Elections in Egypt to test Western commitment to democracy

By James M. Dorsey

Deutsche Welle

Egyptians head to the polls on November 28 to vote for their next parliament amid criticism of systematic repression. Will Western nations step up their support for political reform or simply stand on the sidelines?

The parliamentary elections in Egypt are shaping up to be as much an indication of US and European commitment to human rights and democracy as they are a dress rehearsal for next year's Egyptian presidential election.
Michele Dunne, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said people in Egypt and other Arab countries were watching the West closely to see to what extent they press for free and fair elections in the Arab world's most populous country.
"They will take that as a sign of whether the US and Europe are serious about these issues or whether they have relegated them to the sidelines," Dunne said.

For much of the past year, the US and the European Union have largely been quiet about the deterioration of human rights and prospects for real democracy in Egypt. These issues were glaringly absent from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's agenda when she met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit earlier this month in Washington. Similarly, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's poor human rights and democracy record has not figured prominently in recent high-level contacts between the EU and Egypt.
Crackdown on opposition

The western stance appears to have led Mubarak, in power since 1981, to conclude that he has a free hand in shaping the electoral process. For weeks, police and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition movement, have been clashing. The banned group controls a fifth of the seats in the present parliament by running candidates as independents.

According to Human Rights Watch, security forces have so far arrested over 1,300 Muslim Brotherhood members, including five candidates. The government has also shut down several independent media organizations.

"The regime is sending a message that there will be no election," said Mohamed Saad el-Katatni, the head of the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc.
Monitors? No, thank you

The US has, however, called for free and fair elections. Earlier this week, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley appealed to Egypt to allow peaceful political gatherings, open media coverage and admit international observers to the polls. The foreign ministry in Cairo countered in a statement that this constituted meddling in Egypt's internal affairs.

"The latest positions taken by the administration toward internal Egyptian affairs is something that is absolutely unacceptable," the foreign ministry said in the statement, quoting an unnamed official. "It is as if the United States has turned into a caretaker of how Egyptian society should conduct its own politics. Whoever thinks that this is possible is deluded."
The statement said Egypt would honor the tradition of mutual respect as long as the United States did the same.

The heated discussion over the Egyptian political scene is nothing new and has been going on for some 20 years, said Adel Iskandar, a professor at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. But it was crucial for the US and Europe to foster debate about democracy and human rights.

"The regime has taken two steps forward and five steps back," Iskandar said. "Instead of focusing on how much progress has been made, the debate should revolve around how little progress has been achieved."
Weighing the pros and cons

It is a fine line, though, considering the volatile, geo-strategic part of the world. Western governments fear that taking Egypt to task for its dismal democracy and human rights record could prompt Mubarak to withdraw support for the stumbling Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Egypt also supplies valuable logistics for allied military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some analysts argue, however, that the long-term risks of the US and Europe being perceived as perpetuating authoritarian rule in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world could prove costlier than the short-term benefits of turning a blind eye to flagrant violations of human rights and democratic deficiencies.

But Edward Walker, a former US ambassador to Egypt, said changes were up to the Egyptian people.

"It is not something that the US can or should dictate, but neither should we be quiet about what we believe in," Walker said. "So I think it is appropriate for the administration to review what is going on."
In addition, western powers may just have more leverage than they assume. Analysts said Egypt had a vested interest in continued support of US policy in the greater Middle East.

The Arab nation would not backtrack on support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and risk US congressional favor for its substantial annual aid package. The government in Cairo uses much of the aid to strengthen its domestic security and ability to confront opposition groups. Putting that in jeopardy could spark unrest in the military concerned that it could lose its prerogatives at a time that Egypt is gearing up for a battle over who will succeed the country's octogenarian leader.

The government is also unlikely to risk its control of all US and European democracy and human rights assistance to Egyptian non-governmental organizations. It exercises that control through an agreement with donors that they will only fund NGOs, which are officially recognized and authorized by the government.

Pivotal presidential elections next year

This month's parliamentary polls are of only moderate importance compared to the presidential elections scheduled for next year that could change Egypt's political landscape, many US and European officials believe.
Speculation is rife about whether 82-year-old Mubarak, who is in poor health, will run for a sixth six-year term or whether he will push his banker son Gamal or his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman as his successor. Even if Mubarak does opt for reelection, it is unlikely that he would be able to serve another full term.

Proponents of a more assertive American and European stance said the time will then be ripe to address Egypt's human rights record and stifling of democratic development.

By publicly focusing on the issue, the US and the EU would shape debate in Egypt prior to a changing of the guard along the Nile, encourage democracy and human rights activists and alter widespread perception in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world that the United States favors authoritarian rule.

Islamists Miss Opportunity

No doubt, Islamist opposition to autocratic regimes sought to capitalize on public anger in the Middle East at the incapability, if not unwillingness, of Arab regimes to come to the aid of Palestinians in Gaza during the Israeli offensive. However, in doing so, the Muslim Brotherhood with its tentacles in various countries, hardly proved any more effective than the very regimes it criticized. "Their discourse (was) not too different from that of the official Arab elite. This fact came across very clearly during Israel's war on the Gaza Strip," says Khalil Al-Anani, a senior fellow at Cairo's Al Ahram Foundation.

The Islamists likely benefited from high-riding, public emotions shocked and angry at what it saw on blanket coverage of the carnage in Gaza. But like Hamas, the Islamists were unable to strike a chord with non-Muslim public opinion and build bridges to international organizations that would help translate public outrage into effective pressure on Western governments. In failing to do so, the Islamists missed an opportunity to broaden the base for calls for an inclusionist policy that would help bring Hamas into efforts to find a long-term Israeli Palestinian arrangement and ensure that Islamists are fully integrated into the political process in Arab countries.

In doing so, the Islamists were wholly identified with Hamas and the notion of military resistance. Like Hamas, they misread anger at the perceived callousness of the Israeli offensive and sympathy with the humanitarian suffering of the Palestinians and wrongly assumed that it would translate into political support for the resistance and the armed struggle. For the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, Gaza constitutes an opportunity missed in terms of building bridges between the Muslim and the non-Muslim world as well as in terms of possibly becoming at player in the Middle East peace process.

Amid debate on whether the two-state solution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict has suffered a lethal blow and whether what can at best be achieved in the wake of Gaza is a long-term truce rather than an definitive peace, the Brotherhood could have set itself up as a potential go-between by accentuating Hamas' long-standing call for a 10-year truce instead of supporting its reversal to demands for an immediate opening of the Rafah crossing linking Gaza with Egypt and a 12-month ceasefire with Israel at best. Such an approach would not have jeopardized the Brotherhood's efforts to exploit the gap between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other Arab leaders and public opinion in their countries.

"The dilemma of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is that it still adopts the mentality of its founder Hassan Al-Banna, which was rooted in its confrontation with the West and the United States regardless of the circumstances and the passage of time," Anani says.

Muslim Brotherhood in Denmark (1969)

Making Sense of Jihad found this little gem tonight.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/11427523/islam-for-born-denmark
It's a 1969 Danish-language pamphlet published by the I.I.F.S.O with a forward by Afzal Rahman (from London). It appears to have been distributed by a group called the Scandinavian Foundation of Islamic Services. Not jihad related, but certainly a curio from the Brotherhood's still-formative years in Europe.

View article...

Studies Urges Trans-Atlantic Push For Middle Eastern Reform

If there is one issue beyond the Israeli Palestinian conflict that has damaged US credibility, and to a lesser degree that of the European Union, in the Middle East, it is their failure to stand by their principles of democracy and human rights when it comes to the Arab and Muslim world. Examples of the inherent contradictions of US and EU policy are multiple and glaring: rejection of free and fair elections when the outcome is not to the West's liking such as Hamas' victory in 2006 and the electoral success of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria in 1991, continued support for autocratic Arab regimes in the Middle East and a disregard for human rights in the war on terror.

In his very first days in office, President Barack Obama has signaled his sincerity in seeking to restore US credibility and return it to its adherence to values of respect for human rights and the pursuit of democracy. His executive orders to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and ban torture of suspected terrorists as well as his shift in tone although not in substance on Israel and the Palestinians create expectations. While the Middle East has heard this before from Washington and seen no shift in policy either towards the Palestinians or political reform in the Arab world, tangible changes of US policy, if pursued, are likely to be gradual. Given the fragile balance in the Middle East, policy change resembles an oil tanker seeking to change course.

Public opinion in the Middle East recoils from the unqualified support the Bush administration granted Israel in its war on Hamas and the impotence of the international community and Arab governments in seeking to impose a halt to the carnage. Hamas enjoys a groundswell of support from ordinary Arabs and Islamist opposition to Arab governments is riding high on the predicament of their governments. Fear that change would undermine Arab government support for US policy in the region has repeatedly in the past defeated past lofty US promises to nurture democracy in the Middle East. So has concern that change could produce governments more in tune with their people but less attentive to US needs. The Obama administration has yet to prove that it is able and willing to chart a course key to restoring US credibility and true to Obama's declared ambition in what constitutes a treacherous minefield. Inevitably, this would involve engagement with the region's Islamists, something the US and Europe has been reluctant to do even though it has done so on various occasions. To do so, the United States and Europe will have to balance their long-term objective of political reform with short-term geo-strategic goals such as Middle East peace, continued access to the region's energy resources and a coming to grips with Iranian regional ambition.

In a report entitled 'Europe, The United States and Middle Eastern Democracy: Repairing the Breach,' published by the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Tamara Coffman Wittes and Richard Youngs, argue that to achieve both short and long term goals, the United States and Europe need to adopt a common approach. In a series of recommendations, they suggest:

1) Establishment of a high-level transatlantic forum to coordinate policies in the Middle East similar to the U.S.-E.U. strategic dialogue on Asia established in 2005.
2) The United States and Europe should leave Arab leaders in no doubt of the West’s continued interest in and attention to democratic growth and human rights improvements in the Middle East, in part through joint statements
3) Europe and the United States should agree on common criteria on rewards and positive conditionality as incentives for reform
4) The allies should uphold the principle that local civil society can seek and accept foreign assistance and make US and European support of Arab civil society non-negotiable
5) The United States and Europe should engage with non-violent Islamist organization, make clear that their defense of peaceful political activism is not selective, and exert pressure on regimes that crack down on such organizations or seek to prevent them from meeting with Western donors
6) US and European government funders should engage in sustained and regular dialogue on funding strategies for democratic development in specific states
7) The United States and Europe should stress that democratic development in the Middle East is a common interest shared with the peoples of the region, not a means to other ends.

For too long, the United States and Europe paid lip service to reform in the Middle East, but feared that commitment to a reform policy could endanger energy supplies, nurture the emergence of forces less inclined to embrace the compromise needed for a two-state solution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and embolden militant forces. Failure to insist on reform has produced regimes that increasingly lack credibility and opposition groups opposed to the West in part because the West failed to stand against repression and violation of human rights and refused to engage with them.

Lack of Western commitment to reform is stifling indigenous attempts at a more modern interpretation of Islam that challenges the views of the Islamists. Arab regimes, seeking to neutralize the appeal of the Islamists, often close ranks with conservative religious forces opposed to more liberal approaches to Islam, such as the Koranists, an Islamic reformation movement that focuses exclusively on the Koran and opposes implementation of Sharia law.

"For nearly a decade, as (the Koranists have) gained momentum, they have come under increased attack from the Egyptian government for their religious ideas. Al Azhar University, which is based in Cairo and is the leading center for conservative Sunni learning in the world, has rejected the views of the Koranists and has sought to systematically dismantle the movement. To curry favor with this influential religious establishment, the Egyptian government has brutally cracked down on members of the Koranist movement, leading to the imprisonment and torture of over 20 members and the exile of many more," says Ahmed Subhy Mansour, president of Washington's International Quranic Society.

Progress in seeking a modus vivendi for long-term Israeli Palestinian coexistence would ease Western efforts to nudge Arab governments towards democratic reform. Palestine constitutes a double-edged sword for Arab rulers. For too long, it served as a lightening rod that distracted attention from problems at home. Increasingly, Arab inability to further a peace agenda that incorporates Palestinian aspirations and impotence to force a halt to the latest war is fueling support for Islamist opposition groups. A coordinated US and European peace effort would allow the allies to help regimes embark on reform.

In a separate study, India's Strategic Foresight Group, backed by governments or other agencies in Norway, Qatar, Switzerland and Turkey, has concluded that conflict in the Middle East since 1991 has cost the region $12 trillion. The study says the region's population could have been twice as rich as they are today had conflicts, that prevent the Middle East from capitalizing on its location and resources, been resolved. The report looks at the cost of conflict across the region, including the Israeli Arab dispute, the war in Iraq, tension between Iran and Israel rivalry between Hamas and the Palestine Authority and al-Qaeda. It estimates the opportunity costs of conflict in the region at 2% of growth in gross domestic product and suggest that peace coupled with good governance and sound economic policies would allow some countries to grow at 8%. The report says with peace incomes per capita of the population in Israel in 2010 would be $44,241 instead of $23,304, on the West Bank and in Gaza $2,427 as opposed to $1,220 and in Iraq $9,681 against the current $2,375. The report put the cost since 200 of Israeli checkpoints on the West bank impeding Palestinian freedom of movement at 100 million person hours. "Considering the enormity of the costs evidenced in this report which have direct or indirect negative consequences for the whole world, the urgent necessity of a stronger international engagement is inescapable," says Thomas Greminger, a senior Swiss diplomat who worked on the study.

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.

Arab Summit: What Emergency?

When Arab leaders gather on Friday in Doha to discuss Gaza in what they describe as an emergency summit, Palestinians will have the region's empathy while Hamas is likely to discover that it is more disliked than ever.

It is hard to see how the summit is going to immediately bridge the credibility gap that has widened after virtually daily mass demonstrations in Arab capitals demanding Arab action to call a halt to the suffering in Gaza. Many Arabs like the Palestinians will take the urgency Arab leaders ascribe to their summit at best with a grain of salt. After all, the summit will be convening one day short of three weeks after Israel launched its offensive.

For many Arab leaders, particularly those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the urgency lies in the fact that their hopes that the Israeli offensive would produce a clean and swift defeat have turned into a nightmare with some of the worst civilian carnage that the Arab Israeli conflict has witnessed. In fact, it threatens to produce exactly what it was designed to prevent: the strengthening of the Islamists and the emergence of even more militant forces than Hamas.

As a result, Arab leaders more than ever are likely to look for speedy involvement by President-elect Barack Obama. That involvement will have to be literally from the day he takes office on Jan. 20 if no Israel Hamas ceasefire has been agreed and implement by then and immediately thereafter will have to involve efforts to revive peace efforts. Saudi King Abdullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestine Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas need to show their Arab constituency that their pro-American policies can produce results for the Palestinians. This would not only lend legitimacy to their opposition to Hamas but also help them undermine the opportunity the Gaza conflict presents to Islamists of all stripes, moderate and Jihadi.

The level of anger the Israeli offensive has generated in Arab public opinion and among Arab leaders who have seen Hamas ride roughshod over their political calculations was expressed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former head of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to Britain and the United States, when he last week told the 6th Gulf Forum on January 6th: "The Bush administration has left (the United States with) a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza…Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians and we seek martyrdom for God and for Palestine, following those who died in Gaza."

Hamas is unlikely to benefit at the Arab summit from the emotion expressed by Prince Turki. It seems to be banking more on the capital it has garnered in Arab public opinion for its resistance to the Israel and less inclined to exploit that to build bridges to conservative Arab governments and seek their support in the current crisis. Hamas this week criticized Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa's successful efforts to achieve a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Hamas' criticism did not focus on the fact that the UN does not have the teeth to enforce its resolution but on the Arab failure to consult with Hamas on the terms of the resolution.

"I have no doubt whatsoever that Hamas's attack on Saudi Arabia will cause it to lose all of its support since the Saudis endured the political recklessness of some Hamas leaders who have foreign ties in order to avoid any dispute with them. These peripheral battles that come at a time when Hamas is in need of everybody's support demonstrate the extent of the crisis of leadership and the lack of a commander to take final decisions … It is odd that the Hamas leadership is calling for an end to the crimes being committed by the Israeli killing machine and the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, and is condemning the Security Council's procrastination. Yet when an Arab delegation together with a number of Arab ministers worked continuously for days in New York, pushing for a resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire, a number of Hamas officials attacked these people," said Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, general manager of Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television, writing in Al Sharq Al Awsat. Al-Rashed was referring to Iran when he spoke about Hamas' foreign ties.

Anger and frustration in Arab official circles appears to translate itself in turning a blind eye to a revival of some of the worst racist anti-Jewish rhetoric the Arab world has seen. Following last week's denial of the Holocaust in the Gulf News, this week Dr. Walid Al-Rashudi, head of the Department of Islamic Studies at Saud University, declared on Hamas' Al Aqsa television: "Allah! Allahm count the Jews and kill them to the last one and don't leave even one."

Allowing the venting of frustration by racist Jihadis constitutes for Arab leaders a double edged the sword. In the same speech Al-Rashudi denounced pro-American Arab governments as traitors. "We believe in Almighty Allah and you believe in America and Israel. We believe that Allah sent His soldiers against America in many places in the world."

As Islamists capitalize on public Arab outrage at the continuing carnage in Gaza and Israel pushes ahead with its military campaign, Egypt and the direction it will take in the post-Mubarak era is the political battleground for Hamas and Israel. The more brutal the Israeli offensive becomes – Gaza is reported to have last night witnessed one of its worst nights since the attack began – the greater Mubarak's predicament becomes. Critics charge Mubarak's ability to relieve Palestinian suffering by fully opening the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is restricted by the US and Israel. Conceding to Islamist demands would strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition to the regime, and would risk thousands of Palestinians pouring across the border, something many Egyptians don't want to see.

Most immediately, the battle for Egypt involves Hamas and Arab public pressure on Egypt to fully open the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, control of the passage once a ceasefire has been agreed and Israel seeking to force Egypt to seriously crackdown on smuggling. Israeli officials argue that the underground tunnels connecting Egypt and Gaza through which Palestinians smuggle badly needed basic goods in a bid to break the Israeli siege of the strip as well as arms continue to function because corrupt Egyptian officials benefit from a booming business. Egypt has denied the Israeli allegation. In addition to this, Mubarak wants to prevent an Islamic republic arising on its border.

The Gaza crisis poses a dilemma and creates an opportunity for Egypt. Sudarsan Raghavan notes in The Washington Post that rarely has an Arab leader been attacked for supporting Israel against the Palestinians as has Mubarak. Emotions have been fueled by the government's refusal to adhere to a court decision on Tuesday upholding an earlier ruling banning the sale of Egyptian gas to Israel. The government has appealed the decision. Raghavan describes demonstrators on Friday in Cairo as chanting:

"O Hamas, O Hamas, you are for all the people. We are behind you," the protesters chanted. Then they went after Mubarak.

"O Mubarak, Mubarak, make a decision. Open the crossing. Remove the siege," they chanted. "O Mubarak, Mubarak. Are you with us or against us?"

On the diplomatic and geopolitical front, Egypt's key role as a mediator between Israel, Hamas and the Palestine Authority allows it to reclaim to a degree its leadership in the Arab world, lost when former President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem in 1977 and subsequently signed the Arab world's first peace treaty with the Jewish state. It would also allow it to improve relations strained over human rights and other issues with US as a new administration takes office in Washington.

In a bid to counter the at times vicious criticism and position Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation straddling its Asian and African constituent elements, this week launched a public relations counter-offensive. A 16- page document entitled, "Egypt's position on the situation in Gaza and the Rafah border", addresses Egypt's policy on Rafah and touts its recent efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Egypt Moves Centerstage

With the exception of Jordan, no Arab country has more at stake in Gaza than Egypt, the only Arab nation to share a border with Gaza. Arabs, increasingly angry about the ongoing violence and frustrated by Arab government inability to come to the aid of the Palestinians, are focusing attention on Egypt's refusal to fully open the Rafah border crossing, Gaza's only gateway to the outside world that does not go through Israel. Tens of thousands of Egyptians on Friday poured into the streets alongside their brethren across the Arab world and elsewhere to vent their anger and frustration, in many cases targeting Egyptian embassies.

(As an aside, the war of words between Israel and the Arabs at times seems surreal in its ability to deny reality. David Pollack, a senior fellow focusing on political dynamics in the Middle East at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy in an analysis released on Friday asserts that "only a handful of major street protests have occurred, and almost no tangible support for Hamas has materialized." Coming from the institute that degree of denial – one only needs to switch on television news to see the masses in the streets – is worrisome given the fact that the institute is an important player in shaping US Middle East policy. Executives and associates of the institute will serve as senior officials in the incoming Obama administration's Middle East team and have served in past administrations, Republican and Democratic.)

What happens at the Rafah crossing will in part make or break the sustainability of any ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. To call a halt to the fighting, Israel wants a viable mechanism that would close down what is left of the underground tunnels that constitute Gaza's sole supply line. Those tunnels serve(d) to break the Israeli siege and bring in vital basic supplies like food and medicine; they were also used by Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups to bring in arms and other military materials. Any mechanism will involve an increased Egyptian role, all the more so if international forces are stationed on the Egyptian side of the border. Hamas has said it would allow international monitors to operate from the Palestinian side of the divide but will not accept an international force in Palestine., Egypt too is reluctant to allow an international force to operate from its territory although less firmly opposed than Hamas.. Instead, it wants to revive the 2005 agreement on movement and access, under which EU monitors oversaw the passage of people through the Rafah crossing and vehicles through Kerem Shalom, a deal that fell through when Hamas came to power.

Egypt's role in Gaza could become even more enhanced if the hopes of some Israeli leaders and politicians that the Israeli offensive will lead to regime change in Gaza were realized. That seems a far-fetched goal as the Israeli offensive enters into its third week. Most analysts assume the war is likely to end before US President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20. A real defeat of Hamas would mean that Israel would have to launch its third phase of the offensive – involving a virtual re-occupation of Gaza by Israeli troops moving into the centers the Strip's cities and towns -- and is able of delivering a fatal blow to Hamas within days. Israel on Saturday showered Gaza with leaflets advising residents that it was about to intensify the fighting by launching its planned third phase of the war. "Strip residents: Two days ago, the IDF dropped leaflets in Rafah, warning residents and instructing them to leave their homes for their safety. As Rafah residents complied with IDF instructions, civilians not involved in the fighting were spared any harm. In the near future, the IDF will continue to attack tunnels, arms caches, and terror activities with greater intensity all across the Strip. For your safety and the safety of your families, you are required to refrain from staying near terror elements or sites where weapons are being stored," the leaflet read.

Speaking in an interview with Sir David Frost on Al Jazeera's Frost over the World, Daniel Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, said: "I think Egypt will have a major role in any future regime" in Gaza. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is determined to thwart any Israeli attempt to foist Gaza on Egypt, a move that could provoke a true explosion of public anger. Even before the current pro-Palestinian demonstrations, protests against the government were becoming a fixture of daily life in the country. While most protests are small and focus on local grievances, some labor actions forced the government to make concessions.

Nonetheless, the absence of a swift Israeli victory too brings Egypt's role in achieving an end to the war to the forefront. Egypt has put forward a ceasefire proposal bolstered by the UN Security Council's call for an immediate ceasefire. Neither Israel nor Hamas is implementing the UN call or has accepted the Egyptian proposal, but both have agreed to talk to the Egyptians about it. Egypt is also seeking to blow new life into talks between Hamas and Fatah in a bid to end the debilitating divisions among the Palestinians. Hamas leaders were in Egypt on Friday and Saturday to discuss the Egyptian efforts. "The situation in Gaza represents a test for the Egyptian leadership and its ability to influence any part of the Middle East, and currently it seems that it is losing its soft powers," Muhammed Hassanein Heikal, a confident of the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and one of the Arab world's most prominent journalists, told Al Jazeera

Israel and Egypt refuse to fully open the Rafah border unless it is controlled by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian National Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, a demand Hamas has so far rejected. The Times reported Saturday that diplomats at the United Nations were looking as part of the Egyptian plan at carving out "a triangle at the southern end of Gaza, including the Rafah crossing to Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing to Israel, to be policed by Turkish and French military monitors to stop arms smuggling into Gaza. The zone would nominally be controlled by the authority, the internationally recognized Government. Such a plan would allow the crossings to reopen for the first time since Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007." Abbas was in Cairo on Saturday for talks with Mubarak. "What Mubarak appears to want now is a ceasefire that avoids increasing Egyptian responsibility for Gaza and offers Hamas minimal concessions. Egyptian officials denied an Israeli newspaper report that Mubarak told European Union officials during a private meeting Monday that 'Hamas must not be allowed to win in Gaza,' but the comment might well reflect his thinking," says Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin, in an article in The National Interest.

Finding common ground between Israel, Egypt and Hamas on arrangements at the Rafah crossing is no mean fete. Israel demands closure of hundreds of tunnels, which it says are Hamas' arms highway. Egypt claims that most weapons enter Gaza from the sea, although it admits that it has failed even with recent help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to close the tunnels. While rejecting an international force, it has agreed to accept international help to install technical measures or physical barriers on the Egyptian side of the border. Hamas wants the free flow of goods to and from Gaza through Rafah restored – a move that would help it claim victory in foiling Israel's military objectives in the war. Its position may have been strengthened by the international outcry at the humanitarian consequences of the Israeli offensive. Egypt rejects the Hamas demand because it fears that a fully open Rafah crossing would allow Palestinians to flee the Strip in a mass exodus. An unidentified Egyptian official told Al-Hayat on Tuesday that Mubarak has resisted Arab and Palestinian pressure to open the crossing because he expects it would lead to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flooding into Sinai and the inevitable reestablishment of semi-permanent refugee camps.

Complicating implementation of the Security Council ceasefire resolution is the fact that a cessation of hostilities at this moment would mean there is no clear victor. Hamas can claim survival as a victory albeit at a heavy price for the Palestinians. Continued human agony in Gaza still has some potential to score public relations points against Israel. Full opening of the crossings into Gaza would cement Hamas's claim to victory. The flip side of that coin is true for Israel. It wants to ensure that Hamas victory claims are undermined and that Hamas' capacity to fire rockets into Israel is destroyed, in part by cutting off its supply lines. Time will tell the degree to which that is possible. If Egyptian claims that Hamas gets its supplies by sea are true, there is no reason to believe that Israel and others would succeed where they haven't until now. In addition, closing down the tunnels is proving easier said than done. Also, most of Hamas' rockets are home made. Its ability to continue producing them in an environment in which the flow of goods into Gaza is even more controlled remains untested, "The (ongoing) violence is just to mark time because there's an incapacity to reach a solution and the solution is very complex. All the parties have to take into account what a ceasefire will mean for them," Chatam House fellow Nadim Shehadi told The National. Egypt too has a stake on who emerges as the perceived victor from the Gaza war. A victory by Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, would strengthen the brotherhood in Egypt, where it constitutes Mubarak's main opposition and enjoys significant popularity.

On Thursday, the brotherhood issued a detailed critique of Mubarak’s ceasefire initiative. It called on him to break relations with Israel and accused him of colluding with the United States. Egyptian opposition groups - Islamist, leftist and liberal – have found a common ground in attacking Mubarak for failing to exert leadership in the region and to respect human and civil rights at home. For Mubarak, the challenge is to manage the crisis without taking deeply unpopular steps that would force him to step up repression and crack down at home.

Talking to the Devil

While Hamas portrays a unified face to the outside world and so far appears to be surviving the Israeli offensive in Gaza severely battered but intact, it consists of multiple factions divided by differences in vision of the identity of a future Palestinian state, tactics and strategy and personal and regional rivalries. The shifting balance of power among those factions is to a significant extent determined by Israeli policies that reinforce the views of one faction and weaken those of others. Just how divided Hamas is was evident in the run-up to the Israeli offensive when some leaders rejected extension of the six-month ceasefire with Israel while others publicly advocated renewal. Ultimately Hamas rejected extension in a victory for the hardliners. The question is whether a different Israeli policy in the period preceding the rejection, including an adherence to Israel's pledge to lift the siege of Gaza as part of the ceasefire would have produced a different power of balance within Hamas.

To some analysts, Matthew Levitt, a Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow, who publishes frequently on Hamas, seeking to engage with moderate elements with Hamas is "counterproductive." Levitt argues that differences within Hamas regarding U.S. policy are merely tactical and that engaging more moderate Islamists would undermine efforts by the U.S., Israel and conservative Arab governments to strengthen the Palestine Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Levitt's rejection assumes that the various positions taken by the different Hamas factions are cast in stone and unlikely to develop in the course of a political process that gives them a stake. It also assumes that violence rather than a political process that shows that Abbas can delivery tangible political and economic results will serve to position the Palestinian president, whose Fatah movement lost an election to Hamas, as the leader with the most credibility among Palestinians. Those are two assumptions that so far have been defeated by the history of Arab Israeli conflict and Middle East peacemaking.

On that premise, an analysis of the shifting balances within Hamas points to potentially lost opportunities to bring at least parts of the Palestinian Islamist movement to the negotiating table. If successful that could have significantly altered the balance of power within the movement, to a break-up of Hamas into various groups and a segmentation of public support. The most significant fault line in Hamas is between those whose priority is to solve the Palestinian problem and those motivated by religious zeal. Proposals by the more nationalist faction, which garnered much of its support from the West Bank and the Palestinian business community, to halt military action and focus exclusively in line with the path followed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan on political and social activity constituted one opportunity for Israel and others to draw parts of the Islamist movement into the peace process. Those proposals culminated in the fall of 2004 in an internal memorandum drafted by a senior Hamas leader to dismantle its underground military apparatus. The proposal was defeated by the Hamas leadership in Gaza as well as the exile leadership in Damascus.

The move to call a halt to military activity came months after Israel had killed Gaza-based Hamas founders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in separate operations. The killings prompted splits within the Gaza leadership. Hamas' Gaza political wing was inherited by deposed Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar. Haniya has not been seen in public since the Israeli offensive began but Hamas' Al Aqsa television aqsatv.ps earlier this week broadcast a taped defiant statement read by Zahar. Supporters of Al-Rantissi joined Muhammed Diaf, head of the group's military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Haniya's willingness to cease attacks on Israel in response to pressure from the business community were denounced by another Rantissi supporter Nizar Rayyan, who is the most senior Hamas leader to have been killed in the current Israeli offensive. In a bid to thwart Haniya's move, Rayyan paraded armed through the streets of the Jabalya refugee camp. Flanked by masked Qassem Brigade fighters, he dismissed Haniya's plan, distributed pamphlets describing Hamas' military operations and announced that the group was developing Qassem rockets capable of reaching deeper into Israel.

Hamas' 2006 victory in Palestinian elections on the West Bank and in Gaza strengthened the position of the leadership in Palestine versus the exile leaders in Damascus, whose influence stems from their control of Hamas' finances and relations with Syria and Iran, and initially appeared to reinforce more moderate forces within the group. That began to change with the split between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian group defeated in the election, and Hamas takeover of Gaza. The Israeli and Western boycott of Gaza imposed after the takeover shifted power led by Zahar and Said Siam, a proponent of suicide attacks who served as interior minister in the unified government, through control of the group's Executive Force and Qassem Brigades. Last summer, the position of the radicals was reinforced when hardliners emerged from secret balloting dominant in Hamas' Gaza Consultative Council or Shura Council on a slate dominated by younger members of the Qassem Brigades and headed by Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari. The Gaza council answers to is Hamas' highest decision-making body, the Majlis a Shura, which incorporates representatives from all Hamas constituencies: Gaza, the West Bank, Israeli prisons and Damascus. The slate, many of whose members opposed reconciliation with Fatah because they feared it would lead to an end of the armed struggle and acceptance of a two-state solution, prompted more moderate figures like Ghazi Hamad – a Hamas veteran who served as spokesman and editor of Hamas weekly Ar-Risala and was imprisoned by both Israel and the Palestine Authority -- and Ahmad Yusuf, a political advisor to Haniya, not to stand in the election. The Shura Council victory is believed to have undermined the position of moderates like Haniya. It is reasonable to assume that the tightening siege of Gaza played into the hardliner's hands.

If the Gaza leadership is divided, so are their rivals in Damascus split between Gazans led by second-in-command Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzouk, who was sentenced in the United States on charges of financing Hamas, and political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal, whose supporters hail from the West Bank and studied or worked in Kuwait. Their differences result from competition for influence rather than ideology. The Gazans views the Kuwaitis as too dominant. Palestine Authority officials say internal Hamas correspondence that they seized in November shows that the Damascus leadership together with Hamas leaders on the West Bank favored continued dialogue with Fatah and was critical of the hard line Gaza leadership's moves to thwart Egyptian mediation efforts.

It is ironic that Israeli and Western policies towards Gaza appear to have reversed the traditional relationship between exiles and those that have remained in the homeland with the exiles usually able to afford a more radical position because they run less personal risk and are less exposed to the pressures of circumstance that forced them into exile. By the same token, for all its bluster against the failure of Arab states to intervene, Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia and the only Arab military force that could be expected to come to the aid of Hamas, has restricted itself to words rather than deeds. Speaking in Beirut on the occasion of Ashura, the Shiite commemoration of the death of Imam Hussein some 1,400 years ago and amid mounting fears in Lebanon that Israel mat strike at Hizbollah, the militia's leader, Sheikh Hassan Narallah, vowed that his men were prepared to counter any Israeli regression. The 2006 "Lebanon war was just a walk in the park compared to what we have in store for you," Nasrallah said. In what has become a tat-for-tat spat between Nasrallah and Egypt following the militia leader's call last week on Egyptian to revolt against their government for not opening the Rafah Gaza Egypt border crossing, Nasrallah today again singled Egypt out. "Yesterday (Tuesday) a senior Egyptian official asked the Security Council if it needed to see more than 650 Palestinians killed and 2,500 injured in order to act responsibly. I ask that same official – does the Egyptian government need more than that in order to open the Rafah crossing for the sake of Gaza's inhabitants and their firm resistance and triumph? All you are required to do is open the crossing, not to declare war," Nasrallah said.

Israel's conduct of the Gaza war is increasingly drawing criticism not just from the usual suspects but also from those that have traditionally supported its policies, particularly with regard to taking a hard line towards Iranian ambitions in the Middle East. "Tehran has been aiding Hamas for years with the aim of radicalizing politics across the entire Arab Middle East. Now Israel's response to thousands of Hamas rocket provocations appears to be doing just that," writes Reuel Mark Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow in The Wall Street Journal. Gerecht, arguing that Sunni Hamas far more than Hizbollah, offers Iran the opportunity to train its sights on stirring the pot in Egypt, in his words 'the ultimate prize' in the geo-political power chess game playing out in the Middle East, notes that Iran has been careful never to respond to conservative Sunni anti-Shiite rhetoric. For starters, Iran's support for Hamas positions the Islamic Republic as a more reliable supporter of the Palestinians than the conservative Arab states. Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation straddling Asia and Africa that was once ruled by a Shiite dynasty, may be potentially volatile than it has been since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Gerecht points to the fact that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is aging and questions exist about the state of his health, but that it is unclear who will succeed him. The grip of Egypt's security forces is pervasive but whoever succeeds Mubarak, his jet-setting son or a military officer, is unlikely to resuscitate the regime's credibility and weaken the Muslim Brotherhood which most likely would win with a landslide in a free and fair election. "A turbulent Gaza where devout Muslims are in a protracted, televised fight with the cursed Jews could add sufficient heat to make Egyptian politics really interesting. The odds of Egypt cracking could be very small…but they are now certainly enough to keep the Iranians playing," Gerecht writes.

Marc Lynch, a George Washington University political science professor better known by his nom de plume Abu Aardvark, argues that irrespective whether Hamas wins or loses, Al Qaeda is certain to emerge a winner from the Gaza crisis. If Hamas wins, it benefits from the setback for the West and its Arab allies, if it loses, one of its major rivals is seriously weakened. “Either way, the Gaza crisis guarantees that a far more radicalized Islamic world will face the incoming Obama administration”, Lynch says. He notes that the way the crisis is developing demonstrates “the bankruptcy and strategic dangers of trying to simply reduce Hamas to part of an undifferentiated ‘global terrorist front.’” In fact, Hamas, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, a major Al Qaeda rival, played a key role in preventing the Jihadis from getting a real foot on the ground in Palestine. “…the doctrinal and political conflict between the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda's salafi-jihadism has become one of the most active fault-lines in Islamist politics. As Abu Qandahar’ wrote on al-Qaeda's key al-Ekhlaas forum in October 2007, the ‘Islamic world is divided between two projects, jihad and Ikhwan [Brotherhood],’” Lynch says. “From al-Qaeda's perspective, therefore, Israel's assault on Gaza is an unmitigated blessing. The images flooding the Arab and world media have already discredited moderates, fueled outrage, and pushed the center of political gravity towards more hard-line and radical positions… Governments are under pressure, most people are glued to al-Jazeera's coverage..., the internet is flooded with horrifying images, and people are angry and mobilized against Israel, the United States, and their own governments. That's the kind of world al-Qaeda likes to see.”

Struggle for Identity

At the core of the Israeli Palestinian struggle lays a struggle for identity couched in existential, political, national and religious terms – a struggle that reflects a quest for identity across the Middle East. That quest pervades all aspects of politics, economics, culture and daily life and shapes countries' domestic and foreign policies. The quest for identity is the architect of the region's future, sculpted in opposition to one or more perceived enemies.

For much of the Middle East's post-World War Two history, Arabs and Israelis viewed one another as the enemy. Already before 9/11 but certainly in the wake of those attacks, definitions of the enemy became more complex with new, more radical forces emerging. These new threats produced new alliances, particularly across the once impermeable Israeli Arab divide, which is giving way to a majority of Arab countries agreeing with Israel that Iran as well as Shiite and Sunni Islamists pose the greatest threat to regional stability. In turn, strategic re-alliance, even if it doesn't translate into peace treaties and diplomatic relations, has widened the gap between Arab government policy and public sentiment.

For much of post-World War Two history, Israel served as a lightning rod for Arabs, deflecting attention from domestic issues and authoritarian regimes' failure to cater to people's economic and political needs. As Arab governments shifted the geopolitical paradigm, large segments of the public turned to Islamist forces as the only credible opposition to discredited, corrupt regimes. Even so, the fault lines are not always crystal clear when it comes to defining regional threats. Conservative governments, moderate Islamists and their sworn enemies, Sunni Jihadis, may disagree in their assessment of Hamas or their attitude towards Israel, but find common ground when it comes to Iran and the Shiites. In recent months, conservative Arab governments together with Sunni moderate and militant Islamists have waged a war of words with strong racial overtones against Iran, Hizbollah and the Shiites.

Domestically, Arab governments use a carrot-and-stick mix of pervasive security forces and economic incentive to manage restive public sentiment. Nonetheless, tensions have been on the increase. Rising food and commodity prices raised temperatures in the course of 2008. Gaza is raising temperatures further. Emotions are running so high that some media even in the UAE, the Arab nation that prides itself of multiculturalism and tolerance, has harked backed to the worst demagogic rhetoric of the Israeli Arab conflict. "Today, the whole world stands as a witness to the fact that the Nazi holocaust was a mere lie, which was devised by the Zionists to blackmail humanity. The same Zionist entity swindled the world out of billions of dollars over the years to compensate the wrong and unjust which they claim to have been inflicted on their people. It is evident that the holocaust was a conspiracy hatched by the Zionists and Nazis, and many innocent people gave their lives as a result of this inhuman plot," writes Mohammad Abdullah Al Mutawa, a professor of sociology at Al Ain's UAE University in the Gulf News.

Arab governments from Oman to Morocco walk a tightrope that is becoming shakier as public anger explodes into protests demanding Arab action to put a halt to the violence. It puts governments hoping privately for an Israeli defeat of Hamas and incapable of exploiting the regional and international outcry to achieve an immediate ceasefire on the defensive. It illustrates the region's inability to translate financial clout and control of much of the world's energy resources into political and diplomatic clout and highlights Arab dependence on the United States, which in Arab eyes has little regard for Arab concerns when it comes to definitions of Israel's security.

Mounting public anger and frustration on Arab streets is unlikely to spark immediate or radical political change, but it does contribute to Arab government's continued loss of credibility and an ever growing quest for change -- a creeping process continuously boosted by regional crisis, pressure for greater political freedom, existential fear and a struggle to forge a post-colonial identity. In an emotional denunciation of Egyptian government policies towards the Gaza conflict as well as corruption, Zeinobia, author of Egyptian Chronicles,concludes: "Big strong country's future are not planned by other countries." In Saudi Arabia, where public protests are banned and demonstrators protesting the Israeli offensive have been arrested, people have started to wear Palestinian-style keffiyahs in solidarity with Gaza and are expressing their anger in the blogosphere, according to John Burgess's blog, Crossroads Arabia.

The Israeli offensive immediately after Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni rebuffed Egyptian President Husni Mubarak’s pleas for restraint, reminds Egyptians of their country's apparent helplessness. It plays into the hands of the secular neo-Nasserites and left-wingers as well as the Islamist opposition, who charge that Cairo’s alliance with Washington has brought Egypt to its knees, rendering it incapable of opposing Israeli policies. Israel’s attacks in Gaza will inevitably radicalize Egypt’s political discourse in much the same way they did after the July 2006 war in Lebanon, which placed Mubarak on the defensive, says Stephen A. Cook, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow. Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent, adds: "To admit that Egypt can't even open its sovereign border without permission from Washington tells you all you need to know about the powerlessness of the satraps that run the Middle East for us. Open the Rafah gate (to Gaza) – or break off relations with Israel – and Egypt's economic foundations crumble. Any Arab leader who took that kind of step will find that the West's economic and military support is withdrawn."

While Fisk's widely-circulated writing reflects a popular sentiment, the article coupled with demonstrations in several capitals outside Egypt's embassies against Egypt's alleged collaboration with Israel in the build-up to the Gaza war and the shooting of an Egyptian border guard by Hamas gunmen is provoking a backlash among Egyptians, including government critics. The backlash is compounded by calls by Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Egyptians to rise up in their millions to force open the Rafah border gate and Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri's description of the killing of the border guard in an internet message as "an example to follow for the zealous and free in the Egyptian army". Says female Muslim blogger on Tales of a Fattractive Egyptian Woman: "I'm sick of the sudden 'let's blame Egypt' mentality." Blogger Sandmonkey was far more explicit, laying into "all of you f*****s who are badmouthing my country, which – by the way – fought four f*****g wars for the Palestinian cause and lost more people than all of you."

Authoritarian Arab governments have little to be proud of. They preside over anemic economies and poor educational systems and have failed to educate their citizens to participate effectively in a globally competitive economy. Average unemployment hovers around 15 percent, second only to sub-Saharan Africa. Some 30 percent of the region's population of which 60 percent is under 30 years of age is believed to be illiterate. Political and economic reforms have been cosmetic and symbolic at best, primarily designed to maintain the image of progress. In many Arab countries, dissidents still go to jail, albeit that today they are given the courtesy of a trial.

Many Egyptians see the Palestinian problem and Egypt's role in it as inextricably linked to corruption, repression and the looting of Egyptian state assets by the country's western-backed business and political elite. Opposition demonstrations in the 1990s rallied around the slogan "The road to Jerusalem goes through Cairo." Demonstrators then saw Egyptian financial interests and the country's security forces as prolonging the status quo of Israeli occupation. Today, they view the government's privatisation programme accompanied by corruption scandals, rising unemployment and inflation as part and parcel of global interests that keep Gaza under siege and consign Palestinian self-determination to a pipe dream. "The Gazan crisis has emerged just as popular actions to subvert the systems of social repression that keep Egyptians alienated from their own economic and political processes are snowballing. The previous two years have seen more strikes and sit-ins than at any time since the second world war; a second major industrial sector has managed to break free of the five-decade state monopoly on trade unions; over 2,000 police officers have just resigned en masse over the use of torture as a security tactic and woeful working conditions, writes Jack Schenker in The Guardian.

The battle for Gaza does not constitute exclusively a boon for Islamists, across the Arab world, with the Muslim Brotherhood in the vanguard. Public anger at a lack of Arab response constitutes a welcome opportunity to garner increased support for their efforts for political change. The Islamists will be able to capitalize on the Gaza war as long as Hamas retains control of Gaza and is not ousted in favor of the Palestine Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel is unlikely to destroy Hamas or crush continued resistance against Israeli occupation but could deal it a significant blow from which it will take time to recover. Glorification of the Palestinian struggle will resonate with public sentiment and allow the Islamists to blame a possible setback on Arab collusion with Israel and the United States. "A solution (to the Palestinian problem) has to be found on an equal basis. That is what the new message is from Hamas and Hizbollah. Arabs will no longer allow themselves to be subjugated to colonialism. They no longer accept colonialism. They can resist as long as any human can resist. There are new rules that apply to the Israeli-Arab conflict by some people who insist on fighting for their rights. This is the new paradigm" in the region's quest for identity says Rami G. Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut told Al Jazeera International.

The rise of the Islamists is the product of a pervading colonial-era mentality that dominates Arab governments who look for protection and salvation from foreign forces rather than their own populations, which they seek to control through heavy handed security forces and a buy-in into economic development. As a result, Arab governments are dependent on the United States. That mentality and dependence increasingly has polarized Arab society. In response, large segments of society have turned to religion for their salvation and self-assertion in what is the most dramatic social and political shift in the region in the past three decades. Spearheaded by Islamists, the shift constitutes a break with the 'vassals of the West' mentality in a bid to assert their own identity and interests.

Yet, the Islamists have been unable to translate their call for an Islamic state and the rule of Shari'a into a coherent program offering solutions for political modernization, economic development including job creation and protection of the environment. Gaza buys the Islamists time given their effectiveness at confronting Western powers and Israel to formulate constructive and coherent positions on economic and social issues that will become even more pressing as the global economic turn down takes its toll.

Islamist movements have so far failed to influence policy. They must convince their supporters that political participation is the best way to affect government in the long term, despite seemingly poor short term gains, concludes a Carnegie Endowment study,Islamists in Politics: The Dynamics of Participation, written by Marina Ottaway and Amr Hamzawy. “While participation is not invariably a process of further democratization and moderation, it is also clear that non-participation—either enforced by governments or chosen by the leadership of Islamist parties and movements—is a guarantee that a process of moderation will not take place. This is a sobering thought for those governments and their international backers that would like to set the bar for participation by Islamists extremely high. The choice is not between allowing the somewhat risky participation by Islamists in politics and their disappearance from the political scene. It is between allowing their participation despite the existence of gray zones with the possibility that a moderating process will unfold, and excluding them from the legal political process—thus ensuring the growing influence of hard-liners inside those movements and the continued existence of gray zones," the report says.

An Israeli victory against Hamas would pose a problem for the Muslim Brotherhood and like-minded Islamists, who dominate the religious inspired opposition among Sunnis in the Middle East, not only because it could affect their standing in the region, but because it would create a vacuum that at least in part could be filled by the Jihadi fringe of the Islamist movement. The rise of Jihadi groups in Gaza would repeat developments in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. To Al Qaeda and its supporters, Hamas constitute a deviation from the true path of Islam. "They are traitors. Compared to us, they are Islamism lite… Hamas represents an American style of Islam," says Abu Mustafa, a Jihadi leader in Gaza who studied chemical engineering in Germany in a rare interview prior to the Israeli offensive.

Dressed in Pakistani garb and walking on crutches since he was wounded after an Israeli retaliatory missile strike a year ago minutes after he and his comrades fired rockets into Israel said Gazans were disappointed with Hamas' failure to introduce a real Islamic lifestyle and its willingness to accept democracy.. He said up to 10 people, many of them Hamas fighters, approach him daily to join the ranks of the Jihadis. "These are tough men and they have insider knowledge. They will be very useful should it come to a power struggle," he says. Many of the Hamas defectors opposed Hamas willingness to join a Palestinian conflict and agree to a truce with Israel. Jihadis in the Gaza Strip first made their mark when in 2007 they kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston and held him for four months. "It was nothing personal. It was a message to the West that they should release imprisoned Muslims," Abu Mustafa says.

Seeking to exploit, the moderate Islamist dilemma and Jihadi criticism of Hamas, Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Zawahiri called on Muslims on Tuesday to strike Western and Israeli targets around the world in response to Israel's raids on the Gaza Strip. He accused US President-elect Barack Obama of complicity. "Hit the interests of the Zionists and crusaders wherever and in whichever way you can," Zawahiri said in an audio tape posted on Islamist websites. "What you are facing now ... is a link in a chain in the Zionist crusader campaign on Muslims and Islam," Zawahiri said. "These attacks are Obama's present to you (Palestinians) before he takes office." Zawahiri, an Egyptian, blasted Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak as a "traitor" for failing to back Palestinians in the face of Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.

A Hamas weakened by the Israeli offensive is likely to complicate Egyptian efforts led by General Intelligence chief General Omar Suleiman to mediate between Hamas, Israel and the Palestine Authority. The Israel Hamas ceasefire that ended last month aimed to position Hamas as the force preventing other militant factions like Islamic Jihad, the Fatah-affiliated Al Aqsa Martyrs brigade and Al Qaeda supporters from launching rockets on Israel. In post-war Gaza, Hamas is unlikely to be able to wield that kind of power and may well be unwilling to do so. As a result, Egypt, and Israel, could face turmoil, lawlessness, and factional violence in Gaza. Egyptian officials fear that could undermine stability in Sinai where Palestinian and Egyptian militants could link up and attack Israel from the peninsula. The question for Egypt is how Israel would respond to such an attack. In his internet message, Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri called on the bedouins in the Sinai to help Palestinians break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

If Hamas viewed a full-fledged military confrontation with Israel as its opportunity to repeat Hizbollah's 2006 success in Lebanon, it made a strategic miscalculation; not only because of the ferocity of the Israeli offensive but because the very success of the ceasefire with Israel in the period between June and November 4, 2008 was turning Hamas into a legitimate negotiating partner. That may well have been one reason why Israel pounced on Hamas' refusal to extend the ceasefire. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abdoul Gheit, a key mediator between Hamas, Israel and the Palestine Authority, for that reason, described Hamas' refusal to extend the ceasefire as Hamas giving Israel – and with it conservative Arab states like Egypt itself and Saudi Arabia -- a gift on a "golden platter." Boston University professor Augustus Richard Norton and Harvard Middle East Center researcher Sara Roy quote an Israeli intelligence report published on the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry as saying that "Hamas was careful to maintain the ceasefire" and that "the lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire carried out by rogue terrorist organizations in some instances in defiance of Hamas." The report goes on to say that the vast majority of rockets fired from Gaza at Israel occurred after November 4 when Israeli forces killed six Palestinian fighters in an attack on Gaza. In addition to failing to exploit an opportunity that even Israel was forced to acknowledge, Hamas went to war at a military disadvantage and in an environment in which it had alienated key Arab governments. Only weeks before the Israeli offensive, Hamas infuriated Egypt by foiling Egyptian attempts to bridge the divide between it and the Palestine Authority. One indication of Hamas' post-war strength will be its ability to follow through on a pledge to derail an Egyptian and Saudi initiative to extend Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s presidential term until 2010. Hamas has said it intends to appoint as president the Palestinian parliament speaker – a Hamas member now in an Israeli prison – once Abbas’s presidency officially ends on January 9.

For all the horror of the television pictures emerging from Gaza, the suffering of the Palestinians in the strip, the discussion of proportionality and Israeli denials of the humanitarian crisis in the strip, identity also shapes Israel's conduct of the campaign. Israeli leaders are quick to note that their assault is a far cry from past wars waged by others like the United States against Germany and Japan or the Russians in Chechnya where less caution was exhibited to limit the number of civilian casualties; yet the public relations battle over the humanitarian aspects of the conflict is one Israel cannot win. If anything, is Israel is shooting itself in the foot by seeking to downplay or deny the human suffering and suppress coverage by preventing media from accessing Gaza. To be sure Israel is exercising a degree of caution in a bid to buy the time needed to fulfill its military goals before international pressures forces a focus on the humanitarian cost of the war and a halt to hostilities. Priding itself on being a democracy, it also has to take into account intense scrutiny by its own lawyers, judges, opposition politicians, reporters and human-rights activists. Mass demonstrations in 1982 in the wake of the massacre of Palestinians in the Beirut refugee camps by Christian militiamen under the watchful eye of Israeli troops forced the resignation of then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and led to an independent commission condemning the Israeli government. Virtually every Israeli military campaign against a non-state actor has had its Sabra and Chatilla, a single incident that occurs by design or default involving the deaths of a large number of civilians that comes to symbolize the hostilities. The Gaza war's may have been yesterday's attack on a UNWRA school.

Israel's conduct of the war is defined by a field of tension between on the one hand the moral fiber of a democratic society exhibited in the response to Sabra and Chatilla and the scrutiny mechanisms that go with that and on the other the concept of the New Jew described so well by Tom Segev in his book, Elvis in Jerusalem, the Jew who unlike his brethren who allowed themselves to be led like sheep to the gas chambers during World War Two, does not turn the cheek but hits back hard at those who threaten his existence. This latter mentality leads to the view that will to resist can be broken by overwhelming force and terror, a view that focuses on the effect of resistance rather than he cause. Israel cannot ignore Hamas's attacks, not only because of the primarily psychological damage they inflict, but also because Israel continues to view itself as a state that is one battle away from destruction, and therefore cannot allow its enemies to think that it can be attacked with impunity. But at the same time Israel cannot do what it takes to wipe out the enemy, because of the constraints imposed by its own public, which is far less willing than in the past to suffer or inflict bloodletting and at the day more sensitive to human suffering than Israeli conduct of the Gaza war and current public support for that war reveals. "Israelis have to discard Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous maxim: 'War's objective is victory -- not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.' They will have to settle for a substitute because from their standpoint 'prolonged indecision' is better than the alternatives -- the annihilation of themselves, which would be unthinkable, or of their enemies, which would be unconscionable," writes Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in The Wall Street Journal.