Gaza campaign exposes Middle East policy vacuum

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent - Analysis

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel's week-old offensive in the Gaza Strip is a violent sequel to a drive led by the United States, with much European and Arab support, to punish Hamas for resisting a largely discredited Middle East "peace process."

The campaign is unlikely to eradicate Hamas or make it any easier for the next U.S. president, Barack Obama, to break the cycle of conflict and rescue swiftly receding prospects for a solution based on creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Israel is consolidating its grip on the West Bank, while keeping Gazans bottled up. Splits between Palestinian factions have made sporadic U.S.-sponsored talks between the Israelis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas notional at best.

Outgoing President George W. Bush had set a goal of reaching a peace deal by the end of 2008 after belatedly relaunching Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Annapolis in November 2007.

Faced instead with a new spasm of violence, the White House has effectively encouraged the Israelis to pursue what they portray as an attempt to quell rocket attacks on their civilians and "change the reality" in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The European Union, lacking the energy and unity to act in the diplomatic vacuum left by Washington, has merely appealed for a ceasefire -- and promised a bit more humanitarian relief to the 1.5 million people locked into the coastal strip by a punitive Israeli blockade and a sealed Egyptian border.

The Arab League, caught between public dismay at the Gaza bloodshed and the hostility of many member states to Hamas and other Islamist groups allied to Iran, has agreed only to ask the U.N. Security Council to compel Israel to halt its onslaught.

But the council is toothless without the United States and other veto powers in accord. It has yet to adopt a resolution.

RISING DEATH TOLL

So far air strikes have killed 424 Palestinians, a quarter of them civilians according to a "conservative" U.N. estimate. Rockets fired from Gaza have killed four Israelis.

Israeli leaders, keen to bolster their security credentials before a February 10 election, began the assault on December 27, eight days after a six-month, Egyptian-mediated Hamas truce expired.

Rocket fire mounted after Hamas declared it would not seek to renew a truce that was never fully observed. Israel had kept up tight border controls and launched deadly raids on militants, who failed to halt all of their pinprick rocket attacks.

The unfolding war is a culmination of attempts to crush Hamas that intensified after the Islamist group's decisive victory over Abbas's Fatah faction in a 2006 election.

The United States and the EU, which classify Hamas as a terrorist group, reacted sharply to the result of the poll.

They boycotted the Hamas-led unity government and cut off most aid, insisting that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist, renounce violence and accept agreements made by the Palestine Liberation Organisation -- from which it is excluded.