With Obama, what change for Mideast?

The US “shouldn’t do nothing” while awaiting Israel’s elections, says Mr. Alterman, a former member of the State Department’s policy planning staff. But on the other hand, attempting a major diplomatic push before the elections “is hasty and misdirected energy,” he says.

The state of Palestinian leadership makes the moment all the more difficult, he adds. “One of the greatest consequences of the Gaza war is how it undermined Abbas’s credibility. He didn’t emerge as a great national leader,” Alterman says, “and that has deep implications for how the US might move forward.”

Indeed, the US will have to decide the approach it is going to take to Palestinian leadership before launching any major diplomatic effort concerning postwar Gaza.

Obama assured Israeli leadership in his phone call Wednesday that the US will be an active participant in efforts to shut down cross-border arms smuggling into the hands of Hamas fighters in Gaza. But the Obama administration will have to decide whom among the Palestinians it will work with in addressing Gaza’s humanitarian and reconstruction needs, other regional experts say. Another issue these experts see for the administration: What kind of Palestinian leadership can it realistically hope to see that could return to peace negotiations?

“There’s going to have to be the equivalent of a [Palestinian] national unity government,” says Martin Indyk, a former US ambassador to Israel now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “We are far from that at the moment, but unless there’s some kind of political accommodation between Hamas and Fatah,” it will be very hard for Mr. Abbas to make concessions to the Israelis and move toward a final settlement, he says.

Another possible choice is for the Obama administration to continue in the path taken by the Bush administration – focusing on building up the Fatah-governed West Bank as a model for Gaza residents, who voted Hamas into power.
Perhaps the best the Obama administration can do in the current context, Mr. Indyk says, is to launch a major humanitarian and rebuilding effort for Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority’s technocratic government run by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. In a recent discussion with reporters, Indyk suggested this would be a way to “reintroduce” the Palestinian Authority back into Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Naming such a respected figure and tested negotiator as Mr. Mitchell to the Middle East dossier immediately communicates the president’s seriousness about the region’s importance, analysts say. Mitchell previously headed a commission formed by President Clinton to report on solutions to Middle East violence.

Mr. Holbrooke, who was named the administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was the architect of the Dayton Accords that brought peace to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. Holbrooke is now being tapped by Secretary Clinton and the president to pursue what Clinton called “an integrated strategy” for pursuing the war in Afghanistan and the impact Pakistan has there.

Obama’s aims on the diplomacy front would be bolstered, some regional experts add, by another anticipated naming: longtime Middle East diplomat and former Clinton administration peace coordinator Dennis Ross to assist Clinton on Middle East issues, including Iran.

Given the particularly difficult regional context the administration confronts as it seeks to honor a campaign pledge about reinvigorating Mideast peace efforts, the best Obama can do may be to signal his determination by naming envoys and then wait for a more propitious moment.

“With so many crises demanding his attention and definitely the economic situation in this country having to be his first priority, it doesn’t make sense for him to engage in the Middle East in a way that could lead to an early failure that will affect his credibility,” Indyk says. “But it’s a hot situation and he’s made a commitment to try to move the Palestinian problem toward resolution. So he has a need to do something there, and it’s an urgent need.”

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