The US role in Mideast travails
Extremists' rise can be traced in part to Bush policy, analysts say.
from the June 18, 2007 edition
Page 4 of 4
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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