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Analysis: Amid Flux, Mideast Talks Mulled Anew

Council on Foreign Relations

July 16, 2007
Prepared by: Michael Moran

A year ago this week, war raged between Israel and two stateless entities on its borders, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas inside the Palestinian Authority’s Gaza Strip. The resulting air strikes, missile exchanges, and small-unit actions bruised both sides, killing civilians in Gaza, northern Israel, and especially, in Lebanon. Militarily, as Israel’s own inquiry concluded, launching the two-front operation reflected a “weakness in strategic thinking.”

A year later, the balance sheet is even more sobering. The three Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping helped spark the dual Israeli offensives remain in captivity (JPost). In Gaza, the cohesion of the Palestinian Authority, already dodgy before the Israeli incursion, suffered a mortal blow, collapsing completely last month. That left formerly stateless Hamas, in the words of former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., with a “territorial base … on the Mediterranean” (WSJ).

In Lebanon, Hezbollah bragged of having bested the mighty Israeli military, and set about quickly casting itself (rather than Lebanon’s pro-Western coalition government) as the true defenders of the nation. Bluster, perhaps. But, as CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Vali R. Nasr noted, the stock of Hezbollah’s Syrian and Iranian backers rose nonetheless. With the country still on edge, Walid Phares, a U.S.-based Mideast analyst, sees signs Hezbollah may even risk a Hamas-style coup (Counterterrorism Blog) of its own.

Yet in the Middle East as elsewhere, hope springs eternal. President Bush on Monday announced new aid to the rump Palestinian government (NPR) in the West Bank. President Mahmoud Abbas won concessions from Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on “wanted” (Al Bawaba) and jailed members of his Fatah party. Hamas, feeling isolated, has launched a public relations campaign (LAT) to “soft sell” its motives.

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

Copyright 2007 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.