• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Analysis: The War's Forgotten Front

Council on Foreign Relations

August 17, 2006
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan

It has been merely two months since Hamas militants crossed the Gaza border and abducted an Israeli soldier, but in that time the political landscape in the Middle East has shifted drastically. Just weeks after the Hamas abduction, Hezbollah fighters staged a similar raid on an Israeli border post, capturing two soldiers and touching off a war between Israel and Hezbollah that dominated international headlines for a month. With a cease-fire holding along Israel's northern front, attention is turning back to Gaza, which one year ago saw the unilateral Israeli pullout from settlements they had occupied for thirty-eight years (The Independent). A report from the Palestinian Monitoring Group says July was the deadliest month in Gaza (PDF) since October 2004, and news reports suggest there is little hope for a timely halt to the fighting (BBC).

But Israel's incursion into Gaza may have had some positive effect on the Palestinian Authority government. Before the start of the fighting with Israel, Hamas was at such odds with Fatah that there were fears a civil war would erupt (TIME) between the two political camps. On Wednesday, President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah, and Hamas political leader and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh agreed to begin negotiations on forming a unity government (Haaretz). Haniyeh says a basis for talks is the so-called prisoners' document drawn up by jailed Palestinian leaders, which implies recognition of the state of Israel.

The Palestinian leaders hope a broader government will help bring an end to the crippling international isolation of the Palestinian Territories.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.