Recommended: When Strategies Collide

Walter Russel Mead has written a good piece in The American Interest about the Israel-Gaza conflict: When Strategies Collide.  Mead argues that both Israel and Hamas see this as an existential battle, and are therefore not likely to reach a truce easily or soon.  Events today support that perceptive conclusion, published a week or so ago.

Mead notes that while the American press and the UN are horrified at the carnage, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are delighted to see Israel take on Hamas, which they see as a serious threat to their own regimes, and are giving quiet but tacit support to Israel in this battle. In fact, some would argue, this isn't really a battle primarily between Israel and Hamas - it is a proxy war between Iran and the more orthodox Sunni regimes in the Middle East.

Mead also notes that America's passive withdrawal from the region under the current administration has seriously weakened any influence we might have had in this affair, and that the major players in the Middle East have pretty much decided to ignore us. This matches what some others have argued recently, which is that a world without strong American influence is likely to be a much nastier and more dangerous place.

My own view is that the Palestinian people will never have a reasonable life until Hamas is defeated and gone, whether or not they get a separate state or the blockade is ever lifted. However good they are at playing the media game with the world press, at root Hamas is just another fanatical terror organization, bent on killing Jews and maintaining power at any cost, including especially the cost of civilian lives - Jewish or Muslim alike. Nothing is going to change that.  If they stay in power, they will continue to skim millions from whatever international donors give to Gaza, they will continue to use that skimmed money to arm themselves and build rockets and tunnels and buy whatever weapons they can, they will continue to try to kill Jews any way they can, and they will continue to brutally suppress any opposition among Palestinians.

Anyway, this is a good, informative, thoughtful piece, well worth reading.