Dan, I moderated an event last week for the Middle East Institute at Busboys and Poets (CSPAN Booknotes covered it) with noted Israeli historian Tom Segev to celebrate his new book on the 67 War.

Sadly, Tom does not see any point in the Administration pushing either side; like many other Israeli analysts, he invokes the excuse of domestic political weakness in Israel and chaos on the Palestinian side.

Segev instead advocates America push for "conflict management" over "conflict resolution" with aim to "make the Palestinians more comfortable." Its as if Segev saw no exigency in light of regional events (he eventually conceded after I enumerated them out, but stuck to his prescription based on real politik).

I pointed out to Segev, in the wake of Lebanon, Iraq, and now with the entire region on full flame, that Israel could quickly see itself encircled by the global jihad. The instability in Jordan (with a plurality of the country being pissed off refugees from either Palestine or Iraq) and Egypt (where the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty is still unpopular) should not be taken lightly. As Lebanon demonstrated, Washington and Tel Aviv have the remarkable inability to forecast the spread of violence and reactions to their aggressions.

If I'm right, all those Arafat-haters in Washington, Tel Aviv, and bought European capitals will be longing for the 'good ole days.' I know for a fact some are already.

And should Israel and the US continue to not deal with Hamas and refuse to accept the Arab Peace Initiative they'll all be dealing with something worse: a more radical group replacing Fateh and Hamas. The wiser and more sophisticated Al Qaeda/takfiri Salafist group that emerges victorius (or at least without losing) from the embers of our strategic loss in Iraq and the next jihad in Lebanon will not be interested in negotiations, a two-state solution, or handshakes with Bush in the Rose Garden.

Hate to sound gloomy, but...

The civil war in Lebanon started in 1975 when the Neocon were in high school. Both the US and the EU refused to deal with Hammas because no sane country can negotiate while previously negotiated agreement are rejected. Even the EU with its knee jerk anti-Israeli reaction understands that accepting past agreement is the only way forward.

not supporting Hammas, however, should not have been translated into withholding money from the average Palestinian who has and is suffering than enough from its own leaders and Israeli occupation.

Still, the fight bewteen Hammas and Fatah didn't break out because there were no negotiations or because the American didn't support a solution the rivalry. It's a world class circus stretch to associate the US with the Palestinian infighting.

koshembos.

"Still, the fight bewteen Hammas and Fatah didn't break out because there were no negotiations or because the American didn't support a solution the rivalry."

The American solution involved picking the wrong pony to ride in Gaza. Amazingly, the devisors disagreed with the Israelis who warned them that Hamas has evolved into a more military-like organization with C@C structure reminiscent of Hezbollah's and was likely to rout Fatah.

Oops.

"Hamas today seized control of large caches of U.S. weapons, including eight American armored personnel carriers provided to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, according to Hamas leaders and Fatah sources"

snip)

"We haven't been given clear instructions to take all of Gaza yet," Abu Abdullah said.

Abu Abdullah said while Hamas seized a number of Fatah security headquarters, they were holding off "for political reasons" from taking control of several major Fatah bases and Abbas' main Gaza compound.

"But we can take everything if we are told," he said."

etc.

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56139

Yet it is possible, perhaps, to discern at least one unifying theme: each of these conflicts is, in part, the pushback against the neocon transformationalist agenda for the Middle East.

This is what some neocons planned all along and wanted. Neocon Michael Ledeen even went so far as to say this:

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

Check out this article by Josh from the April 2003 Washingon Monthly:

Practice to Deceive
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan.

By Joshua Micah Marshall

Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.

To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

It's an amazingly prescient article - worth reading.

Know your enemy well, for in the end that is who you become. ~~Old Chinese Proverb

Both the US and the EU refused to deal with Hammas because no sane country can negotiate while previously negotiated agreement are rejected.

I hear this statement (or variations of it) repeated frequently. It makes no sense. You can negotiate with anyone. Whether you can reach an agreement is another matter, but refusing to even talk is pointless--unless, of course, you prefer not to reach any agreement.

This is what some neocons planned all along and wanted. Neocon Michael Ledeen even went so far as to say this:

Here is some back up of that position by Justin Raimondo in an article he posted on Antiwar.com a couple of months ago.

What's jaw-dropping, however, is the completely amoral stance of an alleged "conservative" like Krauthammer, who yelled himself hoarse calling for war with Iraq and now blames the "liberated" Iraqis for the fate that has befallen them. Conservatives used to believe in taking responsibility for the consequences of one's actions and living with them. Not Krauthammer. According to him, the internecine warfare in Iraq is "bewildering."

Really? I don't buy that for a minute, just as I don't believe that the intellectual architects of this war are horrified by what is happening in Iraq today. Anyone could have predicted the probable results of an American invasion: a Sunni minority ruled Iraq for decades while a Shi'ite majority groaned under the increasingly heavy burden of a sectarian tyranny – was there ever any doubt that the destruction of the Ba'athist regime would lead to chaos and civil war? Not on my part – and not, I firmly believe, on the part of any of the more informed war advocates, either. They are neither "bewildered" nor even much bothered by the sectarian slaughter in Iraq – because it's just what they wanted all along. That's one more Arab country that is divided, unable to offer resistance to the U.S.-Israeli battle plan, which aims at nothing less than the "liberation" (i.e., utter destruction) of every nation in the Middle East.

Do you think Krauthammer is saddened by the vicious killing that is now taking Iraq down into a bloody abyss? Not a chance.
The neocons hate Arabs, all of them, Shia and Sunni alike (and the Persians, too). As long as these folks are killing each other, they can't attack the United States – or Israel. That's what motivated the invasion of Iraq, and it's what is pushing them to do the same to Iran – sheer malevolence, but malevolence, I might add, with a purpose.

Notice how the neocons are pushing this idea of splitting Iraq up into its religio-ethnic components: that's another aspect of the atomization strategy they're employing in the Middle East. Smash and reduce the Muslim nations to splinters – set the Azeris against the Persians, the Kurds against the Arabs, the Shia against the Sunni, and let the catastrophe spread from Beirut to Tehran to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

"Among all these religious prejudices, ancient wounds, social resentments, and tribal antagonisms," complains Krauthammer, "who gets the blame for the rivers of blood? You can always count on some to find the blame in America." Aside from Osama bin Laden and his immediate circle few blame "America," in the collective sense: there are, however, a few American individuals who bear ultimate responsibility, and they are known as neocons, i.e., Krauthammer and his gang of world-conquering "liberators."

They plotted and pined for war, they falsified the "intelligence" to fit their goal of "regime change," and when the blood began to flow – after the "liberation" and the celebrations of a "mission accomplished" – they washed their hands of it and blamed the victims.

That's about par for the course with the neocons: after all, aren't they blaming the hapless idiot Bush for bollixing up their glorious war – for not putting in enough troops, for disbanding the Iraqi army, for supposedly not following their prescriptions to a tee? The axis of chickenhawks got what they wanted – death and destruction in the Arab world on a massive scale – and now they're busy assigning the blame to everyone but themselves.

IMO the Neo-Cons are doing and getting just what they wanted all along regardless of what it does to America and of course to Israle (the eventual blowback will be fierce and the injuries never forgotten) in the long run. These raving mad dog ideologues belong nowhere near our government and deserve NO voice in our foreign policy.

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

Gen. Omar Bradley

Ah, yes, the neverending desire to "get tough" in the Middle East, as if that will solve anything.

Imagine if one of your kids was troubled. A responsible parent might talk to their kids. If yo'ure parent "Bush", though, you just beat them until they are a quiet, behaving, bloddy mess, until one day they come and shoot you. If you're "1983Merman", you disengage until they behave, perhaps by locking them in the basement for a week, until one day they grow up and shoot you. Either way, its child abuse, or in this case "region abuse" or perhaps "world abuse"... and it will rebound tenfold.

It is almost insane to have to spell this out, but setting aside what it would do to our economy, because our energy independence does not mean energy independence for our trading partners, there's also the huge loss of life, because cutting off funding, aid, military and ties to the Middle East will mean war, then it will mean fundamentalists take over, and then it will mean more war. Plus, at least two of the countries involved, perhaps soon three, have nuclear weapons. If any 10 or so nuclear weapons go off anywhere in the world you're looking at radiation problems and nuclear winter everywhere. So much for your isolationist nonsense...

So the US was encouraging a military confrontation that its favorite could not win, and was further muddying what would anyway have been a very difficult political accommodation.

It's hard to say whether U.S.-Israel expected to lose this attack on Hamas. It's a win either way since they can now spin it as the Terrorists taking over Gaza and can really crackdown now.

Reports on tonight's evening news are unbelievably distorted. Hamas' routing the Fatah faction that we armed against them is being portrayed as an invasion of global terrorists into our greatest ally's territory. The point is pounded home that Hamas are Muslim. They prayed after they won. A fighter is shown shouting praise to Allah. On NBC, Martin Indyk, Israeli lobbyist, is quoted as an expert saying that this bloody coup by Hamas means that al Qaeda and other groups will move in there.

This is unbelievable. There is no civil war there just a failed coup by Fatah that we generated, and there are no global Jihadis there. The duly elected government has fought off the Fatah power grab that the U.S. and Israel instigated.

The conflating of nationalist freedom fighter groups like Hamas and Hezbollah with global terrorists has been part of the slowly evolving Neocon plan since 9/11. Morphing the War on Global Terrorism (al Qaeda) into the Global War on Terrorists (Palestinian fighters) has been a persistent objective all along.

No one should be surprised at the increase in violence across much of the Middle East. After all, haven't Bush and America, by the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, demonstrated that violence is a way to achieve political ends?

3,000Km by 2010?

Only another 6878km to go.

clayswisher,

And should Israel and the US continue to not deal with Hamas and refuse to accept the Arab Peace Initiative they'll all be dealing with something worse: a more radical group replacing Fateh and Hamas.

Israel has accepted the Arab League peace initiative, and Hamas has rejected* it.

[Update] *New link,

The spokesman for Hamas in the Palestinian parliament, Salah al-Bardawil, told Haaretz, "we will not agree to recognition of Israel or peace with it [as it appears in the initiative]. We have no problem with the part of the initiative that calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and the right of refugees to return."

Bardawil told Haaretz that Meshal had promised to Saudi King Adbullah that Hamas will work with the Arab consensus view, but "we cannot recognize Israel or agree to peace and normalization."

Dan and Bill B. may be a little off, but the main point still holds-- Hamas is at root a fundamentalist Muslim movement that believes in its special, supernatural link to Allah. Hamas will use any Israeli normalization of relations to smuggle in more arms-- especially small inaccurate rockets to use against Israeli civilians, like Hezbollah did. The child analogy is condescending, imperialist, etc. yet whenever I read about another Quassam attack I can't help but think it's appropriate. Even now, after executing Fatah fighters and tossing them off buildings, etc. they're trying to make amends with Abu Mazen? The next time a Quassam flies over, the Israelis should shut off water and power and let the 65% of Gazans who voted for Hamas think about their choice of leadership for a while. Like a month or so. The British academics can go have a conference about their firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden....