UN rights chief wants investigation of Gaza abuses

The Associated Press
Fri Jan 9, 2009

GENEVA – The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called Friday for an independent war crimes investigation in Gaza after reports that Israeli forces shelled a house full of Palestinian civilians, killing 30 people.

Navi Pillay told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council that the harm to Israeli civilians caused by Hamas rockets was unacceptable, but did not excuse any abuses carried out by Israeli forces in response.

Pillay went further in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., saying an incident in Gaza City this week "appears to have all the elements of war crimes."

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Israeli troops evacuated Palestinian civilians to a house in the Zeitoun neighborhood on Jan. 4, then shelled the building 24 hours later.

The U.N. agency said 110 people were in the house, according to testimony from four witnesses.

On Thursday, the international Red Cross said the Israeli army refused rescuers permission to reach wounded people in the neighborhood for four days. Israel said the delay was caused by fighting in the area.

Pillay told the Geneva-based rights council that all parties to the conflict had a duty to care for the wounded and avoid targeting health workers, hospitals and ambulances.

Violations of international humanitarian law may amount to war crimes for which individuals should be held accountable, she said.

The 47-member council, which is dominated by Arab and African countries, is debating a resolution condemning Israel for its actions in Gaza. The motion could be delayed until Monday.

Gaza Strikes Reverberate in Egypt

Mubarak Resists Calls at Home, in Region to Admit Palestinians Fleeing Violence

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 10, 2009; A01

CAIRO, Jan. 9 -- Rarely has an Arab leader been so widely perceived as backing Israel and the United States against the Palestinians, whose struggle has been a fundamental rallying point for Arabs and Muslims for more than six decades.

But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has rejected popular and regional pressure to open the Gaza-Egypt border and toughen his stance against Israel. In recent days, his government has voiced support for Palestinians in an effort to defuse mounting criticism, but officials continue to suppress anti-Israeli demonstrations.

On Friday, as Israeli forces continued a two-week-old offensive against Hamas, the armed Islamist movement that controls Gaza, scores of Egyptian doctors emerged from their union building in downtown Cairo. They clutched posters reading "Gaza Is Dying" and banners demanding the opening of the Rafah border crossing. One demonstrator held a baby doll, symbolizing a Palestinian child, in a white sheet covered with fake blood.

Black-clad riot police stood before them, grim-faced in their black helmets. Brandishing clubs, they blocked the protesters from entering the street.

"O Hamas, O Hamas, you are for all the people. We are behind you," the protesters chanted. Then they went after Mubarak.

"O Mubarak, Mubarak, make a decision. Open the crossing. Remove the siege," they chanted. "O Mubarak, Mubarak. Are you with us or against us?"

Egyptian analysts say Mubarak fears Hamas and wants to do everything possible to weaken the movement. Hamas has close ideological and historical ties to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated Islamist opposition group. Radical Islamists assassinated Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, in 1981.

Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for nearly three decades with U.S. backing, also wants to avoid taking sides in the war and to protect the country's tourism-reliant economy, the analysts said. Hamas has turned for support to Iran in recent years, and Mubarak, like other Sunni Muslim leaders, opposes the Shiite republic's widening influence in the region.

"It is a very serious crisis. And Egyptian public opinion is divided," said Abdel Raouf El Reedy, a former ambassador to the United States. "The more Israel becomes brutal in Gaza, the more pressure there will be on the Egyptian government. It is a challenge to the government."

While many Egyptians celebrate Hamas for fighting Israel in an attempt to achieve Palestinian self-determination, Egypt's secular middle class, including those who oppose Mubarak's autocratic rule, are wary of the movement's ideology and tactics. Many Egyptians are also disillusioned about schisms between Palestinian leaders and worried about the economic and political impact that a huge influx of Palestinians might cause.

"This isn't the Palestinian cause," said Hisham Kassem, a human rights activist and critic of Mubarak. "Hamas has taken Gaza hostage. Now, they want to take the Sinai and the rest of Egypt hostage.

"Mubarak can't have an Islamic terrorist emirate on his border. And it is not in the best interest of anybody in the region. So he has taken a tough position," Kassem said.

Most of the anger toward Mubarak centers on the Rafah crossing, which he has opened only to admit the most serious Palestinian casualties and to allow some aid to enter Gaza. But Egyptians have also demanded that Mubarak's government stop selling natural gas to Israel and expel Israel's ambassador.

"He is not opening the crossing because America and Israel are not letting him," said Awad Abdul Salem, 68, an engineer, in a courtyard of the lawyers' syndicate building Thursday.

"The regime is a traitor," yelled another man next to him.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Shiite Lebanese movement Hezbollah, has called for Egyptians to rise up against Mubarak. "Can the Egyptian police kill millions of Egyptians? Of course not," Nasrallah declared on the militia's al-Manar satellite television channel Dec. 28. "You, the Egyptian people, go and open the border. I am calling for a revolution in Egypt."

Senior Egyptian officials accuse Nasrallah of inciting violence in their country. Editorials have gone further, criticizing Iran's Shiite theocracy for fueling the assaults on Mubarak.

Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab states to have signed peace treaties with Israel. And Egypt has always straddled the delicate line between being a staunch American ally, receiving $1.4 billion in U.S. aid annually, and its leadership role in an Arab world resentful of American policies, especially since the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Still, Egypt has supported the Palestinian struggle for statehood. During the Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, Egypt withdrew its ambassador from Israel to protest the military tactics used against Palestinians.

Today, many Egyptians would like to see similar measures. They view Mubarak's efforts with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas as a temporary remedy that will do little to stop Israeli dominance in Gaza or provide a haven for Palestinians. "These efforts are superficial," said Fatima Ahmed, 17, a commerce student at Cairo University. "The real effort will be to open the crossing."

Mubarak's opponents charge that the 80-year-old president is more interested in preserving his grip on power and ensuring that his son, Gamal, succeeds him by shattering any threats, external or internal, to his rule.

"He says it's about Arab national security, but it's about protecting his own regime," said Mohammed Habib, the Muslim Brotherhood's first deputy chairman.

Before Friday's demonstration, more than 1,000 doctors and medical professionals had gathered inside an auditorium of the medics' syndicate. To enter the hall, they had to walk over a 20-foot-long Israeli flag. Speakers denounced the government for keeping Egyptian doctors and food shipments out of Gaza. "How can we not allow food through? What is the logic of this?" one speaker asked.

Some attacked Egypt's state-run media for asserting that Hamas was responsible for the current crisis and for not excoriating Israel. Muslim Brotherhood leaders called for the government to release members it has detained and to broaden the struggle against Mubarak, seeing in the crisis an opportunity to bolster their group's popularity.

"We have to act politically, not only in the health sector," Mohammed al-Beltagy, a Muslim Brotherhood official, declared from the lectern.

Hossam Zaki, Egypt's chief Foreign Ministry spokesman, described the attacks on Mubarak as the latest manifestation of a rift in the Middle East -- one that has widened since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon -- between groups that favor violent resistance to solve Arab-Israeli conflicts and those, led by Egypt, who favor political settlement.

"They are after Egypt's credibility. They are after Egypt's role as a stabilizer," Zaki said. "They know that if they can undermine us, it would be much easier to go ahead with their agenda.

"We don't want the Arab street to identify more and more with issues promoted by the Islamist movements," Zaki said. "This is extremely dangerous, and it has serious consequences."

Mubarak's supporters say he is a pragmatist who understands that Israeli-Palestinian tensions cannot be stopped through emotion alone. Many are rallying around Mubarak out of patriotism, angered by the Arab world's attacks on their nation's credentials as a supporter of Palestinian self-determination.

Sarah Abd al-Fattah, 24, an accounting student at Cairo University, questioned why Persian Gulf governments have not threatened to withdraw assets from the United States.

"Why is all the talk about Hosni Mubarak? We have our own large population to worry about. Our economy is in crisis. Mubarak is under a lot of pressure from outside and inside Egypt," she said. "We need to talk about the Gulf states. Financial power brings real power. They should be supporting us, not standing against us."

Her classmate Mahmoud Ahmed, 20, nodded. "I feel Egypt is doing what it can. If we do anything else, Egypt becomes a party to war. Nobody wants that," he said.

Ahmed Yousry, another student, said he cared passionately about the Palestinian people. But he has grown disgusted with fractures between Hamas and Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

"At the end of the day, they have to rely on themselves," said Yousry, 21. "They have to take their rights with their own hands."

The trio said they had no plans to demonstrate for Palestinians. "It won't achieve anything," Yousry said. The three said they didn't want the Rafah crossing opened up, fearing the prospect of tens of thousands of Palestinians flowing into Egypt.

"We are already overpopulated," Abd al-Fattah said.

"And," Ahmed said, "there will be no one left to fight for Palestine."

Gaza

The Truth About Gaza

In the face of many ‘modern myths’ currently being propagated,

Here is the truth, based on reports by the UN and other NGOs on the ground, including Israeli human rights groups.


Myth: Israel is a law-abiding nation seeking to live in peace with its neighbours.

The truth: In 1948, shortly after the embryonic UN gave 56% of Palestine to the largely immigrant, minority Jewish population, the Jewish forces drove out most of the indigenous Palestinians and took 78% of the land. They razed to the ground over 400 Palestinian villages, so that the refugees could not return. In 1967 they occupied the rest of Palestine, including Gaza, and began to settle their citizens in these areas, in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention. In 2002 they began the construction of the 400-mile long barrier, largely on Palestinian land, using it to take land and water resources from what is left of the West Bank.
The centres of population in the West Bank have been isolated into ghetto-like enclaves, surrounded by the Israeli army and illegal settlements. Many methods are being used to drive Palestinians out of their homes in East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed, in contravention of international law.
Israel is in violation of over 60 UN Resolutions, which call for the return of refugees, withdrawal of the settlers, dismantling of the wall and a lifting of the siege on Gaza.


Myth: Israel is threatened by its Arab neighbours.

The truth: Egypt and Jordan have diplomatic relations and trade agreements with Israel. Lebanon and Syria do not, as Israel still occupies part of their territory. Nevertheless, on several occasions the Arab League has offered Israel full normalisation in return for a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has refused.


Myth: Israel withdrew its settlers and the army from Gaza in 2005, but the Palestinians rejected this peace offering and simply resorted to more violence.

The truth: Israel did withdraw 8000 settlers from Gaza, after 38 years of occupation – but immediately sent 30,000 more to the illegal settlements in the West Bank (which now has over 450,000 settlers).
At the same time, it placed extremely tight restrictions on all entry points to the Gaza Strip, making it almost impossible for the local economy to function. Over the next two years Israel fired about 16,000 artillery shells into Gaza, killing 120 men, women and children and damaging much of the infrastructure of the towns.


Myth: Israel has for many years suffered terribly from thousands of missiles fired from N Gaza.

The truth: The first homemade Qassam missile was fired across the Israeli border in October 2001; the first fatality occurred in March 2007.
Up to November 2008 13 Israelis were killed by Qassam rockets. By contrast, between September 2000 and the end of November 2008 nearly 5000 Palestinians were killed, more than half of them in Gaza. The rockets have in the last year reached more distant targets, but in military terms they are ineffectual, compared to the fire-power of the US F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, Merkava tanks and naval gunships with which Israel is equipped.
Hamas say the missiles are in retaliation not only for the many deaths Israel has caused both in Gaza and the West Bank, but also for the continued occupation and expropriation of land (see above). They say they hope to end the occupation in this way, much as Israel was forced to end the occupation of South Lebanon by Hizbollah.


Myth: Hamas broke the recent ceasefire, prompting Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza.

The truth: In November 2008, during the six-month ceasefire, the Israeli army killed 14 Palestinians and tightened the siege on Gaza even more. In retaliation, Qassam rockets were fired on the Negev, killing no-one.
Israeli spokesmen have freely admitted that the assaults on Gaza were planned eight months ago – before the ceasefire. They clearly went into the ceasefire agreement without the intention of respecting it.


Myth: Hamas is an illegal terrorist organisation bent on Israel’s destruction. There is no possibility of Israel negotiating with them.

The truth: Hamas is a nationalist, Islamist organisation consisting of a political party, with a military wing, which for years was largely responsible for running hospitals and schools in Gaza, in a situation of military occupation. Even secular Palestinians saw them as efficient and non-corrupt.
When they came to power they offered Israel a ten-year truce, during which time negotiations could take place. Israel rejected this, and continued to quote earlier Hamas manifestos which called for the return of Palestinian land and property.


Myth: Hamas took over Gaza in a coup in June 2007, ousting the rightful government headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

The truth: Hamas won the 2006 general elections, which international observers considered free and fair, and formed a unity government in which MPs from Fatah and other parties were offered ministerial posts. However, in June 2006 Israeli troops abducted dozens of Hamas ministers and parliamentarians and put them in jail, while the US and other western governments joined Israel in refusing to recognise or speak to Hamas.
Israel and the US encouraged Fatah to stage a coup in Gaza, but Hamas pre-empted this in June 2007.
Mahmoud Abbas is the elected President of the Palestinian people, but his party, Fatah, does not have a mandate.


Myth: Israel always tries to minimise civilian casualties – it is targeting only Hamas.

The truth: Israel has the most technically advanced weaponry in the world, with the exception of the US. Its computerised drone planes (which it sells to the UK) send back extremely detailed information about every square foot of the Gaza Strip. And yet hundreds of civilians have been killed and wounded, with the one power plant, ambulances, schools and hospitals being hit.


Myth: Any nation faced with missile or bomb attacks would respond with massive fire power.

The truth: For years Britain experienced terrorist attacks by the IRA, with many more fatalities than Israel has suffered. It never resorted to bombing civilian targets and infrastructure, but succeeded through patient negotiation.


Myth: Hamas uses the citizens of Gaza as ‘human shields’.

The truth: Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on earth, with 1.5 million inhabitants living in an area about 25 miles long and five miles wide. There are no caves or forests to hide in or operate from – only urban areas.


Myth: Israel has the welfare of the people of Gaza at heart.

The truth: Since June 2007 Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip from the outside world, so that it is almost impossible to get in or out, or to import or export goods. Patients used to be able to leave Gaza to seek medical treatment elsewhere, but in the last year Israel has denied permits to most patients and dozens have died.


Myth: The people of Gaza are not really suffering – this is exaggerated for propaganda purposes.

The truth: John Ging, director of the UN agency for refugees in Gaza, Professor Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories and representatives of Oxfam and other international aid organisations reacted angrily to Israel’s claims. For years they have been monitoring the situation and calling attention to the desperate and deteriorating plight of the people of Gaza.


Myth: People who criticise Israel are anti-Semitic.

The truth: To be anti-Semitic is to be racist towards Jews. But many Jews, and even Israelis, are highly critical of Israel’s policies. The policies of ethnic cleansing and seizure of land are rooted in Zionism, or the belief that Jews have exclusive rights to Palestine. To be anti-Zionist is to oppose this ideology and these policies. But Israel uses the anti-Semitism argument to intimidate people into silence.


source: WWW.PALESTINECAMPAIGN. ORG

UN: 257 Palestinian children killed in Gaza

Ibrahim Barzak And Karin Laub
Associated Press
Jan 8, 2009



GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Tiny bodies lying side by side wrapped in white burial shrouds. The cherubic face of a dead preschooler sticking up from the rubble of her home. A man cradling a wounded boy in a chaotic emergency room after Israel shelled a U.N. school.

Children, who make up more than half of crowded Gaza's 1.4 million people, are the most defenseless victims of the war between Israel and Hamas. The Israeli army has unleashed unprecedented force in its campaign against Hamas militants, who have been taking cover among civilians.

A photo of 4-year-old Kaukab Al Dayah, just her bloodied head sticking out from the rubble of her home, covered many front pages in the Arab world Wednesday. "This is Israel," read the headline in the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. The preschooler was killed early Tuesday when an F-16 attacked her family's four-story home in Gaza City. Four adults also died.

As many as 257 children have been killed and 1,080 wounded — about a third of the total casualties since Dec. 27, according to U.N. figures released Thursday.

Hardest on the children is the sense that nowhere is safe and adults can't protect them, said Iyad Sarraj, a psychologist hunkering down in his Gaza City apartment with his four stepchildren, ages 3-17. His 10-year-old, Adam, is terrified during bombing raids and has developed asthma attacks, Sarraj said.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas in response to its repeated rocket attacks on southern Israel, and is doing its utmost to avoid civilian deaths. However, foreign aid officials note that civilians can't escape blockaded Gaza and that bombing crowded areas inevitably leads to civilian casualties. The Israeli military has used tank and artillery shells, as well as large aerial bombs.

In the Shati refugee camp on the Mediterranean, 10 boys were playing football in an alley Thursday when a shell from an Israeli gunboat hit a nearby Hamas prison.

At the sound of the explosion, one of the older boys whistled, a signal to interrupt the game. Several players took cover with their backs pressed against a wall. After a minute or two, the game resumed.

Samih Hilal, 14, said he sneaked out of his grandfather's house against the orders of his worried father. The house was crowded with relatives who fled more dangerous areas, he said, and he couldn't stand being cooped up for so many hours.

"Do you think we are not afraid? Yes, we are. But we have nothing to do but play," Samih said.

Another boy, 13-year-old Yasser, waved toward the unmanned Israeli drones in a defiant gesture, instead of seeking cover during the shelling. "There is nothing we can do. Even if we run away here or there, their shells are faster than us," he said.

Indeed, all of Gaza has become dangerous ground.

Children have been killed in strikes on their houses, while riding in cars with their parents, while playing in the streets, walking to a grocery and even at U.N. shelters.

Sayed, Mohammed and Raida Abu Aisheh — ages 12, 8 and 7 — were at home with their parents when they were all killed in an Israeli airstrike before dawn Monday. The family had remained in the ground floor apartment of their three-story building, while the rest of the extended clan sought refuge in the basement from heavy bombardment of nearby Hamas installations.

Those in the basement survived. The children's uncle, Saber Abu Aisheh, 49, searched Thursday through the rubble, a heap of cement blocks, mattresses, scorched furniture and smashed TVs.

He said Israel gave no warning, unlike two years earlier when he received repeated calls from the Israeli military, including on his cell phone, that a nearby house was going to get hit and that he should evacuate.

"What's going on is not a war, it's a mass killing," said Abu Aisheh, still wearing the blood-splattered olive-colored sweater he wore the night of the airstrike.

The Israeli military did not comment when asked why the Abu Aisheh house was targeted.

In the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, medics found four young children next to their dead mothers in a house, according to the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross. "They were too weak to stand up on their own," the statement said.

The Red Cross did not say what happened to the children, but noted that the Israeli army refused rescuers permission to reach the neighborhood for four days. Israel said the delay was caused by fighting.

Medic Mohammed Azayzeh said he retrieved the bodies of a man and his two young sons from central Gaza on Wednesday. One of the boys, a 1-year-old, was cradled in his father's arms.

In the Jebaliya refugee camp, five sisters from the Balousha family, ages 4, 8, 11, 14 and 17, were buried together in white shrouds on Dec. 29. An Israeli airstrike on a mosque, presumably a Hamas target, had destroyed their adjacent house. Only their parents and a baby girl survived.

Israel accuses Hamas of cynically exploiting Gaza's civilians and using them as human shields. The military has released video footage showing militants firing mortars from the rooftops of homes and mosques.

"Israel wants to see no harm to the children of Gaza," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. "On the contrary, we would like to see their children and our children grow up without the fear of violence. Until now, Hamas has deliberately prevented that from becoming reality."

Rocket fire from Gaza has disrupted life in Israeli border communities, and with the latest intensified militant attacks, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are in rocket range. Schools are closed and fearful Israeli children rush into bomb shelters at the sound of air raid sirens.

In the ongoing chaos of Gaza, it's difficult to get exact casualty figures. Since Dec. 27, at least 750 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza Health Ministry official Dr. Moawiya Hassanain.

Of those, 257 were children, according to the U.N.'s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, citing Health Ministry figures that he called credible and deeply disturbing.

"We are talking about urban war," said Abdel-Rahman Ghandour, the Jordan-based spokesman for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa. "The density of the population is so high, it's bound to hurt children ... This is a unique conflict, where there is nowhere to go."

Successive generations of Gaza children have grown up with violence, part of the accelerating conflict with Israel. In the late 1980s, many threw stones at Israeli soldiers in a revolt against occupation. In the second uprising, starting in 2000, some were recruited by Hamas as suicide bombers.

Sarraj, the psychologist, said he fears for this generation: Having experienced trauma and their parents' helplessness, they may be more vulnerable to recruitment by militants.

In his Gaza City apartment, Sarraj tries to reassure his own children.

His 14-year-old stepdaughter lost her school, the American International School, to a recent airstrike, and a girlfriend was killed in another attack. The family lives in the middle-class Rimal neighborhood and still has enough fuel to run a generator in the evenings, enabling the children to read.

Yet when the bombings start, he can't distract them. "They are scared," he said. "They run to find the safest place, in the hallway, away from the window."

Countering Iran In Gaza And Beyond

By Jim Hoagland
Washington Post
January 4, 2009

A strange brew of wishful thinking and studied inaction passed for George W. Bush's Middle East peace policy for eight years. But in his final days, this president must act to contain the consequences of a regional conflict he has allowed to fester.

Israel's brutal assault on Hamas rocketeers -- and the Palestinian civilians among whom they hide in the Gaza Strip -- is not just another tactical round of mutual, if unequal, bloodletting by ancient adversaries. Israel's campaign was skillfully conceived with strategic aims that involve Iran, the American political calendar and perhaps the nature of pan-Arabism today.

Bush must respond at that strategic level -- within his time-limited means. It is pointless to expect him suddenly to exert pressure on Israel for lasting concessions to the Palestinians. He did not just give Israel a green light to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas once that radical movement foolishly renounced a six-month-old truce. Bush knocked down the traffic light post and waved the Israelis through the intersection.

His unwavering support will not have amazed Israeli leaders. However outwardly positive Barack Obama was about Israel during the campaign, the president-elect is an unknown quantity for them. To Israel it must have made sense to slam Hamas as hard as it could under Bush and start with a theoretically clean slate with Obama on Jan. 20.

In the interim, U.S. policy must concentrate on limiting any political gains the spasm of violence in Gaza could bring for Iran and Syria, which are both happy to fight Israel to the last Palestinian. Israel launched the Gaza operation to disrupt the enervating proxy warfare that Iran wages through Hamas and to demonstrate to Iran that Israel is not a toothless tiger that can be ignored.

Today only Israel poses any threat of military action to halt Iran's drive to enrich enough uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Bush's departure and Obama's promises to engage Iran will limit U.S. action in 2009 to diplomacy.

Fortunately there is a policy instrument immediately available to strengthen Washington's diplomatic position on Iran, while simultaneously demonstrating American support for moderate Arab governments that have been put on the spot by Israel's Gaza onslaught. It is an arrangement known as a 123 Agreement (after Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act), which would enable the United States to sell nuclear technology and equipment to the United Arab Emirates for a civilian nuclear energy program.

The agreement is entirely valid and desirable on its own terms, which I will detail in a subsequent column. The short version for now is that the UAE, a small but influential Persian Gulf state dominated by Abu Dhabi, has convincingly demonstrated through the international agreements it has already signed that it will not pose a proliferation threat. The commitments to inspections it will undertake in the new accord with the United States would strengthen outside controls.

Most important, the UAE has explicitly renounced ever acquiring its own uranium enrichment or reprocessing systems and will require vendor nations to take back all spent nuclear fuel.

Iran's refusal to consider those safeguard arrangements has blocked progress in international negotiations and convinced analysts that it secretly is working on a bomb. The UAE approach provides a model that not only Iran but also other nations interested in developing nuclear energy should follow. And support by the United States would establish that Washington is not against other countries acquiring peaceful nuclear programs, as Iran charges.

U.S. and UAE officials have discussed the possibility of a mid-January signing of the 123 Agreement, which would then be sent to Congress. The Democratic majority should wave the deal through.

Seizing the chance to highlight U.S. cooperation with Abu Dhabi -- which has sent troops to Afghanistan and taken other steps to fight terrorism -- would finally give content to U.S. verbal commitments to Gulf Arabs, who fear Iran and its proxies, Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Tariq Alhomayed, a courageous columnist for Saudi Arabia's London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, noted last week that Iran's Arab spokesmen in the region have attacked Egypt much more savagely than Israel for the Gaza tragedy. This shows, he continued, that "Iran is a real threat to Arab security, as today it launched a war against Egypt, tomorrow against Saudi Arabia . . . ." American policy did not produce the strategic changes occurring in the Middle East. But Washington should work to understand and use them to reengage decisively in a problem too long neglected.

Attacks Further Split Arab Rulers, People

Leaders Assailed Over Censure of Hamas

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 4, 2009; A15

BAGHDAD, Jan. 3 -- "War on Gaza" was the description the satellite channel al-Jazeera gave for the Israeli ground invasion that began Saturday, a culmination of eight days of bombing that have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the crowded seaside strip. But across the Arab world, the struggle was as noteworthy for what was becoming a war at home.

From Egypt to Saudi Arabia, longtime leaders of the Arab world, the attacks illustrated a yawning divide between the policies of rulers and the sentiments of those they rule. Although the Palestinian cause is cherished on the street, the region's leaders are viewed as paying only lip service to it.

The gulf between the two is not uncommon in a region that remains, with few exceptions, authoritarian.

But exacerbating the tension is an issue that, although half a century old, remains at the heart of Arab politics: Palestine and its symbolism here.

The intersection of the issue's resonance with official Egyptian and Saudi criticism of Hamas has created a conflict in policy and sentiment as pronounced as perhaps at any time in modern Arab history.

Protests have erupted across the Arab world, with especially large gatherings Friday. More were convened Saturday in Europe. The Middle East was dominated by laments at the seeming impotence of Arab governments. Al-Jazeera reported that Moroccan demonstrators Saturday condemned "the cowardice" of Arab rulers. At a protest in Beirut, the ire was directed at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

"O great people of Egypt," they chanted, "replace Mubarak with a donkey."

"The Arab-Israeli conflict has witnessed instances during which Arab regimes have collaborated with the Israeli state," Khaled Saghiyeh wrote last week in a column in al-Akhbar, a Lebanese opposition newspaper. "But the interests of the Israeli and Arab regimes are perhaps meeting today like they never have before."

The governments have their own reasons for criticizing Hamas, which the region's populations effectively see as support for Israel's attacks. Egypt and Saudi Arabia perceive Hamas as an ally of Iran, whose influence they fear in the region. Both were similarly reserved during Israel's war in 2006 against Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim movement supported by Iran.

Egypt, in particular, fears Hamas's influence on its border along the Sinai Peninsula. Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated by Islamist extremists in 1981, and through Mubarak's tenure, his government has deemed Islamic activism, in its various incarnations, as the government's greatest threat. That has included insurgents who waged a low-grade war in southern Egypt in the 1990s and the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, which renounced violence a generation ago.

Egyptian officials have remained steadfast in their criticism of Hamas. Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, blamed the group in the past week for offering Israel "the opportunity on a golden platter" by firing rockets that broke a tenuous cease-fire.

But Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's meeting with Mubarak and Aboul Gheit two days before the attacks began may offer some of the most indelible images from the conflict. Egypt also has been criticized for not opening its border crossing with Gaza.

Al-Akhbar used the term "the mummy" to describe Mubarak in another column.

"Does the mummy have a heart and veins where blood circulates? Otherwise how can we explain the insistence of this pharaoh to keep Rafah closed in front of a brotherly nation facing the ugliest massacres?" wrote Elie Shalhoub in a column Thursday.

Even in Iraq, beset by its own conflicts, the Palestinian issue echoed in sermons Friday.

"It is a shameful stance that Arab countries have," Nadhim Khalil declared in a sermon in Thuluyah, a conservative Sunni town north of Baghdad.

The disconnect between policy and sentiment has become a feature of Arab politics, especially in recent years, as U.S. influence has dominated a region long contested during the Cold War. But some analysts say the divide today has threatened the very legitimacy of governments that, in public at least, offered support for Palestinian rights as a staple of policy. Egypt once deemed itself at the forefront of that conflict.

"That's the real story," said Karim Makdisi, a professor of political studies and public administration at the American University of Beirut.

"This gap, which has always been there, is greater than ever. I think we're in the middle of something new," he said. "This polarization -- where you have regimes perceived as getting closer to American and Israeli interests at the expense of very clear Arab and Muslim rallying points. They're acting oddly against their own interests. They're misreading the pulse of the people, the extent of the anger among most Arabs."