The US role in Mideast travails

In many of the jarring events taking place, some analysts see an overarching confrontation between established powers backed by the US and more radical forces promoted by Iran and elements of Al Qaeda. "What we're seeing throughout the region are a lot of proxy battles," says Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "And the bad guys in many cases are winning."

The reasons for the region's radicalization and deterioration are not new, but Mr. Alterman cites a handful of current factors he says are contributors:

• A large and growing youth population that is frustrated with dismal economic horizons and feels "shut out."

• Mushrooming and apparently copious sources of financial support for causes, particularly radical movements.

• The elevated stature of Iran.

• The perceived success of Al Qaeda and "other practitioners of asymmetrical warfare."

• The deepening failure of governments to meet practical needs "and so to win the loyalty of their people."

Indeed, some of the radical organizations in the region, such as Hamas in Gaza, have done a better job of delivering services, with less corruption, than governments.

"There's more than enough blame to go around for the predicament [the region] is in. But you have this undeniable situation among the Palestinians where those who are moderate are not effective, and those who are effective are not moderate," says David Makovsky, an expert in the Middle East peace process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Added to this list of contributing factors is US policy, according to some analysts. Gerges, who has been a Carnegie scholar for the past year teaching in Egypt, says US involvement in Iraq has earned it the image of occupier, even as it abandoned its traditional role as catalyst for the Middle East peace process.

Alterman concurs that people in the region have increasingly perceived the US in a different way. "Arabs don't see the US as taking a hands-off approach. They see the US protecting the status quo, by supporting and legitimizing unpopular governments. They see US support for internal security services that practice torture," he says.

The US approach to the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006 is a case in point for many analysts. The US pressed for elections and then condemned the results, looking hypocritical about its support for democracy, they say. The US then boycotted a Hamas-led government, cutting off international funding – and effectively driving more Palestinians into Iran's waiting arms, some add.

Not everybody is of that view, or believes the US erred in snubbing a governing Hamas. "I know some will say that events now show that the idea of the [international community's] restrictions on the Hamas government was wrong, but I disagree," says Mr. Makovsky of the Washington Institute. "A business-as-usual approach … would have further undermined the moderates favoring a two-state solution."

Makovsky says the US and Israel should "take a page from Hamas's playbook" and take immediate steps to ease living conditions in the Fatah-dominated West Bank.

But Mr. Levy of the Century Foundation, who was on Israel's negotiating team in the last round of peace talks in 2001, says everyone – including the US and Israel – has a lot to lose by joining in the driving of a wedge between the two Palestinian camps.

"It's tempting to think that this is another clarifying moment, that you can build up some kind of Fatah-land as the Palestinian promised land, and reduce this radical Hamas-stan to a place of suffering, and then they'll understand," he says.

"But it's unlikely to work that way, because it's unrealistic to expect Palestinian leaders to play that game, and because the Palestinians are still one people," Levy says. "And then beyond all that, let's not forget where the last clarifying moment got us in Lebanon," referring to the increasing alienation that people in the region have felt in the past year toward moderate solutions and the US.

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