Since their election victory last January, Hamas leaders have come under fierce United States and European pressure to moderate their rejectionist stance and cut a deal with the moderate Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. But now the squeeze on Ehud Olmert’s government is also growing as the “international community”, fearing a region-wide implosion, gears up for another drive for peace.
Demands for action are coming from all sides and at all levels, risking more confusion than clarity. Jordan’s King Abdullah warned recently of unconfined disaster unless the impasse was broken. Moderate Arab states still hope the Saudis’ 2002 “land-for-peace” initiative can be revived.
Spain, France and Italy produced their own five-point blueprint last week. “We cannot remain impassive in the face of the horror unfolding before our eyes,” they declared. Their intervention was endorsed this week by Egypt, which said it would host talks for the warring Palestinian factions.
Yet this sort of freelance peacemaking is prompting irritated frowns in countries such as Britain, which value a “collective” European Union approach and believe the US-backed road map might still lead somewhere.
Earlier this week Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested again that resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict could be key to almost everything, Iraq included.
Additional pressure on Israel is mounting in the usual quarters. The UN General Assembly is demanding an inquiry into this month’s Beit Hanoun killings. That follows a string of inquests, internal and external, into the conduct of the Lebanon war.
Amnesty International this week accused Hizbullah of targeting civilians but also condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks”. Another report, by Medecins du Monde, highlighted the grievous impact on Gaza civilians’ health and living conditions of the US and EU economic embargo. Thus not for the first time do European bad consciences add to pressure on Israel.
But other factors also conspire against Tel Aviv. Syria’s apparent lack of interest, so far at least, in US and British diplomatic feelers, means Israel can expect no help from Damascus, if it ever did, in modifying Hamas and Hizbullah behaviour. Far from coming in from the cold, President Bashar al-Assad will head in the opposite direction this weekend for an unprecedented Tehran summit with Iran and Iraq.
And that leads to Israel’s biggest headache of all — Iran’s threats to destroy the “Zionist entity”, its supposed nuclear weapons ambitions, and the West’s abject, ongoing failure to enforce its own sanctions threat.
Given some American policymakers’ hopes of enlisting Iranian help in disentangling US forces from Iraq, Washington’s failure to force the nuclear issue has led some commentators to worry that Israel could be left to confront or even fight Iran alone.
Israel remained committed to a two-state solution, said Tzipi Livni, Israel’s politically eye-catching foreign minister, and Olmert was ready to meet the Palestinian president any time. But if progress was to be made, the Palestinian Authority needed a new unity government.
Livni said Israel had “some ideas” about rebooting the peace process. Prisoner exchanges might be a start, she hinted, although forward movement could only occur “responsibly and in phases”. Yet, as pressure builds, Israel may have to think again — and quickly. — Â