Clinton's Middle East Adventure

Setting aside war policy, Barack Obama's strategy for dealing with the world, while secondary to current economic concerns, has been fairly good. He's delivered on the promise of using diplomacy over belligerence, most recently by sending envoys to Syria to hopefully break them out of Iran's sphere of influence, welcome them back in the world community, and move forward on an expected peace treaty between them and Israel. Obama's somewhat odd letter to Russia, seeking their help in controlling Iran's nuclear desires in exchange for removing missile defense, was a bit misunderstood. I think that the letter was part of an effort to reset US-Russian relations, and aside from Iran this includes strategic arms limitation talks and better economic cooperation. In 95% of the cases, you can see a fostering of better understanding with the nations of the world, a rejection of the unilateralism of the Bush years, and a move to a better path.

Then there's the other 5%. And that was highlighted by Hillary Clinton's Middle East trip this week. First, she arguably poisoned upcoming Iranian negotiations by expressing pessimism that they will be productive. I just don't understand why this is something you say out loud, even if the comments were in a private meeting and leaked (I wonder who leaked them - Dennis Ross?). Then there were her visits to Israel and the West Bank, which exuded both optimism for a solution and yet also a lack of even-handedness. She called the movement toward a Palestinian state inescapable, and the goal a comprehensive solution on all fronts. She also called plans by the Israelis to bulldoze Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem unhelpful, which they are. And yet, beyond the talk, in the first instance of tangible action at a donor's conference to rebuild Gaza, Clinton and the US limited and conditioned its aid package:

The Obama administration intends to spend most of a $900-million Palestinian aid package on support for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, rather than in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip communities that were badly damaged in the recent weeks-long Israeli offensive, a State Department official said Sunday.

Robert A. Wood, the department's chief spokesman, said that about $300 million of the money would be spent on humanitarian relief for Gaza, and the remainder would help offset the Palestinian Authority's budget shortfall and fund its economic development, security and other projects in the West Bank. The authority is run by the more moderate Palestinian faction Fatah.

None of the money will go to rebuilding Gaza, even though the aid is to be announced today at an international donors conference convened by Egypt for reconstruction in the war-scarred seaside enclave.

This is the same kind of walling off of Hamas that has paradoxically improved their standing with their own people. Marc Lynch writes:

But her remarks suggest that rather than seize on the possibility of Palestinian reconciliation, Clinton prefers to double-down on the shopworn "West Bank first, Fatah only" policy which has been conspiciously failing for the last two years. The concrete manifestation: two-thirds of the U.S. contribution to the reconstruction of Gaza will go not to Gaza but to the West Bank.

I understand what Clinton is trying to do, and appreciate the challenges facing her team as it navigates this shattered environment. But her approach risks missing an important possible opportunity to reshuffle the deck. Clinton has been pouring cold water on the hopes that the Fatah-Hamas dialogue might lead to a workable national unity government by insisting that such a government would only be acceptable if it met the pre-existing Quartet conditions [...]

This all seems stuck in a bit of time-warp. It ignores the two year history of Israeli and Western failure under the identical discourse and policy to deliver meaningful benefits to the Palestinian Authority or the West Bank. It ignores the reality of Hamas power in Gaza, and the reality of Fatah's limited capabilities and legitimacy (which were not enhanced, shall we say, by Abbas's performance during the Gaza war). And it ignores the promise of the dramatic moves towards Arab reconciliation and the accomplishment of a tentative Hamas-Fatah accord last week.

It's an open question whether or not there are partners for peace on the Israeli side, particularly with a new conservative government coming in and rocket fire still falling. But sticking with Fatah and isolating Hamas, AGAIN, makes no sense from a tactical perspective. We've seen this movie before. And it not only ignores the promise of the two movements' reconciliation, it threatens to poison it.

The effects of Clinton's signals may already be starting to be felt. Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of the leading "resistance camp" newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, suggests that yesterday's comments by Mahmoud Abbas suggest that he is being emboldened by Clinton's approach to already move away from the lines of the Cairo accord. Reports are already trickling in about the Hamas-Fatah committee meetings get bogged down. And Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal reportedly repeated yesterday warnings by other members of the Saudi leadership yesterday that the Arab peace initiative would not be on offer to Israel forever.

This feels like a badly bungled opportunity based on stale thinking. I would have preferred the approach of Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair John Kerry, who called for direct investment in Gaza, an honest assessment of the corrosive nature of Israeli settlements, and a need to deal with the realities on both sides.

...Kerry's been pretty good on Iran and direct engagement, too.

Aid For Gaza

You want to know what will make the United States a global leader again? Moves like this. Granted, US provides the aid to Israel that supports the bombs and guns that destroyed Gaza in the first place, which gives us the responsibility to step up. In the future, we should rethink the consequences of that aid. But helping Gaza rebuild just makes sense. At $900 million dollars, this is ten times the amount that the Bush Administration earmarked for NGOs to work to rebuild Gaza in December.

There is one troubling component, that money will be set aside for the Palestinian Authority but not for Hamas, a punitive, naked effort to increase Fatah's standing amongst the population, one that has been battered by the invasion into Gaza. Because this appropriation has to go through Congress, there isn't much of another way, though I'd prefer it all go to NGOs. And there are additional issues:

But even if the bulk of the money goes to Gaza, it will do little good unless Israel first opens the border crossing into the territory, said Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a research organization in Washington.

“It’s a good effort, but the money can’t be spent unless materials can get into Gaza,” Mr. Levy said. “The next step is opening the border crossings, and that requires more than just signing a check.”

J Street concurs with Levy's analysis:

J Street is encouraged by reports that the Administration will pledge $900 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza reconstruction to ease the ever deepening humanitarian crisis and to enable the civilian population to rebuild in the wake of recent Israeli military operations.

This aid is critical to urgently addressing the widening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and for creating a situation in which a sustainable ceasefire can take hold. It is, however, only a first step. In order to leverage the aid’s impact, we must address the underlying causes of the humanitarian crisis in order to achieve a broader ceasefire. This means opening border crossings for all materials necessary for reconstruction, as well as bringing an end to arms smuggling and rocket attacks on Israel.

If the White House can get the crossings open, they will have earned some trust among the Palestinians. Of course, with Netanyahu looming as the new Israeli Prime Minister, it's difficult to see where any of this goes.

Election 2009!

No, not here, you can put your Sarah Palin dolls back. Actually, I'm talking about Israel, which holds elections next week amid uncertainty following the war in Gaza. There's been lots of mudslinging and no substance in the campaigns, but the Gaza assault obviously looms as the biggest issue. When Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak launched the attacks it was cynically seen as a bid to raise their hopes for the election for their respective parties, Kadima and Labor. Predictably, the war only strengthened Hamas inside Palestine, with Fatah completely discredited by its people for tacit collusion with the Israelis. In addition, the war appears to have strengthened far-right extremist Avigdor Lieberman - no relation to Joe - of the Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) Party, kind of the Israeli Pat Buchanan, who is running on loyalty oaths:

Lieberman is campaigning on the slogan "Without loyalty, there is no citizenship," promising a new bill requiring all Palestinians with Israeli passports to swear loyalty to the Jewish state or lose their citizenship. He advocates carving out part of the Galilee that is home to Arab Israeli villages and handing it over to Palestinian control.

His critics among the Israeli left and in the country's 20% Arab minority are widespread. "Here we have a racist immigrant who is fighting against the residents of the land, the natives," said Ahmad Tibi, an Arab Israeli MP. Yossi Sarid, a former leftwing MP, said: "What's the difference between his party and all the fascist parties in Europe? It's the same message, the same technique, taking advantage of the same fears."

But among a growing number of Israelis his policies resonate. Polls today suggested he might win as many as 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, putting him ahead even of the Labour party.

Paradoxically, this appears to be helping Livni and the Kadima Party, as the batshit right Lieberman is taking votes from the merely far right Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party. This could mean that Kadima would be able to pick the governing coalition and not Likud, which would increase the prospects of peace exponentially, although with Fatah basically discredited and far-right populist sentiment on the rise, those prospects look bleak.

All of which re-emphasizes the point that the Gaza war was truly dumb, and distressing to anyone who wishes for peace. After 1,300 dead and thousands of buildings destroyed, extremists are taking over both sides of the divide. Hamas is so radicalized that they are confiscating UN relief supplies, and Israel is taking seriously the candidate calling for loyalty oaths, which is ironic as all get out. Time is running out for a peace deal, and that's probably true no matter who is elected. George Mitchell and Barack Obama (who offered $20 million in Gaza relief this week) have their work cut out for them.

Strong Steps Backwards and Forwards On The Middle East

The Israeli assault on Gaza has ended. 50,000 Gazans are homeless and 21,000 buildings are destroyed. And at least 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis are dead. And for what? Nobody seems to know, other than killing for killing's sake.

Elad Katzir, a potato farmer, was nervous as he drove through the lush fields, agreeing to stop the car only behind clumps of trees or bushes as cover in case of sniper fire. By one thicket, nestled among wildflowers, was a memorial to a soldier who was shot dead here while on patrol seven years ago.

“I do not feel any victory,” Mr. Katzir said. “I still do not feel safe.” [...]

“So they changed the security situation for the next six months, bravo,” said another potato farmer, Eyal Barad. He added, “They should have gone on longer and finished the job.”

After such a tremendous show of force, many Israelis were hoping to see a more definitive picture of victory, like a scene of Hamas leaders coming out of their bunkers and raising a white flag. At the very least, several said, Israel should not have left Gaza without Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal who was captured in a cross-border raid and taken into the Palestinian enclave in 2006 and has been held hostage by Hamas ever since.

There was no job to finish. The strategic interests in the assault were obscure. Hamas was never going to be destroyed because their destruction would have required a mass annihilation of the entire area. So they are predictably holding victory rallies and restoring order to the community. Meanwhile, the more moderate Fatah has been significantly weakened by the events, making more remote the possibility of their partnership in a peaceful solution.

Israel's 22-day assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza made the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority look ineffective and marginalized, unable to stop the carnage. Popular support for its peace talks with Israel, already declining, now seems weaker than ever.

And a tentative cease-fire that left Hamas still in charge of Gaza threatens to reinforce the rift between the Palestinian territories, further setting back hopes for a settlement of the decades-old Middle East conflict.

At an Arab summit in Kuwait on Monday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pleaded for a revival of the power-sharing arrangement that broke apart in 2007 when Hamas, an armed Islamist movement, ousted his secular Fatah forces from Gaza in a ruthless factional fight.

He called for immediate talks between the two factions to form a "unity government" to rebuild the war-devastated territory, organize elections and negotiate peace with Israel [...]

But the authority has no means to reassert its presence in Gaza without the consent of Hamas. And although Hamas said it was open to a new power-sharing deal, it seemed in no hurry to strike one with Abbas, whom one Hamas official dismissed as "a full partner" in the Israeli assault.

"Hamas will be much less powerful militarily against Israel but significantly stronger against Fatah," said Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian analyst in Ramallah. "No one will challenge its control of Gaza. It is in much less need of a unity government."

All of this is really bad news, and the outcome of 1,300 dead Gazans will not be overcome in a day or a week or maybe a year. But the Obama Administration is starting to move in the right direction. President Obama called leaders in the Middle East today, including Mahmoud Abbas, to "communicate his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term, and to express his hope for their continued cooperation and leadership." He talked about a major rebuilding effort in Gaza, taken hand-in-hand with Fatah, which I think would be smart. While the Saudis have pledged $1bn in aid much more is needed, as well as the open flow of supplies and medicine into the Strip. The US could gain lots of goodwill among Palestinian citizens by being a part of this effort.

(UPDATE: Also, this could backfire heavily. As noted above, the Palestinian Authority is viewed with deep suspicion in Gaza, and if they enter with the US to help rebuild, this could confirm the suspicions that the PA are colluders, and ruin their long-term credibility. Still, I don't know how that can get much worse at this point, so they might as well try to use some carrots. This is how Hamas got the people on their side, after all - by attending to their needs.)

In addition, there are rumors that George Mitchell will be the US envoy to the Middle East, and he is the model of an honest broker with a proven record of bringing warring factions together in the interest of peace. Not to mention he has studied the region and has some good ideas for steps forward.

Mr. Mitchell, 75, was appointed in 2000, in the waning days of the Clinton administration, to lead an international commission to investigate the causes of violence in the Middle East. He released a report in the spring of 2001, during the early days of the Bush administration, that called for a freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and a Palestinian crackdown on terrorism.

Other Middle East specialists said Sunday that if Mr. Mitchell was named to the job, he would be seen by both sides as a tougher but more balanced negotiator than recent envoys, which could make some Israelis nervous. Mr. Mitchell has Lebanese as well as Irish roots: his father, Joseph Kilroy, was an orphan adopted by a Lebanese family whose Arabic name had been anglicized to Mitchell, and Mr. Mitchell was raised a Maronite Catholic by his Lebanese mother.

The appointment of Mr. Mitchell would be a strong suggestion “that Obama is going to free himself of the exclusive relationship that we’ve had with the Israelis,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

“This is the clearest indication to me that they’re trying to inject more balance into the Israeli-U.S. relationship,” he said.

Freezing the settlements is needed urgently, it's a major obstacle to peace right now in my view. Mitchell would signal all that is said above, but also an aggressiveness to pursue peace right from the beginning.

On a non-Obama-related note, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the ban on Arab parties from participating in elections, which removes what would be a nasty bit of discrimination inside Israel. They are facing pressure from both inside and outside now to reject the knee-jerk reactionary stances of the past and press for peace. However, the February elections, with Benjamin Netanyahu lurking as a possible victor, will be crucial.

...Shorter Abe Foxman: George Mitchell would be bad for the Middle East because he's too fair and even-handed. Wait, that's not "shorter," that's exactly what he said. Abe, um, you said that out loud.

They Call It Blowback

Nobody could have anticipated that Israel couldn't bomb its way to peace with Palestine.

Israel hoped that the war in Gaza would not only cripple Hamas, but eventually strengthen its secular rival, the Palestinian Authority, and even allow it to claw its way back into Gaza.

But with each day, the authority, its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and its leading party, Fatah, seem increasingly beleaguered and marginalized, even in the Palestinian cities of the West Bank, which they control. Protesters accuse Mr. Abbas of not doing enough to stop the carnage in Gaza — indeed, his own police officers have used clubs and tear gas against those same protesters.

The more bombs in Gaza, the more Hamas’s support seems to be growing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, already considered corrupt and distant from average Palestinians.

“The Palestinian Authority is one of the main losers in this war,” said Ghassan Khatib, an independent Palestinian analyst in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “How can it make gains in a war in which it is one of the casualties?”

This is a pretty familiar outcome - what rises from the ashes of an attack like this is typically not more moderate or agreeable to the offensive power. Fatah was already disliked and now they are seen to be cooperating, either directly or indirectly, with the bombing of civilians.

I bring this up because Tom Friedman can't bother to read his own paper or talk to any regional expert, and would rather just tell the Palestinians to suck on this.

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future. […] In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims.

Yes, it is quite educational to murder women and children, and it almost always leads to a more learned and chastened militant group. Just read any history book. I guess the theory of "education" doesn't extend to Friedman, who can't seem to learn that collective punishment induces radicalism and rage.

Very. Serious. Monster.

The Myth Of Security Primacy

Chris Bowers wrote a post yesterday about how this idea that the primary responsibility of any President is to provide for the common defense is reductionist and wrong. This is a Republican view of government, that its only concern is keeping people safe. And it's damaging our global stature.

Our growing national obsession with security over justice, liberty and democracy is one of, if not the, clearest sign of the eroding stature of America in the geopolitical scene. Until about thirty years ago, America had pretty consistently been the most progressive great power, or super power, in the entire world. Now, due to the rise of conservatism in America, we have unfortunately lost that title to the European Union. It is a painful irony that most of Europe has become more democratic than America itself: in a sense, they have become more American than thou. Our loss of priorities in governance is one of the main reasons for this. In an American contest, "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" should matter just as much as life (remember Patrick Henry?). Justice, the general welfare and liberty should matter just as much as the common defense and domestic tranquility. We have really lost our way on this front, to the point that even saying your first priority as President or in Congress is anything but security is considered blasphemy. That is an incredibly frustrating, teeth-grinding loss of our national purpose, to such an extent that it has become an untouchable symptom in our national decline.

It's not an insignificant point. We are seeing basic human rights and practically the entire code of justice stripped away because of a false notion that security must take primacy. Because of this, we see our legal system twisted into such a knot that a President can indemnify lawyers who act on his orders and lawyers can indemnify a President if they act under their orders. Because of this, members of the executive branch are the only citizens in the country who don't have to answer to Congress, simply by virtue of being in the executive branch. Because of this, companies who break the law are supposed to be rewarded with our gratitude. This is of course about aggrandizing power, but the fig leaf for all of this is national security. The lie that our founders created this great democracy with the singular goal of keeping themselves and their charges safe, this unbreakable, untouchable lie, is like a cancer on the body politic.

And even if you cede this lie, even if you measure the current Administration based on this and only this standard, the only conclusion you can reach is that they are complete and utter failures. Not only is this White House totally irrelevant in promoting any kind of democracy promotion or peace-building strategy, but its policies, which have the nominal goal of keeping America safe, could literally not be more destabilizing and endangering for this country and our allies.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by (Fatah strongman Muhammad) Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

This is really about as unbelievable as you can get. Condi Rice and the national security apparatus was out to lunch by pushing for elections in the Palestinian territories, even though the indications were very strong that they would result in a Hamas victory. When the inevitable happened, they rejected Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to forge a unity government and backed what amounted to a Fatah coup to overturn the election results, using a strongman with a keen talent for sodomizing opposition detainees with soda bottles. Bradrocket picks up the story from there.

Long story short: the US government decides to bolster Fatah by sending them a bunch of arms. Word of these shipments leaks to a Jordanian newspaper. All hell breaks loose, Hamas and Fatah start a civil war. Hamas wins the war and proceeds to use the American-supplied arms it confiscated from Fatah against Israel. Now, here’s the punchline:

“You know,” says [Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades], “since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise. […]

Now that it controls Gaza, Hamas has given free rein to militants intent on firing rockets into neighboring Israeli towns. “We are still developing our rockets; soon we shall hit the heart of Ashkelon at will,” says Jaberi, the al-Aqsa commander, referring to the Israeli city of 110,000 people 12 miles from Gaza’s border. “I assure you, the time is near when we will mount a big operation inside Israel, in Haifa or Tel Aviv.”

Indeed, this provoked a bloody Israeli incursion into Gaza that was eventually repelled, and Hamas is touting: those rockets they got from America through Fatah.

Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said that like Hezbollah, Hamas had “gone from the stone to the rocket.”

“What we learned from Hezbollah,” he said, “is that resistance is a choice that can work.” [...]

But more than 200 rockets have been fired at Israel since Wednesday, according to Israeli military officials, including at least 21 longer-range Katyusha-style rockets, which are manufactured outside Gaza and brought into the strip. Palestinians and Israelis see the use of those rockets as another illustration of the growing similarity between Hezbollah and Hamas, the militant Islamic organization that controls Gaza.

“We are very concerned that the role model for Hamas in Gaza is the Lebanese Hezbollah,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, when asked about parallels between this conflict and the one with Hezbollah.

A strategy based on "security" and "strength" has imperiled Israel. It happened to violate international law as well, but of course the myth of security primacy cancels that out.

This is standard American meddling abroad, we've seen this for decades, although the core competency seems to have, er, eroded a tad. But in a national security state, failures of this stripe are even more devastating. This is practically all we have left in a country where justice and human rights have been completely hollowed out. We're governed by people who are contemptuous of government and indeed want to destroy it. They have no vision of government other than being a protective shield. And yet that shield is so cracked and withered and broken, the policies so dangerous and stupid, that it only hastens this American decline. And without a determined and concerted effort to make government somehow more vital than just a security blanket, there's not going to be much of a chance to turn things around.

Enough With the Nation-Building!

The final fruits of our democracy project in the Middle East were plucked from the vine this week, when Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian government amidst a full-scale civil war in Gaza, where Hamas has the upper hand. Hundreds have died and more violence is to come:

Fearful that Hamas' momentum could spread to the West Bank, Fatah went on the offensive there, rounding up three dozen Hamas fighters. Angry militants threw office furniture out a third-story window of the Palestinian parliament building in Ramallah, then set fire to the office of three Hamas lawmakers. A Hamas activist was shot and killed in Nablus, the first person to be killed in the West Bank after days of violence in Gaza; the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent Fatah offshoot, claimed responsibility.

In Gaza, it was a day of major victories for Hamas and its backers in Iran and Syria — and of devastating setbacks for the Western-backed Fatah. In one particularly humiliating scene, masked Hamas fighters marched agents of the once-feared Preventive Security Service out of their headquarters, arms raised in the air, stripped to the waist and ducking at the sound of a gunshot.

"The era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived," Hamas spokesman Islam Shahawan said.

Gee, it was such a good idea to give the group that says "the era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived" a stirring electoral victory last year, wasn't it? (h/t Garance Franke-Ruta)

Five years ago this month, President Bush stood in the Rose Garden and laid out a vision for the Middle East that included Israel and a state called Palestine living together in peace. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror," the president declared.

The takeover this week of the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group dedicated to the elimination of Israel demonstrates how much that vision has failed to materialize, in part because of actions taken by the administration. The United States championed Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip as a first step toward peace and then pressed both Israelis and Palestinians to schedule legislative elections, which Hamas unexpectedly won. Now Hamas is the unchallenged power in Gaza [...]

"The less we try to intervene and shape Palestinian politics, the better off we will be," said Robert Malley, an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the International Crisis Group. "Almost every decision the United States has made to interfere with Palestinian politics has boomeranged."

Elections aren't democracy, and elections without understanding and preparing for the eventual consequences are downright stupid. Hamas grew powerful electorally and they translated it into a military victory over Fatah. This was pretty well known at the time, but we chose to ignore it. And then, we intervened on behalf of Fatah when it was clear they didn't have the support of the people in Gaza. We tried to starve the Palestinian people after the Hamas victory, and we tried to arm Fatah so they could gain through force what they could not gain at the ballot box. And it bounced right back on us in the fastest example of blowback you've ever seen.

We seem to not be able to leave well enough alone in the Middle East, despite our reverse-Midas touch where everything we encounter turns to shit. We don't seem to understand this central truth about the region:

"The people who are moderate are not effective," said David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "And the people who are effective are not moderate."

You wonder where we can go from here, but this Administration is so catastrophically bad when it comes to foreign policy you'd rather they sat in the corner without talking for the next 19 months. But if there is a way forward, it probably lies in a three-state solution at this point, with a Gaza-Hamastan, Fatah/Palestine and Israel. That's untenable, but so is the current situation. This meddling in the internal Palestinian affairs has made the Jewish state far less safe than it was even at the time of Arafat. Any hope that the new generation of Arab and Israeli leaders could work out their differences is gone. Now we're faced with a series of very unattractive policy options. Sound a lot like Iraq to you?