Israel’s Experimental Pressure Backfires

In this space I published the opinion that Bush's peace tour should not encourage hope or expectations. One reason given was the political status of Bush, Olmert, and Abbas. This NYTimes article below further upholds the premise in my earlier opinion.

A riveting slide show of events at the Gaza - Egypt border can be seen here (<-- click)

clipped from www.nytimes.com

Hamas undermined the chances that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Fatah faction could succeed in negotiating a peace treaty — let alone by the time President Bush leaves office.

Mr. Mubarak will work something out with Mr. Abbas and Israel to allow a regulated border crossing. But even that will resound as a Hamas victory.

The daily newspaper Haaretz said in an editorial on Friday, “The siege of Gaza has failed.”

“The experiment blew up in their faces,” said Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Hebrew University. “The whole theory of putting pressure on a population to put pressure on their government doesn’t work. It didn’t work in Lebanon in 2006, and it didn’t work now.”