Easier said than done

Hillary Clinton is on her way from Cambodia to Jerusalem.  This is precisely the opposite direction from the one President Obama intends for American foreign policy:   his announced intention is to pivot American attention from the Middle East to Asia.  His visit to Asia just a few days after re-election was meant to underline that message.

The current Middle East crisis is over Gaza, where rocket launches against Israeli targets have precipitated a ferocious response, so far mainly from the air (though there have also been sea and land artillery barrages).  Israel has mobilized ground forces, which appear ready for a land incursion into Gaza.  Hamas, which governs Gaza (but does not necessarily launch all the rockets), has attracted support from Turkey, Qatar and Egypt, which is seeking to mediate a ceasefire.

This is a pretty clear cut case of the urgent taking priority over the important.  Even in the Middle East, there are things going on that are more important to vital U.S. interests than the highly regrettable Hamas/Israel conflagration.  The civil war in Syria above all requires more attention than it has gotten, even if Obama’s hesitancy to get more deeply involved is understandable when you look at the array of unappealing options available.  Iran’s nuclear program continues to produce 20% enriched uranium.  If diplomacy does not produce an end to its nuclear weapons ambitions in the next few months, military action by both the U.S. and Israel becomes likely.  The fight against al Qaeda in Yemen isn’t working well–the drone war seems to produce more terrorists than it kills.  Let’s not even mention the sometimes faltering revolutions in Tunisia and Libya, or the apparent extremist takeover of northern Mali.

Whatever.  For the moment Gaza is at the top of America’s to do list.  The immediate problem is a ceasefire, but Ehud Yaari argues that a broader arrangement is really what is needed.  This would entail high-level political agreements between Egypt and Israel on blocking arms smuggling to Hamas, clamping down on extremists in Sinai and opening the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza to both trade and people.

The problem with these ideas is that they tie Hamas-governed Gaza more closely to Egypt and loosen its already attenuated ties to the West Bank, where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) governs.  If there is any sense at all in Israel’s right-wing efforts to block Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution the rest of the world favors, it lies precisely in a scheme to separate Gaza and the West Bank, returning the former to Egypt’s suzerainity and the West Bank to Jordan.

But that does not mean Yaari’s ideas are bad, only that what I take to be their unintended consequences should not be allowed to block Palestinian unity.  It is an added irony that the main obstacle at the moment is the Palestinians themselves, who have not managed to reconstitute a united polity despite many efforts to do so.  It will be interesting to see if the Israeli air attacks sharpen the differences between Gaza and the West Bank or narrow them.  Palestinian unity, like the pivot to Asia, is easier said than done.