understanding politics, considerations

Stratfor on Israel


January 10th, 2009 · Egypt, Europe, Iran, Islam, Israel and the Middle East, Lebanon, Religion, World Affairs

Strat­for Global Intel­li­gence, as usual, hits the polit­i­cal nail on the head:

For each of these Arab states, Hamas rep­re­sents a force that could stir the social pot at home — either by cre­at­ing a back­lash against the regimes for their ties to Israel and their per­ceived fail­ure to aid the Pales­tini­ans, or by embold­en­ing demo­c­ra­tic Islamist move­ments in the region that could threaten the sta­bil­ity of both repub­li­can regimes and monar­chies. With some­what lim­ited options to con­tain Iran­ian expan­sion in the region, the Arab states iron­i­cally are look­ing to Israel to ensure that Hamas remains boxed in. So, while on the sur­face it may seem that the entire Arab world is con­vuls­ing with anger at Israel’s offen­sive against Hamas, a closer look reveals that the view from the Arab palace is quite dif­fer­ent from the view on the Arab street.

The United States, of course, sup­ports Israel in its con­flict with Hamas. Europe, unsurprisingly, is increas­ingly crit­i­cal. But the most inter­est­ing and unknown fact is that mod­er­ate Arab states are likely sup­port­ing Israel even though they can­not say so in public.