaliate to the rocket attacks from Gaza it was understood by Hamas not as an act of restraint, but of weakness and lack of resolve. This produced the Hamas miscalculation of the Israeli response and the trigger for all out war…," Susser writes on the website of the Royal United Services Institute.

Among those who believe there is no peace negotiation possible with Hamas, Friedman is an optimist. Hizbollah's refusal to be drawn into renewed confrontation with Israel in support of Gaza bolsters Friedman's argument. Acceptance by Hamas of a long-term truce with Israel would further strengthen Friedman's perspective.

Pro-Israeli skeptics however doubt there is any prospect of achieving peace with Hamas. Basing himself on conversations in 2006 with Nizar Rayyan, the hard line Hamas leader favoring suicide bombings and father of Hamas' usage of civilians as human shields who was killed by Israel in the early days of the offensive together with his wives and children, Jeffrey Goldberg, an Israeli Army prison ward-turned reporter, argues that the approach represented by Friedman is at best a temporary fix. He refers to Rayyan's deep-seated, virulent anti-Semitism and his belief that Allah turned some of the ancestors of the Jews, a "cursed people," into pigs and apes. "There is a fixed idea among some Israeli leaders that Hamas can be bombed into moderation. This is a false and dangerous notion. Hamas can be deterred militarily for a time, but tanks cannot defeat deeply felt belief. The reverse is also true: Hamas cannot be cajoled into moderation. Neither position credits Hamas with sincerity, or seriousness," Goldberg says.

Rather than focusing on Hamas, Goldberg suggests that preparing a Palestine Authority governed West Bank for "real freedom," a term he does not define in terms of the status of the West Bank and its territorial integrity, may over time lead Gazans to see the light and shove Hamas aside. Goldberg seems to disregard the further loss of credibility Abbas has suffered as a result of the Gaza carnage and the fact that he in the wake of the war will not be able to afford to move ahead with a settlement that does not include Gaza – a move that would paint him even more in the corner of being portrayed as an Israeli and American lackey. Almost half of Kuwait's parliament voted in favor of a resolution objection to Abbas' expected visit next week to the oil-rich emirate to attend an Arab economic summit because his opposition to the “Zionist aggression” was weak.

As the Arab world splinters, incapable 20 days into the war of even agreeing on a venue or in what constellation Arab leaders should meet, Friedman's argument that Hizbollah was successfully "educated" in 2006 and that Iran's other major non-state ally in the ally, Hamas, needs to go through the same learning process presupposes that the Iranian relationship with the Shiite Muslim group is comparable to its ties to the Palestinians. Beyond the fact that Iran and Hizbollah share common religious and cultural roots while Hamas comes from a Palestinian and Islamist tradition that has always had an uneasy relationship with Tehran, it also assumes that Iran can only benefit from deepening divisions among Arab governments and between governments and public sentiment in their countries. Until the moment that public opinion is no longer emotionally swayed by theatrics and rhetoric rather than deeds, Iran indeed can capitalize on Arab inaction and mounting public frustration and anger.

Those short term gains however may not justify the risk the Gaza war poses to the possibility of opening a new chapter in Iranian US relations as President-elect Barack Obama takes office. "This conflict is the last thing Tehran would have wished for in the last few weeks of the Bush administration. It increases the risk of a US-Iran confrontation now, and reduces the prospects for US-Iran diplomacy once President elect Obama takes over - neither of which is in Iran's national interest. Rather than benefiting from the instability following the slaughter in Gaza, Iran stands to lose much from the rise in tensions. … If the fighting in Gaza goes on for too long, the spillover effects will be felt in increased Arab-Iranian tensions at a time when Tehran is more interested in soothing ties with the Arabs in order to minimize Arab disruption to any potential US-Iran opening," says Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance - The Secret dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States and president of the National Iranian American Council in The Huffington Post.

In an interview published on the website of the Council for Foreign Relations, Martin Indyk, director of the Brooking Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, former US ambassador to Israel and a candidate for a senior position in Obama's Middle East team, said the new president to resolve the Gaza crisis would have to embed efforts to achieve a ceasefire in a broad brush approach that would also engage Iran and revive Israeli Syrian peace talks. Taken together, Indyk said, these initiatives would "generate some positive synergies."

Indyk, acknowledging that a ceasefire in Gaza might not be achieved in the five days before Obama takes office, suggested that one way to circumvent Egyptian sensitivities about the stationing of an international force to police the Egyptian Gaza border in a bid to prevent the smuggling of arms to Islamists in the strip, would be to involve the Multilateral Force of Observers (MFO) that has been stationed in the Sinai for the past 30 years to monitor the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. "The American-based force that exists in the Sinai could be augmented and some of its parts moved to the border without changing anything actually. So I'm hopeful that can be solved and serve as a lever for the Israelis to wind down the conflict," Indyk said.

In remarks that are likely to further fuel speculation that Obama may authorize some kind of US contact with Hamas, Indyk was careful not to rule out categorically talking to the Islamists. "Overall, there is a belief among Obama and his advisers that not talking to enemies is a mistake. And he's made it clear that he tends to try to talk to the Iranians about their nuclear program in particular. But in the case of Hamas, his focus has got to be a cease-fire first and then a new initiative to make peace. But Hamas is not interested in making peace. So, it's hard to see how you'd construct a peace process with Hamas. On the other hand, given the division in Palestinian politics for the moment--Hamas controls Gaza and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank--it's also difficult to see how you can achieve movement in this process without some closing of ranks on the Palestinian side. The way that he should approach it is to leave this task to the Arabs and the Turks--they also have influence with Hamas--who have intense interest in trying to promote unification amongst Palestinians. If they got to a situation where Hamas and Fatah reconcile, where Hamas observes a cease-fire, where Hamas agrees that the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas should negotiate with Israel, then I could imagine Obama allowing some low-level engagement with Hamas. … If Hamas gets the trophy of American recognition before anything is changed, especially in the context of the provocation of this crisis and the launching of these rockets onto Israeli civilians, then Obama will be starting off on the very wrong foot. Rather than the United States playing a positive role in terms of trying to end this conflict, he'll end up in a whole political conflict of his own," Indyk said.

Arabs and Iran Battle for Hearts and Minds

As Arab leaders prepare for an emergency summit on Friday, their inability to achieve an end to the Israeli offensive is defeating the very offset some Arab leaders had hoped would emerge from a cutting down to size of Hamas. To key Arab leaders, including those of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestine Authority, a short and surgical Israeli operation would have contributed to putting Islamists across the region on the defensive and countering Iranian efforts to exploit widespread public discontent.

Instead, Iran, despite spewing primarily theatrics and rhetoric rather than real support for the Palestinians, is benefiting from the prolonged horror of the carnage in Gaza and the perceived Arab inability to have an impact on international efforts to silence the guns. Its imagery strikes an emotional chord with an angry and frustrated Arab public, something Arab governments have so far been unable to achieve. The stature of the summit has further been undermined by the decision by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Tunisia and Egypt not to attend.

Egypt, which is in the lead of Arab efforts to end the fighting, is seeking to reverse the credibility gap stemming from its refusal to fully open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza in a bid to alleviate Palestinian suffering and its desire to prevent the country's main opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood of which Hamas is an offshoot, from capitalizing on the crisis. Public anger and frustration with Arab impotence plays into Iran's hand even if Sunni Islamists like the brotherhood are standoffish towards Iran at best. For his part, Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is fighting a legitimacy battle of his own. His term expired five days ago, yet the war in Gaza makes a Palestinian election not only physically but also politically impossible. Israel, the United States and conservative Arabs fear that Hamas would win an election with another landslide as it did in 2006.

In describing the gap between Arab governments and Arab public opinion, Karma Nabulsi, a former Palestinian representative to the United Nations, noted on Al Jazeera that Latin American nations like Venezuela and Bolivia had taken steps against Israeli like breaking off diplomatic relations while Arabs have yet to act. "The protests make it clear that Arab leaders will have to move or will be left out of the process," Nabulsi said.

In the battle for Arab public opinion, Iran and assorted Islamists, many with no links to Iran appears to be winning on points. Iranian statements and paper tiger moves like signing up volunteers for the fighting in Gaza who don't have a hope in hell of making their way to the strip or establishing a court to try Israelis for war crimes, capture the headlines. Arab backroom diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire play less well in the media. "IIran's political success from this episode, even if it proves to be only short term, could prove to be a political embarrassment for the Arab regimes in the long term and may possibly bring wider and more dangerous political repercussions and domestic instability," warns Leila Nadir in an analysis published by The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research.

In a bid to stir the pot, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in early January that Gazans were justified in their belief that some Arab countries had "betrayed" them. While Arab leaders have little to show for their efforts beyond a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire that has been ignored by both Israel and Hamas, Iran does not have the clout to push a substantial diplomatic initiative of any kind. Its call for an Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) summit has been ignored. It can together with Syria, however, influence whether the conflict spreads to other parts of the Middle East, particularly Lebanon through its ally, Hizbollah. Yet, there it like Arab governments has been careful to ensure that the fighting is restricted to Gaza.

Some analysts warn that Iran's strategy is not without risk on the eve of President-elect Obama Barack taking office. "…the criticism (Iran) is leveling at the Arab world will prove to be a setback to the diplomatic links Iran has been working hard to cultivate in the face of US pressure on the Arab world to keep Iran in isolation," Nadir says. Iranian and Hizbollah attacks on Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah crossing wipe out a cautious improvement of relations Iran had achieved in the course of the last year. Iran's vocal support for Hamas will also not play well in any Obama effort to engage Iran in a bid to realign its posture and policies through diplomacy rather than confrontation.

For pro-American Arab governments battling Iran for the hearts and minds of the Muslim Middle East, the tone the Obama administration strikes from day one is of crucial importance. A US engagement that strikes a note more sensitive to Arab sentiment while maintaining support for Israeli security would help vindicate their position. Media in pro-Western nations responded positively to Hillary Clinton's initial statements in Congressional hearings on Tuesday to confirm her as Secretary of State. In stark contrast to the Bush administration, Clinton while stressing Israel's right to self-defense expressed concern about the "tragic humanitarian costs" of the conflict not only for Israelis but also Palestinians and the price being paid by civilians on both side of the divide. "Gone was the tone of confrontation and ideological rhetoric that characterized the foreign policy of the United States during the past 8 years," said the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper.

As pundits debate whether Israel will want the war in Gaza to still be ongoing when Obama takes office, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Hamas, despite the Israeli pummeling, is not willing to settle for a ceasefire at any price. Hamas does not need to defeat Israeli troops to emerge victorious from the fighting. The longer it holds out and the longer it is perceived by Palestinians and Arabs as acquitting itself well, the bigger the chance that the war will allow it to strengthen its claim to Palestinian leadership and strengthen opposition to Arab governments seen as having failed the people of Gaza.

So far that strategy may be succeeding. Israeli intelligence officials briefing journalists according to The New York Times said they had damaged Hamas' military wing “to a certain extent” but that the group’s military capability was still intact. However, the officials suggested that the offensive so far had been more successful in undermining Hamas’ political cohesion and that cracks were appearing in the group’s political leadership.

That could ultimately result in a for Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza even messier situation in which the military wing enjoys greater autonomy. The intelligence officials noted that the leadership in Gaza was more eager to reach agreement on a ceasefire than their colleagues in exile in Damascus. The New York Times, apparently corroborating the Israeli assertion, quoted Egyptian officials as saying that Hamas representative had openly disagreed with one another during ceasefire negotiations in Cairo. Tariq Alhomayed in Asharq Al-Awsat says Damascus-based Hamas Political Bureau chief Khalid Mashaal rejects a permanent truce and negotiations with Israel as well a proposed agreement to reopen the border crossings to Gaza based on a 2005 agreement between Israel and the Palestine Authority because that would prevent the movement from procuring arms in Gaza. By contrast, Alhomayed quotes Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniya as arguing in favor of a ceasefire, saying that “we will work positively with any initiative that aims to bring [Israeli] aggression to an end, to bring about withdrawal, to end the siege and to open the crossings.” While Mashaal was calling for an uprising in the Arab world, Haniya refused to criticize Arab governments, Alhomayed said.

In figuring out who won what in the Gaza war once the guns falls silent, the devil is likely to be in the details. Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Martin Kramer predicts that Israel will likely have to concede to lift the siege of Gaza as part of ceasefire agreement. "After the military campaign is over, Israel's control of Gaza's economy will be its principal lever for translating its military achievements into political gains—above all, the continued degradation of Hamas control. Gaza will be desperate for all material things. Whoever controls their distribution will effectively control many aspects of daily life in Gaza. This is a card Israel must be careful not to trade, either for a cease-fire or for international anti-smuggling cooperation on the Egypt-Gaza border. ... Israel should be willing to ease sanctions only if an international consortium for reconstruction is established, which has the legitimate Palestinian Authority as its sole agent within Gaza. In any cease-fire agreement, Israel should agree to open the crossings only to emergency food and medical aid—as it has during the fighting itself," Kramer says.

Writing in the Boston Globe, Kramer’s colleague at the Washington Institute, David Schenker, argues that the key to achieving that control lies in Egypt’s ability and willingness to shut down the underground tunnels linking Egypt with Gaza. The tunnels have been a major target of the Israeli air force in the offensive. Israel asserts that Hamas uses the tunnels to replenish its military stockpiles. “As pressure mounts for a cease-fire, the disposition of these tunnels -- and specifically, what actions Cairo is prepared to take to close them -- seems likely to prove the difference between war and peace,” Schenker says. He says that Hamas had smuggled “some 80 tons of weapons from Egypt, including longer-range Iranian-made rockets that brought 10 percent of the Israeli population within striking distance" during the six months of the Israel Hamas ceasefire that ended last month. Egypt has asserted it could not properly police the border because it was hamstrung in its efforts as a result of restrictions imposed by the Israeli Egyptian peace treaty on its ability to deploy troops in the Sinai desert. Some Israelis charge that corrupt Egyptian civilian and military officials benefit from the lucrative trade through the tunnels; Schenker says Egypt may have turned a blind eye to demonstrate support for the Palestinians and build goodwill with Hamas.

Despite political infighting notwithstanding within Hamas, among the Palestinians and in the Arab world at large, Palestinians may be winning a key battle. "Palestinians are winning the legitimacy war and that might be more important than winning the military war. That's what defeated the United States in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan… it is also what defeated apartheid in South Africa ," United Nations Special Human Rights Rapporteur Prof. Richard Falk told Al Jazeera earlier this week.

The anti-Israel demonstrations in Western capitals, anecdotal evidence and opinion polls in the United States suggest that Palestinians may not only be winning the legitimacy battle in their own backyard but in the West too. Author Geoffrey Wheatcroft writing in the International Herald Tribune recounts a story recounted by historian Tony Judt several years ago. Judt was discussing with his class at New York University the emotional resonance of the Spanish Civil War the fact that Franco's had long remained "a land of shame that people boycotted for its crimes and repression." Judt told the class he could not think of a contemporary equivalent of a country so disliked and despised. To which a young woman responded: "What about Israel?" To the surprise of Judt, who grew up supporting Israel and has since become a critic of the Jewish state, most of the class including many Jews nodded in approval.

"Those college kids were the next generation of adult American citizens, and we can now see the times a-changing in polls. A majority of Americans still endorse the Israeli action in Gaza, over those who don't and think Israel should have pursued a diplomatic path - but only by 44 to 41 percent, a much slimmer margin of support than Israel enjoyed quite recently. More to the point, Democratic voters oppose the Israeli attack by a margin of 22 percent, and a Democrat is, after all, about to be inaugurated as president... For more than 60 years Israel has shown that it can win every battle by military might. But there is also what the Declaration of Independence calls "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind," and the battle for opinion cannot be won by brute force alone," Wheatcroft says.

Steve Rosen, writing on Obama Mideast Monitor agrees with Wheatcroft’s 44 percent of Americans supporting Israel’s use of force, but quotes a McClatchy/Ipsos poll that found that only 18 percent considered Hamas' use of force appropriate; 57 percent thought that Hamas was using excessive force, while only 36 percent said Israel was.

Iran: A Different Perspective

One probably shouldn't hold one's breath, but the dawn of the Obama administration offers an opportunity to revisit the question whether confrontation or dialogue is most likely to produce an understanding with Iran that would alleviate Western, Israeli and Arab fears. Engaging Iran in a constructive dialogue would help reduce tension and the potential for violence in the Middle East. Obama has said he intends to engage Iran more actively.

The Israeli offensive in Gaza highlights the threat to stability in the Middle East that confrontation with Iran poses. If Hamas rockets were the immediate driver of the Israeli offensive, tacit support by conservative Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, effectively gave it at least initial diplomatic cover and support. Underlying Israeli and conservative pro-Western Arab calculations, is a deep-seated fear of Iranian ambitions in the region that through Hamas cuts across the Sunni-Shiite divide.

Reading between the lines of statements by militant forces in the Middle East often is an exercise comparable with Kreminology in the days of the Soviet Union or second guessing succession in Saud Arabia. Messages designed to open the door to dialogue, settlement of differences and even rapprochement or at least intended to test the waters, are usually buried in a torrent of militant phraseology, war-mongering rhetoric and blood-stalling verbage and often contained in what a radical state or group does or does not do. Iran is no exception.

Iranian leaders from across the country's political spectrum have been signaling a desire to engage in a dialogue with the United States that could define the Islamic republic's role in the region provided that takes into account Iran's size, resources and regional clout. Some fear that engaging Iran on those terms could shift the balance of power in the Gulf. "US-Iranian detente would sacrifice GCC interests. There is a fear that … a grand bargain would marginalize the GCC states," Mahmoud Monshipouri, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, said in a recent speech in Abu Dhabi. He said such a détente would harm Dubai, which has benefitted considerably from the embargo on Iran. UAE exports and re-exports to Iran amounted to $6.57 billion in 2007, according to figures from the UAE Federal Customs Authority. However, a lifting of the embargo may have less of an impact on Dubai than meets the eye. The Washington Post, quoting reports by the US Justice Department and the Institute for Science and International Security, reports that Iran has shifted the axis of its smuggling of components for its nuclear program from Dubai to Malaysia.

Some US intelligence officials believe that Iran is already capable of building one nuclear bomb every eight months and that Obama will have no choice but to engage Iran and embed it in a broader regional security arrangement. The New York Times reports that President Bush last year rejected an Israeli request for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted to drop on Iran’s main nuclear complex and had also refused Israel permission fly over Iraq to reach the facility. Instead, Bush, according to the Times quoting US and non-US officials, advised Israel that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort. Some US intelligence officials however argue that the covert operation, if the past is any indication, will at best delay but not derail the Iranian nuclear program.

Iran most recently signaled its interest in playing a constructive role and engaging in dialogue through its response to the Gaza crisis – a combination of theatrics and some diplomacy. Iran has ruled out military support for Hamas, witness the refusal of Hizbollah to attempt to alleviate Hamas, by opening a second front against Israel on its northern border. Beyond not wanting to jeopardize Hizbollah's ability to perform well in Lebanese elections scheduled for later this year, Iran believes that Israel has created a situation that will cost it dearly, if not in military terms, certainly in political and diplomatic ones. Reason for Mohammed Ali Jafari, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) to say this weekend: "Gazan resistance does not need other countries' military help."

No doubt, an advertisement last week offering a reward of $1 million to anyone who would assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for betraying the Palestinians placed by the Basij, a volunteer-based paramilitary force subordinate to the revolutionary guards, hardly points to a desire for dialogue. It does however fit into the category of tasteless, counterproductive and provocative theatrics. It is unlikely that Iran is about to dispatch a team of assassins. More probable is that Iran would like to stir the pot in Egypt, witness the call by Iran's Lebanese ally, Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on Egyptians to protest their government's refusal to fully open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Hizbollah does "not like to target Israeli civilians during election years – and Lebanon has parliamentary elections coming up in April. Hezbollah even kept their rocket attacks down for 1998’s local elections... Extrapolating, this trend indicates how highly Hezbollah values its legal and political standing in Lebanon and its recognition that this standing is damaged when it is held responsible for provoking Israeli strikes," says Aaron Mannes, who works on models of terrorist group behavior at the University of Maryland’s Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics on the TheTerrorWonk blog.

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has a particular pension for setting himself up as the boogeyman, denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel's demise. Yet, his predictions that Israel with be destroyed or simply wither away from the pages of history reflect a belief that Israel is digging it own grave and will self-destruct as a result of its own contradictions and policies. Critics of Israel in the west may too argue as they watch the carnage in Gaza continue that Israel's is its own worst enemy. Moreover, Iran's real targets are the conservative Arab governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, Israel is a tool towards that goal.

Iran sees political mileage in the mass demonstrations across the Arab world not only denouncing Israel but also Arab government failure to bring an end to the crisis. That political capital is all the more important in a period of transition in which it has yet to emerge whether US President-elect Barack Obama will break with the Bush administration's policy of seeking to force Iran to make concessions before engaging in constructive dialogue.

Iran limiting itself to theatrics and rhetoric in Gaza contains another message: compare Iran's response to Gaza to its response to issues about which it is really concerned: Iraq and Afghanistan where Iran's hand in the resistance against the presence of US troops is clearly visible.

Nonetheless, theatrics and rhetoric contain pitfalls. Iranian leaders encouraged Iranians to pour into the streets to protest the Israeli offensive and to volunteer to fight in Gaza. Supreme leader Ali Khamenei declared that "true believers" were "duty-bound to defend" the Palestinians promised anyone who died for the cause of Gaza that he would be a martyr. Demonstrators took things in their own hands and attacked foreign embassies, including those of Britain and Jordan. They had to be cautioned to maintain public order.

Some 200 volunteers of the 70,000 who reportedly signed up to fight in Gaza held an angry sit in at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, demanding that they be sent to the strip. Ahmadinejad's brother, Dawoud Ahmadinejad, was sent to the airport to advise them that they would not be travelling to Gaza any time soon while IRGC commander Jafari asked them to end the demonstration and called for a "mental and political jihad" against the enemy.