Excellent post. One thing that I'm not clear on. The extent to which the crisis is due to "the unresolved Palestinian conflict" in general versus the miserable living conditions of Palestinian refugees in particular.

. . . it is clearly part of the “al Qaeda family,” . . . . Daniel Levy

Well; that explains everything!

"It’s the Palestinians, stupid. The unresolved Palestinian conflict is a source of region-wide instability"
Why unresolved German, Serbian, Greek refugies problems are not a source of region-wide instability.
Is this possible that unresolved region-wide
instability is a source of Palestinian conflict?

Daniel Levy,

Efforts at establishing dialogue, political accommodation, and rules of the game should be made between the West and the non-al Qaedist Sunni forces. It sounds counter-intuitive, but the place to start is the Palestinian Authority where Hamas is in government and won a democratic election.

How?  And who?

Last week Ha'aretz reported,

Italy would consider sending peacekeepers to the Gaza Strip if the Palestinian government requested help to end factional fighting, Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said on Wednesday.

But D'Alema called for political pressure, including from the Arab world, to end the fighting between Hamas and Fatah.

"If the Palestinian Authority asked for international help to guarantee security in Gaza, that could be considered," he aid. "Still, I believe that at this moment, one must exercise political pressure on the sides that are clashing that are paradoxically part of the same government."

Italy is leading the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. D'Alema said last year that if the Lebanon force proved effective, a similar force could be used in Gaza.

Meanwhile, efforts to bring Hamas into political functionality seem futile,

[Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak painted a dark picture of the situation with Hamas and said there was no chance for peace with the organization. "Hamas will never sign a peace agreement with Israel if it stays in power," the Egyptian president said.

yeah but yours is the only reply.
And Zionista quotes that great believer in democracy, Mubarak.

I agree.

This conflict has had a CIA stink about it from the get-go. Especially in the way these "al Qaeda-like" operations are being reported in the complete absense of connections to the earlier reporting. Not blaming Daniel Levy here. Just wondering when this angle on the story will get the attention (and official denials) it deserves.

Where's Elliot Abrams?

Ellen: "Where's Eliot Abrams?"
Right here!

"In an interview on CNN International's Your World Today, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh explains that the current violence in Lebanon is the result of an attempt by the Lebanese government to crack down on a militant Sunni group, Fatah al-Islam, that it formerly supported.

Last March, Hersh reported that American policy in the Middle East had shifted to opposing Iran, Syria, and their Shia allies at any cost, even if it meant backing hardline Sunni jihadists.

A key element of this policy shift was an agreement among Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy National Security Advisor Elliot Abrams, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national security adviser, whereby the Saudis would covertly fund the Sunni Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon as a counterweight to the Shia Hezbollah."

Hersh points out that the current situation is much like that during the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980's – which gave rise to al Qaeda – with the same people involved in both the US and Saudi Arabia and the "same pattern" of the US using jihadists that the Saudis assure us they can control.

Okay, I'll bite. Of the five or six million palestinian refugees, what proportion of them have been accepted for citizenship by the United States.

And by the way, are you guys up to date on your UN dues?

There are at least three, not two, competing claims about who and what Fatah al-Islam are about and who funds them.

Given the sudden emergence of the group in the last six months, during a period of political crisis for the Siniora government; and given the involvement of the U.S. and Arab client states/allies with the Siniora government in Lebanon; and given that the main result of the recent bombings etc. claimed by Fatah al-Islam has been the army's enthusiastic shelling of the densely populated Palestinian ghetto of Nahr al-Bared, there is considerably more room for speculation about the emergence of this destabilizing group than Levy grants.

I, too, am glad to see Daniel Levy posting here and have appreciated his writing elsewhere. But TPM Cafe is not an op-ed page. Assertions need to be documented with links, and competing explanations needs to be addressed rather than implicitly ruled 'beyond the pale'.

~

Bingo!

A figment of imagination ...

~OGD~

if you read my post, i said we had welcomed thousands of Palestinians to America -- which exactly lines up with the stats you presented. Thank you for verifying -- i do know what i'm talking about.

Believe it or not Brook, it is good form to offer links (credible ones) when you are making assertions, such as the one you make about Hersh.

Before you accuse me of using you as my personal research assistant, I did Google this and could not find anything to back your claim. So a link or two (credible) would be nice.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H.L. Mencken

PAY ATTENTION!
I didn't link only to Hersh then,
and I'm not now.

Less than one per cent? Your cup runneth over.

How about during the Gulf War, when the Kuwait Royal family got their country handed back to them. They decided to take out their anger on the Palestinians who had lived and worked in Kuwait, some of them for generations. They all got expelled or punished.

Uncle Sam stood by and smiled. Given your importance to the Kuwaiti's, I'm sure that if you'd said something like "No punishing Palestinians for Saddam's misdeeds" or "We didn't give you back your feudalism to start pogroms" or "be nicer to each other." it might have turned out different.

Nope. I don't think anyone but you would ever mistake the United States for a friend of the Palestinians.

Major news outlets are reporting the US is rushing arms supplies to the Lebanese government to help them in this fight with militants.

If Hersch is right, that would mean we are supplying both sides of their conflict with weapons. I just find that a little hard to buy even for Bush/Cheney.

i'm not aware of a historical example where we aided 2 sides -- one of which was our sworn enemy. the possible exception is the Iran-Contra deal in which case arms were basicaly ransom.

Another informed viewpoint on Fatah al-Islam, which raises the question of its being Hariri-funded.

Another, reporting from inside Nahr al-Bared.

These are reports and analysis from a definite p.o.v., which has to be taken into account, but both of them offer a much clearer basis for their assertions about FaI than the main poster here.

once again, Val, you didn't read what I said. I said we didn't supply one side of a conflict that was our sworn enemy.

Your assertions about Iran/Iraq war are false and ill-researched. The military intelligence we provided was to Iraq and was limited. We did not provide satellite intel to Iran. Russia and France supplied almost all of Saddam's war machine, while Iran struggled to find any allies in the conflict.

Another Val myth debunked. It's not even a challenge anymore.