July 22, 2014

Hamas Win Leaves Netanyahoo and U.S. Position In Shambles

Hamas just won a major victory. The U.S. airlines Delta, USAir and United have suspended indefinitely all flights to and from Israel. This after a rocket fired from Gaza exploded somewhere near the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. After MH-17 came down in Ukraine the sensitivity of possible flight casualties during a conflict has dramatically increased. No airline wants to be the next to loose a plane to some errant missile. This practically closes the only international airport Israel has and will increase the pressure on Israel to accept some of Hamas' conditions for a ceasefire.

That will still take a while though and the slaughter will for now continue. Neither Hamas and the population of Gaza nor the Netanyahoo government and the people in Israel are so far willing to offer any concessions. On both sides the people push their governments to continue the fighting.

There is also no real international pressure for a ceasefire yet. Kerry and his UN clown Ban Ki Moon are in the region and are trying to find a solution that favors Israel. But there is no solutions without accepting Hamas' demands. They will have little luck to find some united Arab push for a compromise or to pressure Hamas. The only parties that could negotiate on behalf and in support of Hamas are Qatar and Turkey. But the Turkish soon-to-be-dictator Erdogan is no longer talking to Obama and has other problems. The chickens are coming home to roost as "smugglers" from the Islamic State have started to kill Turkish soldiers on Turkey's border to Syria. Qatar is disliked by all other Arab Gulf states plus especially by Egypt for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But Egypt is the other country next to Israel and the U.S. that will have to make concessions to Hamas. The wide opening of the Rafah border that is needed to lift the siege on Gaza can only be done when Egypt fully agrees. Kerry will want to achieve that but when he met the Egyptian dictator Sisi today he and his stuff were made to undergo security controls before entering the palace in Cairo. That was a significant snub and more were likely made during the talks.

The U.S. is simply no longer in a position where it can effectively create political solutions in the Middle East. As Chas Freeman analyzes the Obama administration has, over the recent years, managed to make the mess in the Middle East even messier than it usually is. Its addiction to Israel (and its utter hypocrisy) has ruined its own position:

From the outset, Israel used the “peace process” as a distraction while it created facts on the ground in the form of illegal settlements. Israeli expansionism and related policies have now made Israel’s peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians– and, thus, with Israel’s Arab neighbors – impossible. The United States created the moral hazard that enabled Israel to put itself in this ultimately untenable position. Forty years of one-sided American diplomacy aimed at achieving regional and international acceptance for Israel have thus perversely produced the very opposite – increasing international isolation and opprobrium for the Jewish state. We will now “cover Israel’s back” at the United Nations as its ongoing maltreatment and intermittent muggings of its captive Arab population complete its international delegitimization and ostracism. We will pay a heavy political price for this stand globally, in the Middle East, and very likely in escalating terrorism against Americans abroad and at home. It may satisfy our sense of honor. But it more closely resembles assisted suicide than a strategy for the survival of Israel and our own position in the Middle East.

With Ben Gurion closed Netanyahoo will soon have to somehow end the war he started, with U.S. support, for no sensible reason. His political position in Israel will then be very weak and even more crazy people than him will come to rule. That again will further reduce the political might of the United States and the region may then, left to itself, finally be able to find a new sustainable balance.

Posted by b on July 22, 2014 at 16:49 UTC | Permalink

Comments

next page »